I Went To My First K-Pop Concert and All I Got Was This Wonderful Time (Patreon)

“The great thing about caviar is that it’s caviar.”

This is an old adage in fine food. The simple idea behind the saying is that caviar is an essential object that does not need to be gussied up. You don’t need to braise it stock for forty hours, nor do you need to carefully man the fire, nor do you need to reinforce it with a bevy of other ingredients or extended prep. You just get a good brand of caviar and you eat it. Or you put it on some simple accouterments. Or maybe top it on an oyster or sashimi if you’re going to go lavish with it. But the whole point is that it is a little delightful thing unto itself. The great thing about caviar is that it’s caviar.

1. ON COWBOYS & K-POP

I talk about this instinct from time to time, but I don’t want to be the dying cowboy talking about how the west was once great. I worry that so much criticism is people eventually bemoaning the death of things, whether it is film stock itself, or even a certain approach to art. Don’t get me wrong, I mourn a lot of these things, too. But I’m also always interested in what’s developing, too. Like when I realized some years ago that virtually everyone younger than me grew up with / was a massive fan of anime, I realized it was time to dive in (lo and behold, millions of people aren’t wrong). The same goes for the K-pop boom of this decade. Which is yet another thing that old guard gatekeeping critics of yesteryear seem to approach with a disinterested, even disdainful eye. Which is a shame.

I can’t even remember when I started paying attention to K-Pop, but it was fairly early and interest obviously grew the last few years. I honestly don’t know what to call my level of fandom, because it’s also pretty casual. I tend to mostly listen to the most popular groups, like BTS, Twice, Blackpink, EXO, Loona, etc. And since I listen to music in the car or when I do dishes, I’m not exactly paying attention to song titles all that much and just let the various playlists go go go. But K-Pop also does an interesting thing for me because I tend to be lyric-first listener and K-pop predominantly being in another language gets me to turn off that part of my brain and really attune to rhythms and sound first. I suppose I am the definition of “hum-along-er.” Is that a thing? I guess it’s a thing.

Point is that there is a lot about K-pop that I do not understand.

Like the vast array of terminologies, often within specific fandoms. I try to be good about member’s names, but groups often have a grand amount of members. Then there’s always the daily news going around, which often requires a good amount of backstory. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll see something trending on twitter and it takes me a few minutes to be like “oh, it’s a K-pop thing!” But I find I have a compulsion to try and understand this stuff. Not because I’m some naturally curious person, but as one friend once put it bluntly, “you don’t like NOT understanding things,” which is different. But I like diving into things like this. Still, I’ve also written about the immense trepidation and dangers that come with writing about things you don’t understand yet. The infamous variety article on BTS, itself an object of whiteness and myopia, sticks in my brain. Especially because I come from the writing generation that worshiped the Wallace-ian mega-detailed observation column, which, even when well-researched, can still often rankle because it centers on the viewpoint of inherent ignorance. Thus, all that fear swirls in my head.

But when good ole’ Landon and some friends said they were getting tickets for Twice and asked if I wanted to go, sometimes it's as simple as admitting: “I really want to experience that.”

So I did.

2. THE ARRIVAL AND THE OBJECTIVE

The four of us approached Banc of California Stadium at USC, perhaps, way too early. But when you don’t want there to be any snags, you err on the side of caution. People were there even earlier of course, especially for the official Merch opportunities that exist outside the stadium. The thing that sort of hits me immediately about the mood of the crowd is that there is a palpable sense of calm. Everyone’s moving orderly, obviously excited, but cautious. Perhaps it was just an uncommonly hot day for LA.. Perhaps I’m just far more used to the kinds of drunken hooliganism that accompany every other stadium rock show I’ve ever seen. Perhaps that it’s a younger audience. But “jittery, quiet hyper-focus” was definitely in the air.

But I should say at the top that comparison is often the death of criticism.

Because differences are just what’s most noticeable about you, they’re not what defines you. And people get so caught up in how a thing compares to other experiences, you often miss what it is. So I want to be careful in that comparison. Sure, I’ve been to a fair amount of concerts in my life. My best friend from home was (and still is) the most live music obsessive person I’ve ever known (Hi Matt!). And growing up / going to school in Boston, I can’t tell you how many nights I spent at The Paradise and Middle East, or went down to Great Woods (it will always be Great Woods), or even saw the big stadium event at Foxboro. It was all foundational. But when I moved to Los Angeles I realized how much the relative size of the cities was going to have an impact. Suddenly, bands I used to see in 600 person venues were playing for 3000-5000 people. Then I got super busy and slowly it drifted away and now I probably see one to two concerts a year? But with all that history, you get so used to certain rhythms of life performance. You get used to how people behave, how a star controls the crowd, and become sensitive to the art of the setlist and encore politics. Admittedly, I never saw too many pure pop acts (the Backstreet / Britney / N’Sync pop boom hit late in high school). So, as someone unfamiliar with K-Pop shows, I couldn’t help but be hit with the nature of that which seemed uncanny. Where the little things feltl big. And the relative calm was absolutely one of them.

Which is not to say people weren’t excited. People were walking around, being friendly, but sticking to groups (as they were probably more mindful of the bubbling covid surge). But it seemed like everyone was there either in their most comfortable outfit or their most rad outfit. There was even a smattering of cosplay with one guy dressed up as such and handed out Genshin Impact cards. It was right afterwards that someone came up and handed us cards with Twice members on it. Everyone got palpably excited and, upon my confusion, Landon asked me:

“Oh shit, is this your first photocard?”

“I guess?”

Cue this history lesson on photocards. To go right to the quote: “The excitement of doing “pulls” is one of the best parts of being a K-pop fan. It’s bizarre to understand the craze behind photocards (since it’s basically an idol’s face on a card), but these 55x85-millimeter photos are coveted items in the K-pop community. For starters, photocards are exclusive photos of K-pop stars included as a freebie in albums. The intention was simple: insert a random glossy photo of an idol in an album, and fans will bulk-buy albums to pull out their bias’ face. If luck is not on their side, they’re willing to spend at least P200 to more than P5000 to complete their collection.” Like anything collectible, it has become a massive part of fandom and has all the economic problems that go along with it.

After that, the doors open and we head inside. All the people with the coolest outfits are taking pictures and even posing for others when asked. Some part of me wishes I was the kind of person who was comfortable asking this, but I don’t like bothering people (read: stranger interactions are nerve-wracking), so I’ll guess you’ll have to imagine it! But after some brief exploration, we settled in our seats. Again, everyone around us has this jittery calm, but focus. We all talk about the people we are seeing, while guessing at what is to come. But it’s all part of this joking education process for me. To wit, at one point, I’m asked what my bias is.

“What?”

Clearly, I don’t know what that term means. But basically it’s asking who your favorite member is (and your “ult” as in ultimate favorite member of ANY group). Again, I am the person who bobs along to songs and names stick out, like Momo. I do not have a bias yet. The conversation playfully touches on other terms, like whether or not I have a waifu or husbando. For the uninitiated, these relative terms refer to a “fictional female / male character from non-live-action visual media (typically an anime, manga, or video game) to whom one is attracted and/or considers their significant other.” Again, the vast majority of people use these terms tongue pressed firmly in cheek. But when prompted, I have absolutely no idea how to answer the first question, but I instantly have my answer to the second because my Husbando is 100% the baker’s husband in Kiki’s. Also close is the beefy husband of teacher Izumi in FMA: Brotherhood (I guess I have a type). But the fun conversation also gives us a mission for the concert with a clear objective…

Tonight I will declare my bias!

3. THE CONCERT

A number of things happen over the course of the concert.

Here they are in no particular order.

- JYP - Prior to Twice coming on stage, there is a big demo reel that plays for their label / management company, JYP entertainment, where they advertise a number of their other groups. Where the American music industry is a bit more fractured, the companies of K-Pop tend to be one-stop-shops. And JYP “operates as a record label, talent agency, music production company, event management company, concert production company, and music publishing house.”  Their bands include: 2PM, Day6, Twice, Boy Story, Stray Kids, Itzy, NiziU, Xdinary Heroes and Nmixx. The reel also advertises one J.Y. Park, the founder of the company, himself a “first generation” K-pop artist from the 90’s. I mostly just try to notice which other band gets the biggest cheers (and it is Itzy).

- A Place In The Crowd - Going into all this, I’m incredibly nervous. Again, I am the guy who hums along. And suddenly sitting amongst the army of super-fans, I’m worried that I’m woefully out of place. That I don’t know enough about this band. That I’m crashing the party. That I won’t know anything. That I’ve over-estimated my interest. But soon those worries disappear and over the course of the evening, it turns out I actually know 2/3 of the songs. And it is a tremendous amount of fun.

- The Feels - This is the band’s first full length english single and it’s been the big hit of the last year. It’s used all over tiktok. You may have heard it without even realizing it. Because since I’m so used to the kinds of shows I’ve seen before, I have this lame idea that the song will be built to at some crucial moment of the concert or probably the finale of the encore. Instead, the song is played before Twice comes out as they play video for the crowd. It is then also the first live song of the evening. It will even be used a few times throughout the evening and costume changes. It’s such a different treatment of “the big hit” then I am used to, but nonetheless effective. It’s more of an anthem for the evening, or a bedrock, or even a comfort pillow to relax in. All part of a sustaining force.

- Call and Response - The thing I found most fascinating is how much the concert is predicated on a kind of ordered interaction. I’m used to live events being this barely-controlled chaos, often only orchestrated by a loud projection of noise that plays us into these weird emotional swells. There’s always something jazz-like about it. But the rhythm of everything here is instead built in this constant back and forth of call and response. And I couldn’t help noticing how comparatively quiet the audience was in between prompts of lyrics / interactions, as if genuinely listening with polite, rapt attention, all before responding to the calls and all together becoming the single loudest thing I’ve heard in my life. There’s something really kind of neat about this. It’s all about a kind of hyper-coordination and communication between those on stage and those in the stands. Of which, there is also another hardware element…

- Light Sticks - So almost every band sells their own unique light stick (for 80 to 90 dollars more or less) that is designed so that when you hold them up they create these coordinated movements of light. Here are some videos that show how remarkably cool this can be. and it even comes with an app, blah blah blah. The problem is that they depend on the stadium’s wifi settings / tech capacity in order to function and apparently Banc of California Stadium is not up to snuff. Plus they weren’t even selling them before the show. Nonetheless, thousands and thousands of people still had them. And even without the coordination, the effect of the light on the show was pretty dang neat to look at.

- Skill Sets - So all night I’m paying attention to everything I can from the members on stage. On one level, it’s easy to see the careful coordination of all nine members. These are people who have done these move sets thousands and thousands of times. It’s like clockwork to them. They don’t even have to think (I mean this is what dance routines are, I’m just specifying the extreme nature here). But you also notice the varying skill sets of all nine members. To be fair, these roles are officially specified by the management company. Jeongyeong, Nayeon, and Jihyo are lead vocals. Momo is the main dancer. Tzuyu is lead dancer (which is second to main, perhaps confusingly). Chaeyoung and Dahyun are the main rappers. And Sana and Mina are listed as vocals (and Mina is also apparently a Main dancer too?). But the show takes all these moments to emphasize those ranging skills. There moments things get quiet and you can hear them sing, like really, really sing, as if to purposefully serve as a counterpoint to the faster songs with more backing. For the dancers, it’s less like their getting their own breakdancing solos, but you can see the moments where they get to pop. Especially in the way they sell their snaps (the mark of any great dancer). Then the rappers come in, draped with attitude and show expert control of their relationship with the camera. But again, it rarely feels out of step with the overall syncopation. It’s all just these moments of emphasis with a show that is basically one giant hyper-coordinated ballet.

- Dancing - People are, of course, dancing along as best they can in their seats. I’m reminded of the time my friend and I drank wine and watched these videos (sorry I can’t find them, I tried) where a bunch of K-pop fans gathered in a park. There was this giant stereo that then played a minute of a given song. And if the fans knew the dance routine that went with the song they’d run in and do said coordinated dance routine. The song ends. They run out. New song starts. If they knew that one, they’d run back in. It was hypnotizing to watch. And so much of the same thing was happening in the stands. I talked about the “call and response” nature of the show above, but it is one of those things that reminds me how much pop music is about the endless amount of knowing. There is no depth to your ability to mime, combine, and reflect. It’s part of the same effort of being close to the idols that are now in front of you.

- Musicality - At one point Landon comments that “K Pop is every genre,” and it taps into something I instinctively knew, but like trying to latch onto. Here at the concert I can pay attention with utter focus and all these specific musical things are hitting me. Like, “this is 100% a Whitney Houston backing track.” Or suddenly you’re hearing a weird combination of notes that remind you of Wonka’s rendition “pure imagination.” All music can be like this, of course. But it’s all hitting really clearly tonight.

- Ari! - So apparently Ariana Grande is there at the show, but we didn’t see her.

- Ments - At certain intervals the show slows down and the members of Twice line up to do “ments” which is short for comments. Audience interaction is, of course, a part of any show, but I’m so used to the off-hand banter between songs (usually while an artist is re-tuning a guitar or something). But this, like everything in the concert, is far more structured. And given the language barrier, it is also likely protracted in comparison to their shows at home. I can’t imagine the logistics of trying to pull something like this off, but it’s    strange for any big live concert to have this many moments of dead air, or hemming or hawing (perhaps I’m just over-sensitive because ANY live Q+A type things give me a borderline allergic reaction). But what’s also interesting is the formality of it all. We’re told declaratively: “One by one we will share our thoughts about today….” and then we get little, simple, yet vaguely poetic speeches of life bringing tears, smiles, and memories. I think it would be easy for jaded audiences to dismiss things like this, but there’s something deeply endearing about it. It may be somewhat surface level, but the members of Twice were taking real strides to outline what makes X or Y special about the show. Like how this was their first outdoor stadium concert in America (at least I think that’s what they said), or how the moon was shining brightly, etc. And at one point in the ments they got into why their fourth world tour was called three…

- Numerology and Light Linguistics - So TIL I learned that Twice fans are called Once. But “the reasoning behind naming TWICE's fandom "Once" is simple and adorable: if fans love the group even once, the girls will repay them with "twice" their love!” That’s nice, but it’s also likely that it’s just a proximity of numbers thing. In that same spirit, we are told the tour is called three because it’s once plus twice. But for me, really the whole thing gets into the nature of how many K-Pop bands play with numerology and light linguistics, especially when it comes to their English usage and translations. For all the flowery emphasis, it comes down to simplicity, recognition, and that everyone has the ability to turn them into basic symbols of significance. Thus, the capacity of simplicity is the very point.

(note: I'd be posting lots of videos I took, but patreon is so weird about posting pictures OR videos, I'm working on it)

- On A Specific Patron - I was on the end of our group’s seats so I also spent the night sitting next to a young dad, his daughter, and her friend. He was somehow the most spastic person in the audience, yet he spent the entire concert looking at sports scores on his phone, all while mentioning how much he doesn’t want to stuck in traffic while leaving. To their credit, the two teens paid him absolutely no mind and continued to scream and cry through the entire show. I assure you, traffic was of little concern to them. They loved it.

- Exhaustion - By the time things were over, Twice had played 32 songs for over three hours.  I kept thinking “they must be beyond exhausted.” I mean, yes, they took a few breaks for costume changes, but they were actually pretty short breaks all things considered. Which is why I think the most interesting costume change came for the last act of encores (really the entire show as just five whole acts). They finally came out in sweats, jeans and casual wear (which obviously was a lot of the merch they have for sale). But gone were the heavily coordinated routines. Instead, it was kind of just like this big hangout session. Granted, it felt strange to have a lot of dead air in a finale of encores, but it was also aiming for crowd interaction. In that spirit, instead of purposefully withheld bangers, there was instead there was the wheel of encores! I’m not kidding, they spun a wheel and it picked the songs they wanted to do (audience clapping played SOME part). But they now performed the songs with a sudden relaxed vibe, often with some half-remember choreography and fun and games. On one level, this all feels practical as you could SEE the exhaustion. But on another level, it’s all very purposefully aimed. As if all part of the way a band like this strives for that surface level of intimacy, which I don’t say disparagingly (it’s a healthy part of the barriers you need in this kind of situation). It just felt nice. And at the point of total exhaustion, they said their final goodbyes as they slowly returned backstage.

Which finally brings us to…

- A Declaration of Bias - It’s best not to overthink these things. And after a night of carefully watching the concert I realized the member that most struck me was the one who I thought was the best “jack of all trades.” The one who could sing well, sell the snaps of the dance moves, and the one who had these very natural comic reactions to things. So, yes, my bias is Jihyo. But I dunno, it could change. But as I said, it’s best not to overthink these things. Though some other things are worth thinking about a lot more.

Because, perhaps the most interesting part of all of this were the conversations on the way home.

EPILOGUE - “OUR THOUGHTS ABOUT TODAY”

I come at all this from a place of wanting to understand it better. When driving home with Landon I asked about a number of topics. I asked about K-Pop rapping and the matter of appropriation with black culture and YUP, it’s a clear issue. I mean, it’s an essential question of so much music and you can’t just shrug it off because “hip hop is influential” or because it’s a foreign nation that doesn’t innately understand the specific cultural history of the United States. But I’m told about just how much worse it was 8 years ago (like, oof) and how much K-Pop’s growing popularity in the United States is hopefully reshaping that relationship, But the “how and why” of rapping remains one of the central questions of K-Pop in general.

I also ask about the lifespan of groups and come to realize how many groups are broken up by compulsory military service and how much this is now a central question for BTS. One that is actually making South Korea rethink the “artistic exemption” angle, because how can an artistic exemption not apply to the biggest international musicians in the world? The ones who basically serve as cultural ambassadors for the country? Yet, it’s an incredibly loaded topic specific to the culture and there are so many questions that go along with it.

I also ask about the quality of members’ lives. The grind and schedules are pretty punishing. And perhaps it’s our nature to do this with any artform that is so relentlessly sunny, as if there is this instinct to have conjecture of what behind the scenes life is REALLY like for these artists. Some of this is probably unfounded. But in America, we have a whole history of awful corporate behavior and the “wall of secrecy,” along with standards of decorum, seems infinitely more pronounced with K-pop.

Thus, the framing of these questions is everything.

As Landon says, “there are many times people use all these matters of conjecture as a way to just blankly toss aside the genre and dismiss it.” It’s “concern,” but only out of fear. While concern born out of love is a radically different act. And to whatever credit, I’m told the K-Pop industry seems to be getting better at how it addresses things like depression or anxiety with their members. Even the conversations about dating lives (which has been a historic no no) are slowly starting to shift. But I don’t know enough about it. All I can say is that the thing I notice is how much the fandom seems to rotate around the notion of meaningful support, whatever is going on in their lives. And that’s when you best realize that this is not some Lynchian world of light and dark that you have to frame as having some underbelly. It’s that it’s just that: a world of support. Which brings it all back to the question, which is always the question of everything…

Why K-pop?

To the outsider, I keep thinking about how easy it would be to call it “fluff.” Because it’s same thing that so-called serious critics have done with bubble gum pop music for generations, now further exacerbated by language barriers, xenophobia, and basic racism. As I warned, it focuses on what’s different, not what it is. And in search of depth, it would be easy to try and justify the import of K-Pop through the endless arrays of fandoms that dive in, know every word, every dance, and love every single moving part of it. But I would argue this also misses the point because it misunderstands what musical “depth” really is. Because music is the most emotional and intrinsic art we have. For all the aims of going into tHe rEaL mEaNiNg behind a given moment, the created emotion itself is the real meaning. And the emotion at the center of so much K-Pop is that ever-elusive notion of “fun,” which is only one of the most difficult things for an artist to create. Seriously. It’s really, really hard. And so many K-pop acts are uniquely great at it. Even when creating songs that are a loose collection of fun terminology, emotional moments, or declarations of attraction, it’s infectious. Something completely in the tradition of Manfred Mann’s “Do Wah Diddy Diddy.” These are things that are impeccably designed for the purity of fun. And when you look at the vast array of thousands of screaming fans, all smiling wide, you realize THE DEPTH of fun itself. It’s the feeling of gleefully joy echoing down, down, down and connecting you to the core of the earth, all while your hands reach up into the light of the ethereal sky above. Emotionally speaking? I can think of nothing bigger. Which is perhaps just a simple reminder of certain things in life.

The great thing about K-pop is that it’s K-pop.

<3HULK