CONCERT VENUE & DATE:

BARCLAYS Center, BROOKLYN, NY - 2025.03.13 (Day 1)

Section 24 - Row 20 - Seat 9

If you’ve followed along with me for a while, you’ll know I LOVE live music, and have a special place in my heart for K-Pop concerts. The energy, the crowds, and the performances are next level amazing. I saw 3 different groups in 2024 (see my posts for Tomorrow x Together, ATEEZ, and Seventeen), but 2025 brought who I have been waiting for since I got into K-Pop a few years ago: BTS. Korea has mandatory military service, so all of the seven members of BTS had to take a hiatus from their music careers for two years while they enlisted. So far two members have finished their time, and J-Hope decided to do a solo world tour to make the fans (called ARMY) happy before all the members could be together again on stage.

~

J-Hope is a skilled songwriter and rapper. However his first love is dance, especially street styles (see his documentary about dance on prime). This concert was a combination of his hip-hop heavy solo albums and his love of dance. He had an amazing dance crew with him and really made time throughout the concert to showcase them both as a group and individually, which was wonderful to see.

~

A fun fact about me is that by day I’m a structural engineer, and I engineer concert stages. I was happy to be the stage engineer for this show, and because of that, got to know the production project manager. Through her I was able to go into the venue a little early to see my stage up close and see sound check before going to my regular seat for the show (I did buy a ticket during pre-sale). I can’t share any photos of some of the stage stuff (security reasons, NDAs, etc.), but the staff I met were all so lovely and really made my concert day even better, so a huge thank you to them ❤️❤️❤️

~

Photo notes: everything taken and edited on my iPhone 13 mini

Needlepoint project for the show: a custom patch bucket hat with five patches (1 for the show, 3 for his albums, and 1 for a funny single that had great album art). Making things for shows is such a fun way to add a personal memory to the experience.

*This is mostly a post for me to go back to for the nostalgia, so enjoy the photo & video overload along with me 😊

Sound Check

Songs: Baseline —> 항상 (HANGSANG) —> Outro: Ego (by BTS)

Act i: Jack in the box

Songs: What if… —> Pandora’s Box —> Arson —> STOP —> (J-Hope ment) —> MORE

So. Much. Fire.

Act II: Hope On The Street

Songs: on the street —> lock / unlock —> i don’t know —> i wonder… —> (J-Hope ment) —> Trivia 起: Just Dance (by BTS)

Act III: New Songs, Hope World, & BTS

Songs: Sweet Dreams —> Mona Lisa (1st live performance) —> (J-Hope ment) —> Base Line —> 항상(HANGSANG) —> Airplane —> Airplane Pt. 2 (by BTS) —> MIC Drop (by BTS) -> Silver Spoon (by BTS) —> Dis-ease (by BTS) —> Outro: Ego (by BTS) —> Daydream —> Chicken Noodle Soup —> Hope World

This set was long and dance heavy, J-Hope and the dancers all did amazing in this!!

Encore

Songs: Equal Sign —> Future —> Neuron

Special shout out to the dance crew in this show. They were all INCREDIBLE and made this show magical. I’ve added all of their instagram handles below under each photo (J-Hope introduced them all during the show). Definitely give all of them a follow if you love dance!

Concert setlist provided by Spotify: