The 2010s File Feature
Kiss And Make Up
Kiss And Make Up by Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK: Chart History and Legacy "Kiss And Make Up" by Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK was released on October 5, 2018, as part of…
01 The Story
Kiss And Make Up by Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK: Chart History and Legacy
"Kiss And Make Up" by Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK was released on October 5, 2018, as part of the deluxe edition of Dua Lipa's debut self-titled album, which had originally been released in 2017. The collaboration between the British-Albanian pop star and the South Korean girl group became an immediate statement of cross-cultural musical convergence, arriving at a moment when K-pop was rapidly accelerating its penetration of Western mainstream markets. The song became one of the most commercially successful K-pop adjacent collaborations of the year, peaking at number 84 on the Billboard Hot 100 while generating streaming numbers that demonstrated the combined fan power of two of the world's most intensely dedicated fanbases.
The track was written by Dua Lipa, Danny L Harle, Caroline Ailin, and Chelcee Grimes and produced by Danny L Harle, a British producer affiliated with the PC Music collective who brought a bright, maximalist pop sensibility to the collaboration. Harle's production combined the propulsive synth work that characterized much of his output with elements designed to accommodate both Dua Lipa's smoky contralto and the more varied vocal textures that BLACKPINK's four members bring to a track. The result was a production that felt simultaneously like a pop record and like a deliberate act of genre synthesis.
BLACKPINK consists of members Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa, each of whom contributed verses or portions of the vocal arrangement to "Kiss And Make Up." The Korean-language sections delivered by the group gave the track a genuinely bilingual quality that most Western pop collaborations with K-pop artists had avoided or minimized. Rather than asking BLACKPINK to simply sing in English, the production integrated Korean verses into the song's structure as equal components, which was received enthusiastically by BLACKPINK's global fanbase, known as BLINK, and helped the song establish itself as an authentic collaboration rather than a commercial experiment.
The song charted in South Korea through the Gaon Chart and performed strongly across Asian streaming platforms, adding to its global reach. Internationally, it charted in the United Kingdom, Australia, and several European markets, reflecting the dual audiences that the collaboration was designed to serve. The UK performance was particularly notable, with "Kiss And Make Up" entering the top forty of the Official Singles Chart, giving Dua Lipa additional traction in her home market while simultaneously expanding BLACKPINK's presence in Europe.
The deluxe edition of Dua Lipa's self-titled album, titled "Complete Edition," in which "Kiss And Make Up" appeared, was released specifically to expand the album's commercial life cycle and reward fans who had already purchased the original version. The strategy was common in the streaming era, where deluxe reissues could generate additional charting activity by re-entering the album chart with new content. "Kiss And Make Up" was unquestionably the most commercially and culturally significant addition to that deluxe package.
The music video, released alongside the track, directed with an aesthetic that drew on both pop video conventions and the distinctive visual identity BLACKPINK had developed through their work with YG Entertainment, their Seoul-based label, generated tens of millions of views within its first weeks. The visual component was important in cementing the song's identity as a genuine creative partnership rather than a simple name-on-label collaboration, showing the five artists sharing space and screen time with evident chemistry.
Critically, "Kiss And Make Up" was praised for the naturalness with which it integrated its two very different artistic worlds. Reviewers noted that the song did not require either party to substantially compromise their identity: Dua Lipa sounded like Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK sounded like BLACKPINK, yet the combination produced something coherent rather than disjunctive. That quality of collaboration, in which both participants remain legible as themselves while creating something new together, is genuinely difficult to achieve and was widely recognized as a creative success.
The song also had a meaningful impact on the trajectory of Western interest in K-pop collaborations. While groups like BTS were simultaneously pushing into the US market through their own releases, "Kiss And Make Up" demonstrated that a credible Western artist collaborating genuinely with a K-pop group could produce a commercially viable mainstream product rather than a novelty. It helped establish a template for future cross-cultural collaborations that would become increasingly common over the following years as K-pop's global influence continued to expand.
"Kiss And Make Up" was certified platinum by the RIAA and achieved similar certifications in multiple other territories, its streaming numbers accumulating steadily as fans of both artists continued to return to the track. The song remains one of the most prominent examples of Western pop and K-pop intersection from the 2018-2019 period and is frequently cited in discussions of how K-pop crossed over into Western mainstream awareness. For both Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK, it represented a career moment that reinforced their respective positions as global pop forces capable of reaching audiences well beyond their home territories.
02 Song Meaning
The Meaning of "Kiss And Make Up" by Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK
"Kiss And Make Up" engages with the classic romantic paradox of wanting to fight and reconcile in the same breath. The tension the song describes is not the crisis of a relationship ending but the strange pleasure of minor conflict followed by resolution, the particular emotional texture of a relationship stable enough to absorb friction and emerge warmer on the other side. That dynamic, the push-pull of two people who care enough to argue and skilled enough to forgive, gives the song its specific emotional flavor: it is celebratory rather than anxious, treating romantic conflict as proof of intimacy rather than as a threat to it.
The title itself encapsulates the central proposition. To kiss and make up is an idiom that compresses an entire emotional arc into four words: conflict, acknowledgment, resolution, and renewed affection. By using that phrase as the song's title, the writers signal that the reconciliation is the destination, not the fight. The song is not really about the argument at all but about the closeness that emerges when two people who genuinely matter to each other navigate disagreement and come through it. That framing makes the song emotionally generous, presenting conflict not as failure but as an ordinary component of genuine connection.
The collaboration between Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK's Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé, and Lisa adds a dimension of meaning that the lyrics alone cannot produce. When artists from fundamentally different musical and cultural traditions come together on a song about reconciliation and mutual understanding, the collaboration itself becomes a form of argument for the song's central theme. Two worlds finding common ground, just as the song's narrator and their partner find common ground after conflict, transforms the track into something that operates on multiple registers simultaneously.
The bilingual structure of the song is central to this additional layer of meaning. The Korean verses sung by BLACKPINK are not translated versions of the English portions but distinct contributions that enrich the song's emotional geography. The presence of two languages in one love song implies that the feelings being described transcend specific cultural or linguistic contexts, that the experience of conflict and reconciliation in intimate relationships is universal enough to be expressed in multiple languages without losing coherence. The song implicitly argues for the universality of romantic experience through its own formal choices.
Producer Danny L Harle's bright, maximalist production supports the song's emotional optimism. The synthesizer textures and rhythmic drive of the track create a sonic environment that feels forward-moving and energized rather than heavy with the weight of conflict. The production says, in effect, that the reconciliation has already been decided; the fight is a temporary detour on the way back to closeness. That sonic optimism shapes how listeners receive the lyrical content, framing the conflict as lighter and more playful than genuinely painful.
The song also functions as a commentary on the way affection and friction coexist in healthy relationships. It treats the capacity to argue with someone as evidence of emotional investment rather than incompatibility. Only relationships where both parties care deeply generate friction, because indifference does not produce conflict. The song's narrator is not exhausted by the conflict but energized by what the reconciliation promises, and that energy is what the production channels into its relentless rhythmic momentum.
For listeners who followed the careers of both artists, "Kiss And Make Up" carried additional resonance as an artifact of artistic friendship. Dua Lipa had been vocal about her admiration for BLACKPINK, and the collaboration felt genuinely motivated rather than commercially engineered. That perceived sincerity influenced how fans received the song's content, reading the affection described in the lyrics as continuous with the real creative relationship between the artists who recorded it. The meaning was enriched by biography in ways that pure pop craft alone could not achieve.
Ultimately, "Kiss And Make Up" is a song about the resilience of genuine connection. It argues that relationships worth having are relationships worth fighting for, and that the willingness to work through conflict rather than away from it is one of the clearest expressions of love. That message, delivered with warmth and rhythmic energy by five artists from two different continents and three different languages, made the song one of the more quietly sophisticated pop crossovers of its era.
→ More from the 2010s File
View all 2010s hits →
Keep digging