Red Velvet shows off all its concepts during first Seoul concert in over three years
Red Velvet aimed to show all aspects of its concepts during its fourth concert “R to V” held in KSPO Dome in southern Seoul on Saturday and Sunday.
“The concert name [R to V]] means that we are presenting from red to velvet, the two genres that we excel at,” member Joy explained.
The girl group classifies its releases into three genres: powerful and alluring Red; classical and soft Velvet; and Red Velvet.
“Since this is our first concert in three and a half years, we have a lot of songs stacked up, and we will show you all of them today!” member Irene said. The girl group performed a total of 25 tracks at the concert, including all five tracks from its most recent album “Birthday” (2022). Its last tour was titled "La Rouge" and held in November 2019.
Red Velvet kicked off the Seoul performances with B-side tracks that represent the genre Velvet, performing “Pose,” “Beg for me,” “Zoom,” “Bye Bye,” “In & Out” from its most recent albums, “Queendom” (2021), “Feel My Rhythm” (2022), “Birthday” (2022) and “'The ReVe Festival’ Finale” (2019). None of these tracks had been performed at a concert before.
The girl group then continued with more familiar lead tracks — “Peek-A-Boo” (2017), “Bad Boy” (2018) and “Psycho” (2019) — before switching to more upbeat songs in the Red genre, while wearing pastel-colored dresses, contrasting the chic-black outfits that represented the Velvet genre.
“Don’t you think this is ground-breaking? Only Red Velvet can pull this off. The downside is that we struggled a lot trying to change our makeup and hairstyles to fit the different concepts [backstage]. It’s a war down there,” Seulgi said with a laugh.
In the Red genre, the girl group sang never-performed-before tracks “Feel My Rhythm” (2022), “Queendom” (2021), “Birthday” (2022) alongside songs that define Red Velvet: “Ice Cream Cake” (2015) and “Red Flavor” (2017).
Red Velvet performed a total of five songs during its encore — “Celebrate,” “My Dear,” “Russian Roulette,” “You Better Know” and an impromptu encore track “Zimzalabim,” which was not on the previously released set list that press received.
With the Seoul leg of the tour completed, the girl group will move on to Singapore, Yokohama, Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and London.
The Paris concert will be Red Velvet's first-ever solo concert in Europe.
The girl group will also perform at the Primavera Sound 2023 festival in Spain as the only K-pop group to do so, in Barcelona on June 1 and Madrid on June 8.
Red Velvet debuted in 2014 and consists of five members: Irene, Wendy, Seulgi, Joy and Yeri. Its latest EP “Birthday” (2022), sold 1 million copies this January, making it the group’s first million seller.
BY CHO YONG-JUN [cho.yongjun1@joongang.co.kr]
