Weeekly Grand America Tour: Weeekly University- Concert Review

I’ll be completely upfront now, this review is all about how I had some of the most fun that I’ve ever had in my life. I will also have a short summary at the end if you just want the quick version scroll down to that. Before I get to the full review though, I do want to write a little bit about how awesome my wife was for this show. All photos were taken by, she took 143 pictures and videos so I could just focus on enjoying my favorite group. She really enabled me to relax have such a fantastic experience. Also, while I mention who I bias later in the article, but my wife didn’t really have a bias going in, but I think Jaehee won her over.

Part 1: VVIP Events

So, we didn’t do VVIP+, I have pretty extreme social anxiety and didn’t know what I would even do in the fanchat situation. That said, hopefully I get to see Weeekly again, because if I do I am going to get that fan chat, I’ll explain why later. As VVIP we got to be in the venue while the fan chat was happening though, so we got to try to look at the members past all the VVIP+s. After that we got a fan sign, so I picked out albums for us to do and that was super cool even though it’s really quick. Credit to the organizers on the fan sign, they give everybody small, free posters, so if you don’t bring something to get signed you’ll still go home with signatures.

This was during the show, but phones weren’t allowed to be pulled out at all in the building during any of the non-concert events, so it’s the best representation of the fan sign experience I have.

Then we got the hi touch + group photos where chunks of the VVIP+s and then VVIPs would go down the line giving the members high fives before sitting in chairs in front of them for pictures. Anxiety beat me here, a bunch of people asked the members to do hearts with them and I was in a seat where I could have asked Soojin to but I was too shy, oh well, be braver next time. I haven’t seen the pictures from this part yet, but from watching other people, I’m sure they’re all cute. 

After that the group left and we had a few minutes of down time to buy merch or drinks before we got our numbers called to move up towards the stage. We wanted to bring our stuff back to the car to free our hands up but apparently there’s no in and out without buying new GA tickets, which I thought was kind of unfortunate, but it is what it is. I ended up buying the event photo cards. Sadly I REALLY WANTED A SHIRT but they were all sold out hours before VVIP events even started, you just have to get to the merch pre-orders or you won’t be wearing their shirts, a huge chunk of people wanted them and didn’t get them. I WANT TO ADVERTISE FOR YOU WEEEKLY PLEASE. For real though, if anybody has a source on a medium tour shirt let me know.

Part 2: The Show- Performances

Is my wife a professional photographer? This is so good.

The set list was fantastic, they hit almost every title track, basically except Ven Para, which is sad because I think they did great with that song and so did a number of fans near me who kept shouting for it. The other notable missing songs for me were Sweet Dreams and 7 Days Tension, which is an ad, so I didn’t really expect it, but it’s a good song. Jihan was coming of a cold, she had actually missed a prior show date, so she asked the audience to sing along on her parts because her voice wasn’t in the best condition. She was definitely trying to minimize her voice usage, but she still did a fantastic job. I also really liked the cover they did of an Ariana Grande’s One Last Time that they did.

They had a total of 4 outfits, which is pretty good, that's what the super big concerts usually have, many smaller concerts don’t even get one. I think everybody was a fan of the varsity jacket outfits at the start, but they really all looked good all the way through, I’d say all the outfits were a win. They also performed well front to back as a group too and did a great job of having the audience get into every single song. I was proud of the audience on the “call me addiction” part of Backwards, because the whole audience gave a strong shout of “addiction” back to the group.

The energy in the venue in general was really strong, you could tell that the audience was there to have a great time, and that collective positivity is a really good vibe. Honestly, I smiled basically the whole time, and I have a pretty big open smile and my mouth started getting dry. I used the water fountain big time between the end of the show and the snapshots after.

We’ll sing for you Jihan! Rest up!

Part 3: The Show- VCR

So, VCR is a bit of a misnomer, it normally refers to the videos that the groups play during outfit changes, but this venue didn’t have screens, so instead the members just changed in trios while the other three entertained us. The girls apologized for the lack of VCR, but I honestly feel like we won by getting the whole show with them, no breaks.

There were two main bits during the VCR sections, the first was a raffle where you could win signed posters, albums, or polaroids. Somehow my ticket won on the very first pull! And then more shockingly, my wife’s won on the 3rd! I have never been so lucky in my life, and probably never will be again. We were shocked, the group was shocked, everybody was just kind of floored. We picked a poster for the first and then an album for the second, Zoa had pulled the second number, and she’s my main bias (Soojin and Jaehee being my other biases, but I love all 6 members) so we let her pick the album version so I can say it was hand picked by Zoa. I am happy with these choices, but I partly wish I had gotten the Zoa polaroid from her because it feels like that was fate and I just wasn’t thinking about it at the time.

The funniest part here was one raffle winner who was pulled by Soojin picked a Monday polaroid and Soojin pretended to be all mad at him for not picking her after she pulled him, it was a good bit.

The second VCR section was answering fan questions that had been submitted earlier by VVIP+ ticket holders… I think? Not sure, regardless, they had a ton of fun with the questions. There were some memes, they hyped up the local food, fans kept trying to stop them from picking easy answers, like when a question about favorite part of the tour, or something along those lines came up people shouted “number 2 answer, don’t just pick meeting Daileee” and of course the members then sassily pick meeting Daileee anyway. I guess I should note here that this group is extremely English proficient, they barely used Korean at all, and outside of some use of the teleprompter for scripted things they just freely spoke English, almost completely. Zoa also did a spider man impression during this section as well and we learned Jaehee’s favorite ice cream flavor. Soeun also told a truly “scary” story. A fan also did a stellar impression of an Adventure Time character, and he was made to do it again when the rest of the group came out after changing. I don’t know much about the character but the impression sounded like such an intense vocal experience that I could feel the ghost of my vocal chord inflammation from a few years ago just listening to it.

Soeun and Monday are really naturals at filling air and keeping a vibe going while people were pulling out raffle tickets and questions. They would probably do a pretty good job MCing. And the whole group would actively try to engage the audience, which worked pretty well because, as I mentioned earlier, the audience was really excited to be there.

Part 4: Snapshots

So, once the show came to an end, people with snapshots got to hang around and everybody else got kicked out, including my wife, so she took all our merch out to the car and I was left to do the pictures. My wife is the biggest stabilizer for my extreme social anxiety, so this was nerve wracking for me a bit. That said, I had no reason to feel nervous, once I got to each member for pictures they were super nice and comfortable, they all asked me how the show was after and seemed to genuinely want to have little conversations and it felt really nice to have a real human connection and chat. This is why I will, a million times over, do the fan chat if I get a chance to see them again. These girls are so incredibly humble and sweet.

I did Jaehee, then Zoa, and finally finished with Soojin, who I told it was the best show I had ever been to and her jaw dropped and she looked really happy. I then told her that it was “the number one show, easy peasy” which clearly shows I wasn’t thinking because I’m not sure “easy peasy” is a phrase not native speakers really know, I don’t even think the gen z people say it. But she really cutely repeated “easy peasy” back to me after. Then I said goodbye and we waved to each other as I walked away. Speaking of Soojin, the person in front of me was taking a minute to pick their pose and we made eye contacts and both just started dancing to the song that was on, she was doing choreo and I was just vibing because I don’t know choreos and it was a fun moment between us.

Snapshots with Zoa, Jaehee and Soojin. I was worried about being too leaned in towards Zoa not wanting to invade personal space and didn’t realize she leaned in more towards me. My shyness got the best of me.

I also want to shout out Jihan here because while I was in Jaehee’s line her photographer was switching signs from Premium to Standard poses (they wore signs around their neck with the pose options) and the cords got tangled in her hair. Jihan almost immediately stepped forward and started helping the photographer get untangled. It was really nice of her, and clearly it wasn’t a measured decision, but an instant reflex to help. Monday also made everybody laugh because a staff member did a last call for her premium snapshots, and then she repeated the last call so much louder.

Part 5: A Kind Stranger

The last thing I want to mention that doesn’t quite fit anywhere is this. As the show ended a woman from a couple next to us turned to my wife and said “I made these Weeekly concert friendship bracelets, do you want one” and held out a hand holding like 8 bracelets. She then offered me one as well, which I accepted and have been wearing out since even if the softer feminine pastel colors aren’t really my normal vibe. A lot of them had song names and at random I got a song that I think really described the whole event, although, it is a bit of an understatement. My bracelet says “Good Day” but with this show, it was one of the best days ever.

This was such a random occurrence, but I think a group’s fans reflect the group often times, if Weeekly has such sweet fans, think about how sweet the members are. And if you see this random Daileee, please reach out and I’ll give you a shout out more specifically and plug anything you want me to!

Summary

Weeekly put on my favorite show ever, and I genuinely don’t think anything will top it for me. I think all their ticket upgrades and extra events are very worth it too, I genuinely wish I had bought more upgrades and snapshots. If Weeekly has a show near you and you like their music, absolutely go, you’ll have fun. And if Weeekly’s tour company has any extra medium tour shirts they can feel free to reach out to our email manelykpopofficial@gmail.com and we can figure out the details.

In all seriousness, I’ve been thinking a long time about where I want to take things with my passion for kpop and writing, this website has had over 24,000 visitors at the time of publishing this (WOW, thank you SO MUCH, never knew I’d get there from nothing) and I’ve decided I want to start finding a way to interview groups, especially smaller groups who don’t get access to all the big news sources. That said of all the interviews, I would love to do Weeekly the most, especially in person if possible. If we could make that happen someday, I would be the happiest Daileee on the planet. So if you really want to reach out to me, Weeekly management team, I’ll gladly do an interview with the group!

Now that I’ve shot my shot, thanks for reading everybody, sorry about the site being so quiet, I won’t make promises about the next few months but the usual set of year end articles are coming, but I want to do more before that.