The warehouse in Los Angeles is cold and drafty, transformed this November day into a photo-shoot dreamland for Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, and Rosé, the four members of Blackpink. Cement floors sprout into a fairy-tale garden, and a glossy vintage station wagon is parked next to a man-made hill. For nearly 12 hours, the performers—some of the most popular women in the world—gamely hit their poses. In the evening, huddled up with fuzzy blankets over bare legs in front of a makeshift plywood backdrop, they seem less like superstars than best friends unwinding. “We put in a lot of work so we could look like superwomen,” says Jennie. “We’re very normal girls, at the end of the day.”
Normal as they may be, their 2022 has been anything but. They appeared at the VMAs in in September, which notched a record as the best-selling album by a Korean girl group, with over 2 million album sales. It continues to dominate on YouTube, where Blackpink is the biggest musical act with over 83 million subscribers.
