Abi Scaife

There’s no concert quite like a K-Pop concert.

The street outside Tottenham Hotspurs Stadium is teeming with fans. People of all ages and genders wander around with enormous tote bags, happily shoving their trinkets and lovingly made goodie bags into your hands before moving on to the next. Others hand out free suncream and BTS banners, waters and snacks and reminders to stay safe and keep cool. Here, no one is a stranger – just a friend you haven’t met yet.

Seeing BTS in London feels particularly special – they last visited the UK as a group seven years ago, when they played Wembley Stadium. In seven years, a lot can change – every cell in your body regenerates, you are literally, physically, different – and that’s without the outside effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and BTS’ temporary hiatus for their military service. For the us in the crowd – and, it seems, the group – tonight feels like a homecoming.

The first songs on the setlist are from their latest release, ARIRANG, a dynamic return to the hip-hop roots that started it all. You could be forgiven for being surprised at this, if you haven’t delved into their back catalogue, but the punchy, gritty sound that makes up the bulk of ARIRANG is familiar territory for BTS. 

The album was billed as the beginning of a new chapter of the group – BTS 2.0 – and yet at the same time, it feels like a resettling. The favourite pair of shoes you had forgotten about, which, slipped into once again, mold to your feet, providing comfort like no other – and once updated with a little shoe polish and a few charms, feel somehow brand new.

The first few songs, all taken from ARIRANG, feel structured and choreographed beyond the literal, and though they are great fun it is when recent releases become interspersed with older tracks that the stadium truly comes alive, both here in the audience and on stage. It’s here that the walls of performance fall down, and we begin to breathe as one – joy shared, walking on the same wavelength.

When Come Over plays, the audience holds up banners organised and designed by fans and handed out before the concert. In Korean, and underneath in English, it says the words ‘we’ll always love you like we did before’. The banner is a message to the band – one that has V tearing up – and a call to raise funds for non-profits The Min Yoongi Centre and Young Minds UK, in BTS’ name. From VIP standing up to the gods, the whole stadium turns blue with these banners, organised by SugaDumplingCrew – a testament to fandom spaces, and the power they have.

When it is time for the DJ Spin mystery tracks we first have the customary teasing as BTS stride around the stage, reading old song names from banners and measuring the crowd’s excitement by their stand-shaking screams. The surprise tracks end up as Life Goes On and Dionysus – a slightly odd pairing back to back, but the audience devours every note. That BTS are here, a rare occurrence – that we managed to get tickets, a miracle; whatever surprises come our way are the cherry on the oh-my-god-is-this-really-happening cake.

The show is overwhelmingly good fun, and full of an energy you just can’t find anywhere else. Even in the humidity of London’s 33 degree heat, backup dancers are sprinting around the stage in full length monk robes, carrying enormous flags and dodging pyrotechnics so hot we can feel them up in the access section. 

The men of the hour are just the same, running wildly from one end of the spidery stage to the other, tumbling and roughhousing with each other like puppies in a basket. They seem just as amazed to be here as we are, even as they command the stage with a sense of belonging that is unmatched in the genre.

As the show goes on, they become undone – literally, in that they change from carefully curated costumery to more casual fits – behaving more and more like young men than consummate professionals. And as the show draws to a close with fond farewells (and a congratulations on England’s footie win against Mexico) it feels like they are breathing freely.