When Lalisa Manobal made her entrance early in the latest season of The White Lotus, HBO’s burn-the-rich dramedy, the significance of the moment passed many viewers by.
To them the Thai-born musician and actor – better known by her stage name, Lisa – was merely the latest unknown portraying a quietly resentful local required to wait hand and foot on the show’s rotating cast of toxic Americans abroad.
But to millions of fans of Lisa’s K-pop juggernaut, Blackpink, her appearance was the equivalent of Madonna turning up in Dynasty or Taylor Swift gracing Coronation Street. A pop star had descended to the mortal realm and was walking among us.
Lisa’s White Lotus performance as Mook is thoughtful and understated. Such a claim cannot be made of Alter Ego, her ostentatious debut solo album, which wants the listener’s attention so badly that it trips up on its eagerness to create a lasting impression.
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If The White Lotus is a masterclass of satire, Alter Ego is an often clumsy lurch towards pop maximalism sure to disappoint devotees of Blackpink’s beautifully epic pop.
That is no reflection on her talents as a singer. Time and again Lisa lives up to her Blackpink status as a triple threat capable of pummelling pop verses, cloud-scraping power ballads and take-no-prisoners rapping. But there’s so much going on at every moment that the cumulative effect is jarring.
One problem is that Lisa doesn’t seem 100 per cent locked into who she wants to be as a solo artist. Her solution is to try to be several people at once, which she does by taking on five alternative identities, named Roxi, Kiki, Vixi, Sunni and Speedi. The idea, she has explained, is to “put all the different styles into the album and call it Alter Ego”.
Sadly, she never fully sells the concept. From track to track Lisa comes across as less a pop chameleon than a muddled first-timer reluctant to settle on a singular sound or style. Nor does it help that the album is packed with distracting cameos, including the beautifully punchy Born Again (which was released as a single in February), which features the Brit winner Raye and the TikTok favourite Doja Cat.
Lisa has gone on to reunite with both on a medley of Bond songs at this week’s Oscars – she is a huge 007 fan – and their chemistry is palpable as they trade hyper-bop bars over a nagging, minimalist bassline. It’s a riveting statement of intent (albeit available only on certain streaming editions of Alter Ego) that the rest of this up-and-down record struggles to live up to.
That isn’t immediately obvious, though, with Lisa ascending to impressive heights all over again on the unrestrained Elastigirl, where she pledges her undying devotion to a love interest and, for good measure, promises to throw in a variety of creative gymnastic poses. “I’m an elastic girl, try it on me, I’m flexible”, she sings in an impressive display of braggadocio, although you do worry about her posture over the longer term.
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But Elastigirl is followed by a huge twist, as the record abruptly loses its way and is looped into a pop production line that speaks to Lisa’s background in K-pop, where music is a product to be packaged and marketed with maximum efficiency.
On Thunder, Lisa sounds like a cut-price Charli XCX doing battle with a forgettable avalanche of video-game beats, while a chemistry-lacking collaboration with the Catalan megastar Rosalía and the Swedish singer Tove Lo on New Woman sits in a state of inert indifference.
She then takes a hairpin turn on Moonlit Floor (Kiss Me), which samples – or, more accurately, cuts and pastes – the appallingly twee Kiss Me, by Sixpence None the Richer.
The degree to which the LP is a missed opportunity is underscored by the track Dream, a Billie Eilish-style hazy ballad that strips away the overkill and showcases Lisa’s hauntingly expressive voice.
The singer’s acting ambitions – before The White Lotus she appeared opposite the Weeknd on The Idol, his HBO vanity disaster – have made her the highest-profile member of Blackpink. Still, she appears to be hedging her bets on a solo career and will be with the band as they embark on a stadium tour this summer.
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You can see why she isn’t ready to call time on the day job. Alter Ego is explosive and attention-grabbing at moments, yet the supreme irony is that an album celebrating the many aspects of her creativity should, in the end, suffer from lack of personality.
We know what Lisa wants – global domination, for starters – but this album doesn’t tell us enough about who she is.
