BLACKPINK heats up KL with 2-day concert

“Hit you with that ddu-du ddu-du du – BLACKPINK!” Malaysian BLINK shouted in excitement as the Korean girl group opened their “BLACKPINK 2019 World Tour [In Your Area] Kuala Lumpur” last Saturday evening with their hit song “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du”.

Wearing matching light pink shorts and jackets, the K-pop quartet appeared onstage around 6.20pm and dazzled with their fiery opening stage (literally, stage pyrotechnics spat out fires during the performance), which ended with booming fireworks.

Jisoo, Rosé, Lisa and Jennie performed “Forever Young” next, dancing on a raised platform in the middle of the stage. Before sitting down to sing a remixed version of “Stay”, the four girls greeted their fans in the Malay language. (Throughout the concert, while her English-speaking members continued to interact with fans in English, Jisoo chose to charm her Malaysian fans by continuing to demonstrate the Malay phrases she’s learned).

After “Stay”, the girls walked out to the smaller extended stage up front and performed “Whistle”.

Jisoo performing her Korean and English cover of “Clarity” (Photo source: YG Entertainment).

Following the intermission (during which a video compilation of BLINK worldwide performing covers and sending messages to the girls were played), Jisoo re-appeared alone, exuding a diva vibe as she was sitting on a small mountain of disco balls – quite a juxtaposition to her cutesy dress.

Jisoo showed off her vocals with her cover of Zedd’s “Clarity”, which included Korean lyrics that the singer wrote herself. While the oldest member belted off high notes in her solo stage, the youngest and only Thai member, Lisa, showed off her dancing skills with “Take Me” and “Swalla” dance covers.

Lisa proving why she’s called the Dancing Queen (Photo source: YG Entertainment).

Rosé took the stage next with her powerful covers of The Beatles’ “Let It Be”, Park Bom’s “You and I” and Taeyang’s “Just Look At Me”. 

The last to perform her solo stage was Jennie, who, of course, sang her solo hit, “Solo”. (In respect to the country’s more conservative culture, she donned a white shirt underneath her what was usually quite revealing costume for the performance).

Rosé looking very elegant in her sequined dress (Photo source: YG Entertainment).

Jennie is the first and only one of the members with a solo career (Photo source: YG Entertainment).

Moving on to “Kiss & Make Up”, their song with Dua Lipa, only three members appeared first while Jennie ran on stage much later, one could only assume there was problem backstage so she couldn’t make it on stage earlier with the others.

They followed it up with a remixed cover of Wonder Girls’ “So Hot”, before performing “Playing with Fire”, a reggae version of “Really”, “See You Later”, “16 Shots”, “Boombayah” and lastly, “As If It’s Your Last”.

Of course, the girls showed up on stage once again after a little break to perform their encore stages. Dressed now in fresh, casual wear, they performed “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” and wrapped up the whole show with the original version of “Stay”.

Mandatory group pic (with their dancers and band) with the crowd of fans (Photo source: YG Entertainment).

Luckily for Malaysian BLINK who were not content with seeing the girls live just for that one evening, they could catch them again the next day at the same venue, Stadium Malawati. Even though this was the BLACKPINK’s first concert in Malaysia, they made sure to go all out by performing for two days back-to-back, pulling in a crowd 8,000-strong each day.

(Photo source: YG Entertainment)