It’s been two years since the women of Blackpink have released a proper single together. In that time, each member has gone off to become a successful solo artist in their own right. Hell, Lisa even did the acting thing on the most polarizing season of The White Lotus. Indeed, Lisa is often cited as the most successful woman of the quartet when it comes to releasing music outside of Blackpink. There are others still that argue it’s really Rosé (who recently provided a song, “Messy,” for her first soundtrack, F1 the Album). Or maybe it’s Jennie, now that she has Ruby, or Jisoo, now that she has “Earthquake.” It seems, in effect, that whoever is deemed the most successful, it has less to do with actual numbers (whether in sales or views) and more to do with who you ask a.k.a. who that person is the biggest fan of. But when the four come together as Blackpink, there’s no need to pit them against each other in such a way—for their collective force is too great to bother with such a triviality.
And oh, how they’ve joined forces again for what amounts to the first taste of how their third album will sound. Reteaming for the lead single, “Jump” (not to be confused with many other singles of the same name, including a 2005 Madonna song from Confessions on a Dance Floor), the group also seems to immediately acknowledge the feeling that fans have had—that they’ve been apart for far too long—by effectively “reintroducing” themselves with billboards at the beginning of the Dave Meyers-directed video. As though anyone has forgotten their names. It’s on the fifth billboard shown, however, that the four appear together under the headline of “BLACKPINK.” For that, indeed, is something people might have forgotten by now in this short-attention-span’d world.
Briefly camouflaged within that billboard are the four women themselves, who quickly draw attention from an ever-mounting crowd down below. The open mouths of the screaming fans are soon used as a special effects opportunity, with each member appearing inside of an unsuspecting mouth for a decidedly Dave Meyers-y embellishment (after all, his videos are known for being drenched in these kinds of “trippy” flourishes).
From there, they even split apart one fan’s head before showing up inside another’s ear. All of which is to say, quite graphically, that Blackpink gets inside your brain with their earworms. With “Jump” being no exception to the rule. This in large part due to the up-tempo beat produced by Diplo, 24, Boaz van de Beatz, Zecca and Ape Drums. In short, it’s their most “American” musical outing yet (complete with Meyers as the music video director). And from inside a fan’s ear as the beat drops, Blackpink conveys their ongoing power to make bitches dance by sending everyone into a frenetically choreographed tizzy. We’re talking total apeshit, can’t-control-themselves pandemonium as they head bang like their lives depend on it, some even doing so against the surfaces of walls and windows. Perhaps this is why Blackpink chose to debut the song in conjunction with their Deadline World Tour, wanting the crowds to take a page from the ones in this video.
At another point, the pink lasers (what other color would they be?) that Blackpink beams from inside their ears (for they’ve gone from being inside one person to being inside many) actually “pours out” of everyone’s cochleae for an even more surreal comment on how much power they hold over their listeners. As this is happening, the timely allusion to a certain other iconic and highly influential girl group—Spice Girls, duh—is also wielded in the verse, “So come up with me, I’ll take you high/That prima donna, spice up your life.” And here it’s worth noting that not every Spice Girl who went solo was truly successful (*cough cough* Mel B and Emma Bunton) as each member of Blackpink has been. Hence, their right to boast, “You know I got that shit that you like/So come up with me, run up, uh, jump.” And, needless to say, when Blackpink says, “Jump,” their acolytes will only ask, “How high?” Shit, they’ll probably even jump off a high-rise building if told to.
In another scene, the quartet appears in coordinating shirts that read “Jump” across the front as they run through the streets at a superhuman pace—likely just another heavy-handed metaphor for how they outrun all the competition in their orbit. Even after taking this “long” of a break (because, in 2025, “two years and ten months” is considered a “long time”—courtesy of TikTok accelerating the perception of “so many things happening”). More than that, they’re capable of being among their fanbase while still remaining “outside” of it. The modern way of “interacting” with fans, as well as keeping them on the hook and wanting more from this kind of parasocial relationship. This manifest in a scene of the quartet being encircled by the head-banging crowd (now with fans [fans holding fans, meta] in hand to add further panache to their dance stylings—though Carnival Cruise Line would likely snatch those “props” away) just before they get another burst of insane energy that prompts them to do the kind of head banging that could cause real brain damage by smacking their heads against actual hard surfaces. This perhaps being Blackpink’s wry way of throwing the oft-touted belief that pop music makes you dumb back in people’s faces.
Soon enough, the quartet has another wardrobe change (this time into outfits that are decidedly on the more winter-ready side) as they lift off into the sky and start flying over the crowd. Yet more not-so-subtle commentary on how famous people tower over the hoi polloi. The hordes situated on balconies and rooftops are, thus, presently closer to “touching God,” but, of course, that god—Blackpink—remains just out of their reach.
For the grand denouement, Lisa, Rosé, Jennie and Jisoo appear on a heart-shaped platform suspended in mid-air against the night sky (it should go without saying that this video is chock full of CGI). A heart that, for added spectacle, shoots out sparks from its sides. The crowd below that gets visibly hit with some of those sparks appears unbothered by the potential of any burn damage. After all, isn’t it worth it to be able to say you were scorched by Blackpink? Yet another testament to their power over the masses.
