At the start of “Mantra,” Jennie, dressed to the nines (of course), steps confidently out of a quartet of fancy cars. It’s a fitting image for someone who, almost a decade into her career, is leaping into a brave new world.
After achieving massive global success as Black Pink, Jennie and her fellow members are turning their focus to solo ventures, and doing so without YG Entertainment (which still manages group activities, but no longer any members’ individual promotions). As the founder of Odd Atelier, Jennie is her own CEO, poised to spread her wings however she chooses. Her new single, “Mantra,” is the first glimpse into what that might look like.
Let’s start with the good stuff: “Mantra” is catchy, stylish, confident, and unabashedly sexy. The simple but fun MV sees Jennie strutting and posing her way across Los Angeles in a series of fashion-forward, itty-bitty, knockout outfits. With the exception of a couple of cheap-looking blonde wigs, she looks stellar from start-to-finish. There’s no doubt who’s the “pretty girl” that “Mantra” endlessly references:
Pretty girls don’t do drama ‘less we wanna
It’ll be depending on the day
Pretty girls be packed in a defender, know I’ma defend her
Never let her catch no strays
This that pretty-girl mantra, she’s that stunna
Make you wanna swing both ways
The outfits are just one way that “Mantra” is a clear step up from Jennie’s previous solo releases (2019’s “Solo” and 2023’s “You & Me”), which featured confusingly conventional styling given Jennie’s status as a leading face in global fashion. Despite its relative simplicity, “Mantra” is Jennie’s most musically interesting single. A snappy mid-tempo beat propels the track forward, and the talk-sung chorus is an instant earworm. Jennie is also given opportunities to showcase her vocal dexterity in the first pre-chorus, which dips into her lower register, and in the half-whispered final refrain, both highlights of the song.
Best of all, “Mantra” is a very effective showcase for Jennie’s particular brand of playful yet mature charisma. She seems comfortable and confident throughout the MV, including in the glimpses of classic, delightful, booty-shaking choreography that are featured. The Jennie seen in “Mantra” radiates glamour and fun, leaving no doubt as to why she’s become a mononymous international it-girl.
Where “Mantra” stumbles is in its slightness, both literally—the song is just barely over two minutes long—and figuratively. “Mantra” lacks ambition. It fails to build on its strong musical elements to create something beyond a snippet of a song, and it fails to push its occasionally nonsensical lyrics beyond the simplest girl power platitudes. The result is a single that is perfectly enjoyable, but also goes in one ear and out the other. Additionally, “Mantra” tells audiences nothing new about Jennie, which as she appears to launch her solo career in earnest, is a big missed opportunity.
You could argue that it is as Jennie sings: “It’s not that deep…sometimes girls just gotta have fun.” Sometimes, that’s absolutely true. However, Jennie is nearly ten years into a career in music and, both as a soloist and as a member of Black Pink, has conspicuously little actual music to show for it. She’s playing catch up, but “Mantra,” while an improvement execution-wise on previous releases, is a step-in-place thematically.
“Mantra” tells us that Jennie is pretty, cool, and talented. That’s great, and will likely make “Mantra” a not-undeserved hit. It’s also boring and shallow, a repetition of all the things that have been obvious about Jennie since her debut in 2016. If she’s going to fulfill the potential of this sky-is-the-limit-era, she’s going to need to stop relying solely on style and start coming up with something new to actually say.
