LISA wants you to believe she’s multifaceted. The Thai singer and rapper’s debut solo album is called Alter Ego, and if one takes her at her word, these 13 songs are meant to live up to that title. She presents different versions of herself, among them Vixi, a villain who drinks your tears; Roxi, a rock star who loves energy drinks; and Sunni, a girl who’s afraid of the dark. If this sounds a bit hollow, it’s because the concept is designed to sell multiple copies of the same album (CDs can be purchased with one of five photo books, each featuring one of the identities). This marketing ploy also highlights her biggest challenge: LISA, who is part of the record-setting K-pop girl group BLACKPINK, needs to convince you that she has depth without her bandmates. Alter Ego proves she doesn’t.
At this point in her career, LISA is too big to fail commercially but also too big to succeed creatively. When BLACKPINK was gaining international acclaim, they followed the BTS model of crossover appeal: They collaborated with Western artists, sang more in English, and avoided the genre-blending that makes K-pop a fascinating game of connect-the-dots. One of the group’s debut singles, “Whistle,” was a beguiling mixture of Dipset-isms and country music. “As If It’s Your Last,” from 2017, was like “Pon de Floor” fused with ’80s mall pop (inexplicably, there was country in this track, too). Alter Ego, like much of BLACKPINK’s recent material, doesn’t try anything as audacious. Take the album’s bookends: “Born Again” is a banal disco track in the vein of Dua Lipa, but it fails to understand how a voice can be a vessel for exultant uplift. “Dream” is a shallow ballad that can’t help but feel flimsy, rushing through lines to eschew any meaningful pathos.
The problem is that LISA’s role in BLACKPINK is to offer moments of snotty charm—her range may be limited, but it has a purpose. When she’s tasked with carrying a track, the songs are tedious. She channels second-rate Cardi B on “Fxck Up the World,” but it’s not until Future arrives—with a phoned-in verse, no less—that we hear any personality. The features on this album often have this effect. “Rapunzel” is too sedate, but hearing Megan Thee Stallion’s “Ah!” reveals that there are ways to take a cutesy song and make it playful, bratty, and cocksure. Most damning is Rosalía on “New Woman.” Hearing her glide in Spanish makes glaringly obvious that LISA should’ve explored the phonological possibilities—and personalities—of other languages. Even her role in The White Lotus, where she speaks in Thai, makes this project feel stifled by comparison.
If Alter Ego presents LISA as the most generic embodiment of a pop star, then it is no surprise that its best songs rely on tried-and-true formulas. “Moonlit Floor (Kiss Me)” takes the Sixpence None the Richer song and ramps up the sensuality: the couple is in Paris, there’s a lot more kissing, and LISA sings of her lover’s tongue doing tricks. It works because the original hook is so indelible—all its tenderness is already understood, so hearing it collapse into dreamy eroticism feels apropos. These highlights, though, aren’t so much good as acceptable. The syncopated percussion on the Tyla collaboration “When I’m With You” is a welcome change of pace; it may be worse than everything on Tyla, but at least it’s seductive. “Rockstar” is the closest thing here to “traditional” K-pop, but the adventurousness only goes as far as a glossy chorus reminiscent of Tame Impala-produced Travis Scott. One line on “Fxck Up the World” manages to summarize the whole experience: “They want the old LISA, then listen to my old shit.” It’s hard to imagine who wouldn’t.
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