hot take: the kpop tribute concert (kpop forever) was atrocious
so i recently attended one of these, and let's just say the satisfaction with the end product is in the negatives. i think this was the very opposite of a tribute concert - it just showed kpop in a very stereotypical way.
here's the setlist i took off of wikipedia. now let's go over it.
jump, kill this love, pink venom, ddu du ddu du, how you like that - blackpink (korean girl group, lyrics both in korean and english)
debut, internet girl, gnarly, gabriela, touch - katseye (global girl group, lyrics in english)
this is for, strategy - twice (korean girl group, lyrics in english)
your idol, takedown, soda pop, free, what it sounds like, golden - kpdh (american movie [prod. by sony and netflix], lyrics in english)
ice cream - blackpink feat. selena gomez (western collaboration, lyrics in english)
cupid - fifty fifty (korean girl group, lyrics in english)
dynamite, butter - bts (korean boy group, lyrics in english)
like jennie - jennie (korean soloist [also in blackpink], lyrics in english [small amount in korean])
gameboy (katseye) and the feels (twice) weren't played at my stop.
now that we dissected the setlist - the songs were all english. which i understand, the cover group may not know korean. but they are doing a kpop (korean pop) tribute concert, and yet they're performing only english tracks. not to mention they cut out megan thee stallion's part in strategy, as if that was also hard to rap out.
i also have issues with the promotion. it was promoted as a kpop tribute concert and that they'll play kpop's biggest hits, including bts, blackpink, saja boys, twice and more. except there was no more. it was mostly blackpink, katseye and kpdh every second song. with a sprinkle of bts and twice. so where is the tribute to the rest of the groups who left their mark in kpop, who made it reach all places around the whole world?
essentially, this concert was calling kpop a children's genre (kpdh) and ai slop (katseye). yes i have a big problem with katseye, and their fandom is even worse. they haven't contributed to kpop because they themselves aren't a kpop group. the only korean thing about them is yoonchae.
where's the other groups? bigbang, shinee, got7, tvxq!, red velvet, ikon, blockb, monsta x, nct, exo, seventeen, snsd, wonder girls, 2ne1... literally any group that are remembered in kpop for either their greatest hits, or their influence. how are you gonna call it a tribute, and then rotate the same 5 groups? where's the diversity?
then, onto the technical issues. microphones not working properly, bad sound system, bad lighting, extremely small stage in comparison to the big space they performed in... in between every 2-3 songs, the DJ and host (?) kept walking onto the stage trying to hype the crowd up by doing some "i say k, you say pop" fanchant every single time. your audience are children. and you have 0 knowledge about kpop if you're making me chant "kpop forever" 5 times in a row.
everything felt super rushed. there was no proper intro or outro to songs. it all felt blended into one. parents who maybe don't know every song could've easily gotten confused. they also shortened the songs a bunch, where it feels like it just started but, just kidding, it's actually ending and we're moving onto the next stage in the span od 2 seconds. the crew was barely synchronized, but i don't wanna get too much into that.
i'm just glad i didn't pay a huge amount of money because this was extremely underwhelming. if you're gonna do a kpop tribute, then do it how it's supposed to be done. if not, then just don't do it. there's other ways to earn money besides fishing mothers of young children who clearly love kpdh.
ps. not all of it was awful, i actually liked the 2 twice songs they played because i enjoyed singing along (i'm a big once😊). that doesn't take away from the fact that this show was a mess.
tangentwithtanner
origamiaround
stormborns
blakekathryn
germansingergirl
pixelskylines
