I was in Seoul in September 2024 for the Korean Open tennis competition. The tennis courts are next to the former Olympic gymnasium where RIIZE was giving a concert the day before the tennis started so I thought I'd drop in to "evaluate" them through the eyes of a would-be SM Director of Artistic Development.
Singing: good, not remarkable
Choreo: very simple. For me, the ultimate in complex dance-pop choreo was Momoland's BAAM. Nothing I saw from RIIZE came close.
Stamina: none needed; 3 short dance routines in 90 minutes
Interaction as a group: fantastic but, unfortunately, all of it occurred while sitting down or strolling around the stage, not while performing.
I think I may have been attending some kind of a wrap-up, end-of-tour performance because 80 of the 90 minutes I was there were consumed by the boys chatting to each other and to the audience, playing dress-up games and doing quizzes. One of the games required each boy to watch a clip of himself during a previous stage performance then repeat it live. All of this was, of course, in Korean which is why I left after 90 minutes.
I tried to ask my neighbours (I estimated the attendance at 10,000; 95% of whom were young women) if this was a normal k-Pop concert but none were willing to read Google Translate on my phone as long as the boys were "performing."
I did notice that the loudest audience screams came when a boy appeared in close-up on the huge screens to play his part in the chatting and quizzing. Not the music, not the dancing, not the choreo, not the scenery or the spectacle but close-ups of the performers.
So, are good looks the simple secret to the k-Pop phenomenon?
Clearly, bands in other music genres have some physically attractive members but, with rare exceptions, all the members of those bands are talented musicians and one or more of their members compose most of the songs they perform.
Apparently not so in k-Pop.
Could it be that the back stories to the genre-boot camps, years of drilling, harsh criticism, even harsher contracts, no romantic partners, etc etc-is all a marketing ploy to make them seem special and give the audiences an excuse to go and look at a pretty face?
