On January 14, 2026, K-Pop’s top girl group — consisting of JENNIE, LISA, JISOO and ROSÉ — announced their upcoming EP DEADLINE, with a release date of February 27, 2026. The album contains five songs: “JUMP,” “GO,” “Me and my,” “Champion” and “Fxxxboy,” with each song having a runtime of around 3 minutes.
DEADLINE marks the quartet’s first major release in 4 years, following the release of their 2022 Album Born Pink, which included hit songs “Pink Venom” and “Shut Down.”
On July 11, 2025, the first song of the album, “JUMP,” was released as a single. When it was later revealed that it would be on the tracklist, many fans of the group expressed their disappointment — a reaction I shared. The general consensus was that, after a four-year hiatus, the group should include five new songs. However, including pre-released singles in new albums is a common occurrence for many K-Pop groups.
All five songs on the album feature limited Korean lyrics, with “JUMP” and “GO” being the only two songs containing Korean lyrics. “JUMP” has several lyrics in Korean throughout the pre-chorus, chorus and outro. In contrast, “GO” only has one phrase in Korean, “무야호,” and the rest of the songs are fully in English.
The five songs are good but a deviation from previous BLACKPINK releases. This album still keeps the “sisters” theme but with a much more mature tone than their previous work. This is evident with two out of the five songs on the EP (“Me and my” and “Fxxxboy”) featuring explicit lyrics, although clean versions of both songs are available.
“Me and my” evokes moments from single releases of the group, with the song beats sounding similar to several songs on LISA’s debut album “Alter Ego,” while the line “pretty girls walking,” is evocative of JENNIE’s “Mantra” from her debut album “Ruby”, where she sings, “This that pretty girl-mantra, this that flaunt ya.”
The title track “GO” is quite good, but barely features JISOO, which is a common issue with most BLACKPINK releases. The song also makes little sense with the album's title.
The fourth song on the album, “Champion,” was the underrated favorite. With Grammy and Oscar award-winning songwriter EJAE credited as the song's lyricist, composer, songwriter and background vocalist, this is to be expected. For reference, EJAE has written KPop Demon Hunters songs “How It’s Done,” “Golden” and “Your Idol,” as well as some K-Pop songs for groups like Aespa. The song “Champion” did still have cringier moments though, particularly with the repetitive chorus line, “And if I take a, take a L, I’ll still fight.”
Overall, the songs on the album are very good separately, but don’t feel cohesive. “DEADLINE” feels more like a collaboration between solo artists than a BLACKPINK album. This point is especially obvious as only one song on the album,“JUMP,” contains the group’s catchphrase “BLACKPINK in your Area.” Although the song “GO” still references the group with the repeated chorus line “BLACKPINK’ll make ya,” and “Champion” containing ROSÉ repeating “BLACKPINK” for the outro.
As much as I love the songs on the album, this release makes me worried for the future of BLACKPINK’s career as a group. Also, with the group's individual contracts with YG Entertainment set to expire by late 2026 — despite renewing their group contract in 2023 — many Blinks are unsure about what will come next for BLACKPINK.
3.5/5
