After high anticipation from international fans, eager to see them two years since they toured in the U.S., Seventeen has started their fourth world tour. ‘Right Here’ has five stops on its U.S. leg, and I was blessed enough to get tickets for day two in Chicago. The tickets were a hot commodity that went on sale back in August, leaving people waiting in queues with up to 50k+ others ahead of them for arenas less than half that size.
Seventeen is a 13-member K-pop boy group that has been active for around 8 years. While the group came from small beginnings and had to work their way up to stardom, it paid off as they hold the record for most album pre-orders for a K-pop group for their 2023 mini album Fight for My Life. However, not all 13 members were able to attend this tour, member Jeonghan had to start his mandatory Korean military service back in September. Another member, Jun, had conflicts in his schedule and is currently filming his second Chinese drama at this time.
The concert starts with many background dancers before the opening song, “Fear” starts. This starts Act One of the show where they perform popular b-sides and some new title tracks. I think that this was a very powerful start to the show as it was some of their more hard-hitting songs and really showed the audience their strength as idols. This was also the first K-pop concert I’ve been to where they have backup dancers, which further showcases the incredible performers that Seventeen are.
Act Two starts off the unit performances. Seventeen is well known for its unique structure of three subunits within their group. The Hip Hop unit consists of S.Coups, Wonwoo, Mingyu, and Vernon. The vocal unit is composed of Jeonghan, Seungkwan, DK, Joshua, and Woozi. Lastly, the Performance unit is Hoshi, The8, Jun, and Dino. This act definitely held some of the best performances of the night. Each unit performed two of their songs, one from a various previous album, and then their unit song off of the latest album. Out of all the performances though, the hip-hop unit performing “Water” stuck out to me the most. Their high energy matched with the energy of the song really got the whole arena hype.
It wouldn’t be a Seventeen concert without a little bit of silliness, as they’re known for their group antics. Act Three started off the cute song section of the night. The group performed four songs and gave a lengthy ment about their love for the fans. Their song “Home’” includes a call and response part, and during this time you can really tell by the look on their faces as they hear the fans sing that they have a lot of love and admiration for their fans.
The final act of the show included three songs. Their newest title track, “Love, Money, Fame (English Version)”; “March”, a b-side off of their 2020 album Face The Sun; and “Super”, their title track off of Fight for My Life. These performances truly encapsulated the passion and dominance they hold in K-pop. They are, without a doubt, one of the greatest live-performing K-pop groups in the entire industry. They wrapped it up with another ment and said goodbye, but the first goodbye is never the end at K-pop concerts.
The encore starts off with the members changing into the venue-specific t-shirt and performing an older title track, “Adore U”. They went on to sing six more songs before starting what’s dubbed, ‘Carat Time.’ This is when they will randomly select fans (typically those who brought posters asking to interact with them), and have them do a dance battle. After this, they perform “Very Nice” multiple times. This has become another fun thing among Seventeen and fans as they always try to beat their highest record of how many times they play it as an encore song.
Overall this was definitely one of if not the best concerts I have ever been to. Not only does Seventeen commit to their performances but also try to interact with every single fan that attends. At a Seventeen concert it doesn’t matter where you sit, you’ll be sure to enjoy the show.
