Tears (lots of tears), garters visible under miniskirts worn by teenage girls, cries of hysteria and glitter, that’s more or less, the recipe for the evening at the Stade de France this Saturday evening, with the Blackpink, female korean pop superstars. Last December, the male equivalent of the group, BTS, had sold out twice at the Accor Arena, in Paris Bercy (XII). Back in France, for their European date hall in the summer, the meeting takes on the air of a challenge. Will they succeed in filling the place? The answer is no, without it being difficult to understand.
While the offer of concerts in the Ile-de-France this summer is enormous between The Weeknd and the Lollapalooza festival, to approach Lisa, Jennie, Jisoo and Rosé, you had to break your housing savings plan. The cheapest (and rare) seats started at 68 euros and you had to pay 183 euros to be seated in the lower stand, downright 304 euros for seats (also seated) in the pit and… 827 euros to be in front of the stage!
A 70% female audience
And no question of changing category taken by the passion in full show. Those who tried to get a little too close were soon caught by the security patrol who, in groups, called fans back to their seats. A nice sum to which the many reckless had to add 75 euros to afford a “lightstick Bi-Ping-Pongs. »
This light stick connected to an application and acclaimed by fans of the genre, here stylized in the group’s pink and black colors and surmounted by two hearts which flash to the rhythm of the music, is snapped up in merchandising shops, robbed despite prices exorbitant (155 euros for the hoodie).
Unlike previous French dates, the stadium is not full. The sitting pit is empty on the sides, and several stands are covered with a black cloth. Not enough to lessen the ambient excitement when the group’s first clips are shown on the two giant screens around 9 p.m.… And for nearly 40 minutes! So much for the first part as is the tradition of K-pop, just to get in the legs and especially in the mouth. A good and inexpensive technique to warm up the 70% female audience, including many members of Asian communities.
An Ultra… Loud Fanbase
The vast majority dressed for the occasion with breathtaking looks, halfway between the world of manga, and teenage heroines from “Virgin Suicide.” The colored wigs light up the crowd, long braids à la Nelly Oleson (the villain of “Little House on the Prairie”) and see-through sequin tops for the men dressed in hot leather shorts finish setting the scene . “They can’t offer us tickets to go to Seoul?” “Yells one of them as the advertisement for Korean Airlines is broadcast for the second time, behind that of a video game on the group. “I know them so well that I feel like the fifth girl in the group,” laughs a fan.
So what could we expect from this quartet qualified by Time Magazine as “artists of the year 2022”? One thing is certain at the level of the decibels shouted in chorus by their audience, the young women with a (very) youthful look place themselves very high. In six years of existence, two albums and first-class collaborations with Dua Lipa, Selena Gomez and Lady Gaga, Blackpink has created an ultra-loud fanbase. What amaze the many parents who come to accompany their offspring who film themselves almost constantly with their smartphones.
“I have never heard so much screaming when I have been doing concerts for 30 years, I should have taken earplugs”, comments a young man in his fifties who came to accompany a little cousin. If the energy in “the Blinks” (the name of the fans) hardly weakens, the artistic proposal is struggling to fill the list of requirements for a stadium. The staging is reduced to a trickle with a stage that is too small and has difficulty in imposing itself in the enclosure. Only a pyramid in the background changes colors. And it’s not the few effects of glitter and other flames that change the game.
A singer leaves the stage… before the end
As for the choreographies, they are very scholarly, and lack interaction. A show poorly supported by messy video recording, with cameras that are not always stable and girls often passing one in front of the other. Another downside: the intermissions, too many, breaking the rhythm. Finally, the epilogue takes on the air of anything, when one of the singers leaves the stage for no reason, leaving her three friends alone in the process of furnishing by calling out to those who have written signs bearing their likeness for long minutes.
After an interactive game, a “dance challenge”, they finally come back to close the evening with a few words of French. “Bonjour Paris”, they launch before resuming themselves in French between two hops, their arms spinning in the air like in an end-of-school-year boom. “Tonight, it’s not nothing to be with you, we have a lot of friends in France, thank you for being here, it’s madness”, slips Lalisa. After nearly two hours, the evening ends with a huge fireworks display, which ends up astonishing the addicts… But does not reverse the state of mind of the others.
“The show is not up to the artists who can fill the big stadiums, slips a music professional. They are so far from the level of a Beyoncé or a Rihanna. Not really in the opinion of a young woman, three rows higher… All in sobs and gasps. “They’re really too strong,” she mutters in her mother’s arms. It’s the most beautiful concert of my life, I don’t know how I’m going to be able to resume a normal life after that. »
