Album Review – Rosie by Rosé

On a sugary sweet debut, Rosé showcases her intelligence and strong melodic instincts, and ends up making the best thing to ever come out of BLACKPINK.

I have a complicated relationship with BLACKPINK.I know it might be kind of weird to say that about a band like BLACKPINK, but given we’re talking about a group responsible for songs that fall at the extremes of the quality spectrum from pop perfection (‘Lovesick Girls’) to some of the worst pop music of recent memory (‘How You Like That’). It’s hardly a wonder I found their albums so difficult to approach. 2022’s sophomore effort Born Pink might have been a marginal improvement on their 2020 debut thanks to more forward thinking songwriting, but it was still extremely uneven, as if the band had deeper aspirations that kept getting knocked back by limp commercial concisions, and it’s not like said concessions from Born Pink did that well on the charts either.

It’s that latter point that makes discussing Rosé’s success away from the group fascinating. Despite being the biggest K pop girl group, BLACKPINK failed to crack the US market in the way rivals BTS did despite help from Selena Gomez, Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga. However, with a little help from Bruno Mars, Rosé was able to succeed where her group had failed, with APT peaking at 8 as of writing. It’s quite the success story, and you can tell Rosé’s a bit shaken by it all as she begs – maybe even demands – a partner to tell her she’s good enough on the opener ‘number one girl’, a song bathing in insecurity around her stardom where the only solace is the partner, the one person she’d give it all up for.

The writing on this album is sharp and poignant in that vein, with ‘toxic till the end’ being the best of the lot. Rosé’s songs about toxic relationships read less angry and more relieved to finally be out of those situations, all coated in sugary optimism and a twisted sense of bemusement around how she was strung along for so long as a participant in her own misery. Also in the breakup song camp is ‘not the same’, an introspective look into a relationship that ran its course as everything she once loved about this person continues to feel like an increasingly distant memory, but even that song isn’t accusatory, more just quietly mournful for what was lost.

“Mournful” is probably the word of the day when talking about this album, especially as Rosé tries and fails in her attempts to make sense of her own emotions. ‘number one girl’ might be relatively straightforward in its desire to be affirmed by this partner, but even Rosé admits that she doesn’t really know why she needs the validation to that degree. ‘two years’ also shows her struggling to understand her feelings, this time as to why she can’t get over this guy in spite of the time that’s passed, although she does eventually find closure, with ‘gameboy’ showing her closing the door on that particular relationship in playful style. But sometimes it’s not that easy, with ‘call it the end’ being a quietly devastating track about emotionally dealing a relationship ebbing away and not knowing how to cope.

That’s the core of why this album works. It positions how little Rosé really knows, both about these relationships and her feelings, at the forefront of the lyrics. The result is that her struggles feel more human and genuine. It’s most obvious on ‘3am’, a song where she downright confesses how dumb it is that she’s so in love with this guy, but struggles to put words to it beyond describing everything she wants to do with him. It’s also apparent in the subtext of hookup tracks like ‘drinks or coffee’, where her cautious approach to pursuing this guy might be the result of the weights of past heartbreak that she’s still struggling to understand and manage. Any reckless abandon leftover from the glamour of her time in BLACKPINK seems sanded away, replaced by a thoughtful, but wary steadiness, although she’s still willing to cut loose in a low-key way on the closing track ‘dance all night’. To all the people saying this project sounds like an ‘AI generated modern pop album’, I dare you to consider all that nuance.

Granted, the intelligence that she shows does begin to fracture when you get to songs going for cutesy, low stakes parties like ‘APT’, where the repetitive anticlimax of a hook as well as the juvenile turns of phrase undercut the emotional maturity that Rosé was building on the album up until that point. ‘3am’ also falls into this category for its lyrics demanding validation even when she’s putting this partner through hell. Not exactly a healthy or mature look, even if the hook of that song is borderline irresistible for how head-over-heals in love with this guy she is.

While Rosé is certainly a great performer (see ‘toxic till the end’ and ‘stay a little longer’ in particular), the production on her vocals can occasionally feel a tad overworked, compromising the intimacy that she’s trying to build on songs like ‘too bad for us’. The whole album is a tad over-polished for what is, willing to take the decent swings in the writing but less so when it comes to the music.

But when the production works, wow does it work. The thrumming bass on ‘two years’ that builds into a wailing climax works wonders for the emotionality of the track, and ‘toxic till the end’ is pure synth-pop bliss borrowing from 1989 era Taylor Swift. Honestly, this is the album I’ve been looking for BLACKPINK to make for years. While far from perfect, the potential on display opens up so many doors for development down the line. Not going to like, I’m actually kind of looking forward to a new BLACKPINK album now… and I don’t know how I feel about that…