Sour Candy (Lady Gaga and Blackpink song)

"Sour Candy" was initially written in a session unrelated to the creation of the Chromatica album by Madison Love, with the help of BloodPop, Rami Yacoub, and Burns. Talking about the session, Love said:

We started riffing on a chorus. We liked the title "Sour Candy". I thought we should write it like Sour Patch Kids in those commercials where they cut off people’s hair: They’re sour, then they’re sweet. That’s the wordplay I brought.... We wrote the chorus and I wrote a little verse for a [featured artist]. We were thinking Blackpink could be cool.... Blood brought it to Gaga and she was like, "I love this, I want to work on it." She put her touch on it and transformed the song into her song. At the end she was like, "What about Blackpink on it?"[2]

In an interview for Japanese entertainment site TV Groove, Gaga talked about the genesis of the song and stated that "when [she] called them and asked if they wanted to write a song with [her], they were so happy and motivated. It was a really exciting collaboration." She added: "I wanted to celebrate them because they love powerful women like us, and they also wanted to celebrate me, and we had a great time together with this song. I was excited to hear them interpret the song in Korean, and told them that the part was so creative and fun. I was impressed when I heard their singing voice."[3] Blackpink's management later talked about how the song came about: "We listened to each other's music and became fans of each other, so we naturally carried out this project."[4]

"Sour Candy" is a 1990s-influenced[5] dance-pop,[6] electropop,[7] bubblegum pop[8] and deep house[5] anthem that follows a "bouncy" house,[6] dance[9] and electronic[10] beat with an upbeat production.[11] On the song, Gaga and Blackpink are "trading off flirty lines" in English and Korean which use sour candy as a metaphor to "illustrate how they function in a relationship"[5][9][7] as well as showing that they are rough on the outside, but sweet and authentic on the inside.[4] Lyrically, the song sees the singers informing a potential lover to accept and not try to change their damage.[4] The '90s house[12] drop features Gaga performing a "speak-rap",[9] while the K-pop group's verses include "tight, almost mechanical melodies".[13]

According to the sheet music published on Musicnotes.com, the song is written in the time signature of common time, and is composed in the key of A minor with a tempo of 120 beats per minute. The vocals range from the tonal nodes of G₃ to C₅.[14]

"Sour Candy" was released on May 28, 2020, a day before the album's release.[15] Universal Music Australia serviced the song to contemporary hit radio on May 29, 2020.[16] On 16 June, 2020, an accompanying lyric video was released. In an article by Rolling Stone, the video was described as the inside of a virtual reality headset, "set in a candy-coated and surreal digital landscape", with the lyrics "flashing, Matrix-style".[17] Gil Kaufman of Billboard found the video "trippy" and "a Willy Wonka-worthy color explosion", featuring "glowing futuristic lion fish-like blobs floating in space."[18] The song was first performed by Blackpink on January 31, 2021, during their livestream concert, The Show.[19]

Joey Nolfi from Entertainment Weekly called the song an "epic collaboration" and "a mouthwatering serve".[9] Michael Roffman from Consequence of Sound said that "'Sour Candy' is another banger from the Oscar winner, proving Chromatica will bring the party to our pandemic."[20] Claire Shaffer from Rolling Stone found it "a sugar-sweet club track for all our at-home parties.[21] Jem Asward from Variety found it "a sparkling combination of the two artists' styles".[13] Zoe Haylock from Vulture opined that "when the lyrics can basically all be Instagram captions, you know it's a good pop song!"[22] Cole Delbyck of HuffPost thought that the song is "fusing Gaga and Blackpink's distinct sounds into one dance-floor-primed [...] bop" and "lives up to the hype surrounding the long in the works collaboration that fans have been filling up their mentions about for years".[23]

Louise Bruton from The Irish Times found it "the perfect mix of weirded-out pop and euphoria".[24] Stephen Daw from Billboard complimented the song for managing to give every participants "equal, well-balanced time", although he noted that something was missing from the track that "could have rounded [it] out".[25] Michael Cragg from The Guardian was critical of the song, saying that it "falls disappointingly flat" and "ends up sounding like a dashed off, cheaply produced interlude".[26] Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine called the song "empty-calorie",[27] while Evan Sawdey from PopMatters thought it was "blissfully short" and one of the "lesser songs" of the Chromatica album.[28]

"Sour Candy" debuted at number 33 on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Gaga her 25th top 40 hit and Blackpink their first top 40 hit.[29] The song became Blackpink's first top-ten single in Australia, where it debuted at number 8.[30] It also became their first top-twenty single in the UK, where it debuted at number 17.[31]

The song topped the charts in Malaysia and Singapore.[32][33]

Credits adapted from liner notes from Chromatica.[36]

• List of number-one songs of 2020 (Malaysia)
• List of number-one songs of 2020 (Singapore)