Katseye, the K-pop-but-not-exactly six-girl girl group, are already pretty big. I have to imagine that by this time next year, they could become ubiquitous, inescapable, “sick-of-hearing-about-them” famous. The six girls that comprise Katseye are beautiful, multicultural, and talented performers. They are good at the fan service part of being an idol, and, based on videos I have seen of them, even better at seeming like a fun hang! They have an entire Netflix docuseries about the boot camp reality competition that formed Katseye. They have multiple kids’ show theme songs. Their creative director is from the late great clothing brand Opening Ceremony. Between their Jollibee, their Gap, and their (shudder) Waymo advertisements, they have proven themselves to be very marketable.
In other words, they have it.
Friday was their San Francisco debut at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, the first of two sold-out nights of a tour they named Beautiful Chaos. This is the first concert I’ve been to in my 29 years where a majority of the crowd was Gen Alpha teens, tweens, and kids (and their parents or guardians), the new arbiters of youth culture. At one point, the crowd was asked to cheer if this was their first concert ever. The response was very loud.
The kids are absolutely enamored with these young women. They know every Katseye song, even the filler cuts, and most of the choreography.The youth spilled into the aisles, running as close to the stage as they could, phones up, hoping to record the whole thing, or proving that they practiced the choreo. For every burst of confetti that covered the Bill Graham floor — there were, by my count, three — five or so young girls running around to catch as much as they could to take back to their seats, then presumably back home. (A quick concert fashion trend sighting: Boots where the entirety of the shaft — but not the foot — is covered in fur; I saw at least a dozen of these.)
Katseye put on a hell of a show; of course they did. Surviving their reality show bootcamp and whatever “K-pop artist development methodologies” are means they were tack-sharp and full of swagger onstage. Damn near every song in their 17-song set had choreo (even one of those kids’ theme songs); at least five of them had extended dance breaks with acrobatics and backup dancers and a lot of elaborate stage work. The choreo was lithe and synchronized, practiced without feeling rigid. It was hard for me to detect a backing track in their audio mix, and group vocalists Sophia and, in particular, Lara, leaned into melisma and vocal belts whenever they got the chance. They sounded great, even when singing “Tonight I Might,” a song that contains a lyric bad enough that it’s become an in-joke between Katseye and their fans.
That said, a fair bit of things went wrong midway through the show. Lara got tangled up with Daniela, prompting Manon and Yoonchae to stand in front of the two. (It wasn’t a wardrobe malfunction, I don’t think, but it futzed up her attire enough that Daniela ran briefly backstage.) Almost immediately after that, backstage technical glitches forced the girls to work the crowd for close to 15 minutes. Most of it was improvised, and very charming. Then, while she was climbing up a row of chairs, Daniela, the group’s main dancer, stumbled on her skirt during an elaborate flamenco-meets-folklorico dance break of their Latin pop number “Gabriela.” Then, there was an almost ten-minute pause after their first costume change, presumably because of the aforementioned technical woes.
I do think these technical difficulties, in general, made the show better, or at least less sterile. That stretch of time where the girls’ rehearsed mid-show banter turned into riffing off each other for a while, was incredibly charming. The girls commanded the crowd to do a flashlight phone wave (twice), conducted a happy birthday singalong to Katseye’s baby member Yoonchae (who turns 18 today), and did their (crowd-favorite) Gap dance to “Milkshake.” Sophia, the group’s leader, shouted out the Filipino people in the crowd. ( I cheered.) Lara shouted out the South Asian people and the gay people in the crowd. (I cheered again.) Manon shouted out San Francisco’s ramen scene. They were bubbly and effusive and fun, perfect parasocial relationship fuel.
The girls apologized at least four times throughout the night for the various foibles, but they didn’t really need to. A girl group already so polished to perfection needs some space to mess up. It makes these idols, untouchable and unblemished, feel human.
Really, if there’s one criticism, it’s that their discography is still very slight. Of their short set, three numbers were finale songs from the Netflix bootcamp they graduated from, and three others were from TV soundtracks. Sometimes, it’s nice to hear deep cuts, but perhaps these are too deep. (I did find out that a lot of these kids must have discovered Katseye through the Netflix show Monster High; the crowd went bonkers for that one.) I also do not care much for the group’s new song “Internet Girl,” with its limp, electroclash-lite beat and an inexplicable hook that repeats a command to “eat zucchini.” They are too good for their own (and labelmate Le Sserafim’s) reheated nachos. They need one great signature song, a “Say My Name” or “Work From Home.” “Internet Girl” isn’t that.
At least they have “Gnarly,” a repulsive song that I love. It was electric live, made better by the fact that they got hundreds of elementary schoolers to yell out the phrase “Boring dumb bitch, fucking gnarly” in front of their parents.
Talk about beautiful chaos.
