This past weekend was BTS’ 8th anniversary and 6th muster concert so as a fan of the group I decided I wanted to watch the concert in celebration of them and my birthday!
Since we are still in unexpected times and I am in California instead of Korea, this was an all online event that was livestreamed. It spanned two days with each day being different versions of the same show, meaning some songs were different in the set list. I watched the “world tour version” which just meant it had more songs in languages other than Korean.
In order to watch live, I was awake at two in the morning since the show started at two thirty for me. Is that ridiculously early? A little bit. But when the performance is being done in Korea and for them it was six in the evening it makes sense. The concert was only two and a half hours so I just slept more afterwards.
On to the show itself. A muster isn’t a normal concert because it is more relaxed and the band get to goof off more. This is perfectly demonstrated with their performance of Chicken Noodle Soup. This song is a solo track from their member J-Hope, but they did it with all seven of them so it was a colorful, silly song. I’m personally not a big fan of Chicken Noodle Soup, but the performance was fun.
Since they couldn’t have a live audience, they came up with other ways to have fan interaction. They had screens with fans cheering them on that they walked through and performed one of my favorite songs to. They also had a contest for fans to sing along with them on some songs and that was really nicely done. The only thing I disliked was the fake crowd noise they used, specifically when it was on a constant loop during a costume change for the band. It was eerie watching the cameras pan over the screens with fans and have that looped.
One downside of a online concert is running into technical difficulties. I only had this happen once thankfully and only missed their Dynamite performance, which is fine to me because we’ve all seen our fair share of Dynamite performances at this point. But a big upside to it being online, besides the obvious of getting to see it at all when if it wasn’t I wouldn’t have, is that I got to share the experience with my best friend. One ticket allowed two devices to watch, so I shared mine with her and we were talking throughout with our opinions. That was what really made the concert fun in the end.
Was it worth it to wake up well before dawn to watch? Absolutely. Would I do it again? Easily. Although next time I’d consider doing a two-day pass so I can watch both days since there was differences I would have liked to see. And ultimately it was enjoyable because I had someone to share it with.
Have you attended any online-only events recently? Tell me about them with a comment!
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