I have mentioned in an article before that I really value musical consistency in groups, not necessarily in maintaining a single concept or style, but the actual musical quality. For this reason, I really love GWSN as their title tracks and b-sides are all great, the music is fun to listen to, and they do it across a spectrum of sounds. Stayc has been shifting to fill the GWSN filled hole in my heart, they have that same consistency and coherence to their whole discography from their most popular title tracks to their least known b-sides. So, needless to say, I was really excited for this show, especially because my 30th birthday came right after and this was a bit of a present to myself.
The first thing that I loved about this show was that it wasn’t some big arena with assigned seats and all that jazz like so many kpop concerts are. It was a nice open standing venue, which means everything is typically easier to see, you can move around a little more, and if you have extreme social anxiety like me, you can hang out in the back where you can not even have people near you while still seeing everything super clearly. Smaller standing venues are just the best concert experience, even if you want to be close the crowd energy up front is so good as long as everybody is being safe. So, that’s a huge win.
The performances were also a win, Stayc are a ton of fun to watch perform, they have really good expressiveness, solid vocals, and a consistent playful energy as they do their songs. I think there were a couple major highlight songs for me that stood out above the rest though. The first and foremost is ASAP, somehow, despite it being one of my favorite Stayc tracks, I just didn’t realize how much fun it was going to be to bop out to it live and in person. ASAP’s energy is so high, and so contagious, that you just can’t help but be carried along into the energy. The second standout to me was Like This, which I don’t actually know if I had heard before because I didn’t get into Stayc during So Bad, I came in on ASAP. Like This might be their best song and I didn’t even know it, and I loved the vibes of it in a live performance setting, the rap sections are fire, and Isa’s chorus section are such standouts too. I have been completely awakened to the power of Like This. The last song that super stood out to me was Teddy Bear, it’s just too much fun to not enjoy a bunch.A few honorable mentions go out to Bubble, Stereotype and the unreleased Flexing On My Ex for being on the more memorable side, although the whole set was great front to back, not a single miss during the whole show due to the strong discography and great performances.
The talking sections were also fun, Sieun basically hard carrying the English, which she is so good at, with Sumin giving her best and the other doing as much as they could. Sieun was also clearly in charge of keeping things moving and I thought it was fun how she would need to say things “alright calm down, we have to move on,” it came out blunter than she probably intended, but when you have members like Yoon goofing off on the side dancing to audience suggested songs you do need to keep things going. They did a couple mini-covers during one section ranging from Twice, to Red Velvet, to Ariana Grande all with no backtrack and they sounded great too. Having watched some of their debut stages and then hearing them sing live now, I’m honestly so impressed with how good all 6 of them have become with their vocals, the group is definitely above average at this point. In terms of all the members' performances, I think Sumin and Isa stood out the most to me during the show, although all 6 members were fantastic, Sieun, Seeun, J, and Yoon are no slouches.
So, overall, this was a blast, and probably my favorite show this year over Aespa, Ateez and Seventeen (Aespa review coming very soon despite being super late), and I would recommend seeing Stayc to anybody who wants a good concert experience, I think you probably could have fun even if you didn’t like kpop if you’re open minded to new types of concert experiences. Frankly this show was a 10 out of 10, and a great show to watch days before I turned 30. My wife who is more of a casual Stayc listener also really enjoyed it, and really thought Sumin stood out too. As I just alluded to, I will have an Aespa review out soon, maybe even this week, and we are also gearing up for our year end voting and I am personally working on my year end list starting this week. Sorry I haven’t been as consistent with my articles or uploading Chelsea’s, she has a huge backlog ready, so expect a pretty consistent flow for a while as we catch up on those.
