Reviewing a K-Pop concert review

There was a particularly egregious review of a Stray Kids concert making the rounds on social media. Feel free to read it for yourself! I have to admit feeling a little nostalgic as I read it. I haven’t seen this kind of over-the-top anti-K-Pop sentiment in years. Most English-language outlets these days either stick to recycled press releases or rely on fan journalists/critics to deliver some dull but gushing review to be read only by fans. To see an outlet like the Globe & Mail assign a Dad Rock loving dude to review a Stray Kids concert made me feel like I was in 2018 all over again. 

My favorite part was the Monkees reference that was later edited out in a “correction” issued by the Globe & Mail. I mean, who does a dude who loves Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen hate?? THE MONKEES! 

Haven, the night’s final song, is about breaking moulds: “Do whatever you want.” Breaking the mould, though? This ultra-choreographed band is so prefabricated it makes the Monkees look like the Beatles.

Rap is a big part of the Stray Kids sound, with a vibe that is more upbeat than typical North American hip hop. Lyrics are neither hedonistic nor political, and diss tracks are not part of the formula. The band is too busy singing to put anybody down.

[Emphasis added; Also note that the first paragraph above was later edited out, leaving only the drifting reference to the Monkees’ theme song that I’m guessing went over the heads of anyone under the age of 60 who wasn’t a Nick at Nite fanatic like myself.]

It’s a pure rocktivist attitude that has almost vanished from music criticism; reading it was like spotting a passenger pigeon in 2025. I thought the Monkees had been reclaimed ages ago as kind of based but apparently the Prefab Four still hold an important place as a villain in the Rock Critic mythos.

While I empathize with the journalist who was tasked with sitting through hours of what must have been an unpleasant experience for him (I certainly wouldn’t want to sit through an interminable Bruce Springsteen concert), it doesn’t excuse the nasty tone of his review and I’m glad the Globe & Mail edited out some of his snark because it didn’t reflect well on him or the newspaper. 

Here’s what I think happened: 

K-Pop in 2025 is by and large not for general public outsiders or music fans; it’s for K-Pop fans.

That goes double for concerts.

Which makes most K-Pop concerts almost impossible for a regular music critic to review because they aren’t paying attention to the right stuff, especially one whose idea of good music is Bruce Springsteen. 

Can an act like Stray Kids be reviewed using the same criteria as one would review Bruce Springsteen? No.

To review an idol concert, you must review it like an idol concert, not as if you’re expecting The Boss to show up on stage and play some sweet guitar licks for you. 

I’ll give our critic a little slack because K-Pop fans will insist up and down that their faves are Mozart, Beethoven, Elvis, John Lennon, David Bowie, and Tupac rolled into one group. Imagine that as an outsider you roll up to an act that you’ve been told is musically spectacular only to find yourself at an idol concert with a loud backing track, intense choreography, and songs with lyrics you cannot understand. 

North American and Anglosphere fans never want to hear this but it’s true: K-Pop concerts are by and large not great showcases for musical talent in our Current Year of 2025. They are idol concerts and should be reviewed as such. 

How were the lightsticks used? Was the group able to get the audience to perform fan chants or sing along? How were song transitions in the set lists? Did each member get spotlighted appropriately? What was the fan service like? And—importantly—how did the setup in North America compare to the concerts in Korea and Japan? How did it compare to other idol concerts in Korea and Japan? 

One of the biggest complaints I have about idol concerts in North America is not the ultra-choreography but, rather, that they tend to half-ass the ultra-choreography performance over here because they know North American audiences won’t notice. 

There was a great Japanese article I read a few years ago (and have lost the link to so it’s possible I hallucinated it) that compared current year K-Pop idol concerts negatively to the spectacle put on by (then-Johnny’s) acts like Arashi. One of the complaints was that the K-Pop acts only performed for the front row—something I’ve witnessed, as well. I’m not sure if it’s a by-product of making so much video content but I think it’s a fair critique of an idol concert to say that they played too much to the cameras and the front row of the audience, unlike other acts working in a similar style who are able to perform for the full stadium.

That is an appropriate apples to apples comparison.

Complaining that a K-Pop act is doing choreography (unlike a rock band?) is not an apples to apples critique. Was the choreography at the level of SHINee? That’s a fair critique.

Are there exceptions to this? Sure. BigBang toured with Band Six who became a part of their live sound. 

I’ve also seen wonderful live versions of songs from more straight ahead pop acts like Arashi, such as that time Matsumoto Jun performed a big band jazz arrangement with a full orchestra of Arashi’s treacly pop song “Wish,” that is far superior to the original. 

What I’m trying to get at is this: was that a fair and professional review of a Stray Kids show? Absolutely not, but it was interesting as a look at what an outsider still sees when he sees a K-Pop concert. And what I took away from his review was that, to an outsider, K-Pop is still an incomprehensible jumble of sensory overload. In the case of our rock-loving critic, it made him uncomfortable, bored, and angry. There’s no way for an insider to tell if the concert was good or bad, only that it was incomprehensible to this critic. 

For all that fans love to claim that K-Pop has taken over North America or this or that act has claimed number one on various American charts, K-Pop is still very much an opaque subculture. No normies or locals are wandering into these concerts; they are for the dedicated fans and that’s okay. But it does mean that sending a critic whose wheelhouse is rock concerts to review a K-Pop act, won’t result in meaningful critique—just like sending in a fan to review the concert won’t result in meaningful critique. And maybe the solution is simply for mainstream normie outlets to not attempt to critique K-Pop at all.