Dreamcatcher Continues “Odd Eye” Variety Show Circuit, Charting Milestones For Lunar New Year Week

K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall

Dreamcatcher takes a well-deserved and brief holiday break, but not before feeding InSomnias more content for mid-February 2021.

The Lunar New Year holiday weekend is wrapping up in South Korea as I write this, but not even a well-deserved and needed break for Dreamcatcher stopped them from sneaking in a few appearances and some charting numbers before heading home or out with friends to celebrate. As always, InSomnia are frequently known to be among some of K-Pop’s most spoiled fandom, with a steady diet of Dreamcatcher content always ready to be consumed, and this past week was no exception.

How about we start with some charting numbers? After hitting number 1 on the weekly charts on Gaon for the last week of January and into February on both the Retail and standard Album charts, Gaon’s monthly numbers came out for “Dystopia: Road to Utopia”, with Dreamcatcher coming in number 7 with an eye-popping 91,469 albums sold to stores (remember that Gaon tracks shipped/sold albums to stores while Hanteo tracks individual sales).

While this may seem like only a modest increase to the 86,874 that Dreamcatcher sold for the first month of their last release, “Dystopia: Lose Myself”, it’s worth noting that A)Lose Myself released in the middle of the month, meaning it had a bit more time for sales to be made and B)Road to Utopia reached that number in a mere six days. When you think about it that way, it is pretty respectable growth for the group. It’ll be interesting to see what the lifetime numbers of “Dystopia: Road to Utopia” will be, but if less than a week’s sales are any indication, Dreamcatcher will be well on their way to another financially successful comeback.

But that wasn’t the only charting news Dreamcatcher made. Billboard, one of the West’s most well-known websites for music charting, showed that Dreamcatcher landed number 1 on its “Next Big Sound” chart for the past week. For those who don’t know, Next Big Sound is a chart that isn’t attached to straight-up popularity like Billboard’s other charts (meaning you won’t find already-popular acts like a BTS, Blackpink, etc). Rather, this is a more predictive chart that uses data from websites, sales, and other tracking metrics to highlight what it believes are the acts on an upward trajectory relative to their recent activity — hence the “Next Big Sound”. That Dreamcatcher was able to rank number 1 on here, when this is a chart that has rising acts from all over the world, is a worthy achievement. Granted, this isn’t Dreamcatcher’s first time on a Billboard chart — they’ve been on the World Albums chart in the top 10 for prior releases, for example — but getting to number 1 on Next Big Sound when they’ve been flirting with the top 10–20 for a while now is great to see. It’s just another validation backed by metrics to show Dreamcatcher is going in the right direction — even if it is a slow and steady one.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A98qOnZgnLo[/embed]

With most music shows not airing this week or playing replays prior to the holiday, Dreamcatcher spent much of their pre-holiday activity making the rounds on the variety circuit promoting the album, with one of the longer appearances being a return to Arirang’s After School Club. The global fan-friendly variety program has had Dreamcatcher on before, but this was the first appearance by all seven members in quite some time. Not unpredictably, the show had its fair share of Dreamcatcher-style chaos and notable moments, especially one that highlighted just how much more confident (and funny) Handong has gotten since she got back from China. I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s around the 45-minute mark when the group was asked to describe how they want fans to react to seeing them, and is well worth it. You can also check out the bonus clips of their appearance that didn’t air — writing on the After School Club chalkboard and a 1 second Drama OST guessing game that had an unexpected member coming out on top.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ixV8HX6Y3s[/embed]

Other than that, the highlight of these promotions variety-wise appear to be radio shows from some of the big networks giving Dreamcatcher some time and love. Jun Hyosung, member of prior generation girl group Secret, invited subunit “Yaja Time” (Yoohyeon, Siyeon, and SuA) from Dreamcatcher to make an appearance, talk about the album, and even sing a few songs. Naver NOW’s “G.O.D’s Lunch Attack” became the latest in the Naver NOW family of shows to welcome Dreamcatcher for a radio show appearance that included the unexpected treat of having dark EDM track “Poison Love” performed live. With two more radio appearances scheduled for this coming week (we’ll have had JiU and SuA on “Hope Song at Noon” again and JiU, Dami, and Gahyeon on Lee Joon’s “Young Street” in pre-recorded shows by the time this article is published), this seems to be a comeback where Dreamcatcher is, at least on the radio front, inching up the ladder of popular K-Pop shows.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMfw7DPZe0g[/embed]

Besides After School Club, variety videos continued to drop this week, including the beginning of a new series of Idol Ground videos on the NADOL channel that would once again test Dreamcatcher members’ rhythm ability. Proving that she’s the leader Dreamcatcher needs, JiU swapped with a nervous SuA (who’d never done the rhythm challenge before) to go first — you’ll have to watch if she made the right choice in doing so, especially with the challenge’s new rules.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nawgLxGnGYY[/embed]

In what may likely be a multi-part series, Dami, Siyeon, and SuA (with the occasional pan to the rest of the Dreamcatcher peanut gallery waiting in the wings) returned to TongTongTv’s Lie Detector to get tested on their truthfulness. Even though the Lie Detector stuff is just a fun little toy in the end, it’s worth it just to see the detector’s responses Dami being asked to say which member is harder to deal with (SuA or Siyeon). To her credit, Dami remains cool as a cucumber — but the lie detector takes no prisoners. You can, of course, count on SuA and Siyeon to be their fun and chaotic selves as per usual.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2a2x1ZwAlE[/embed]

And for those of you who want to take a little trip down Dreamcatcher memory lane, SBS Hanbam and its host, Travys Kim, took a 45 minute journey down Dreamcatcher’s history of songs, with live performances from debut song “Chase Me” all the way to “Odd Eye”. There’s a sprinkling of Dreamcatcher interview segments of the group promoting the album and talking about the group as a whole, and even a brief side jaunt into Pre-Dreamcatcher, MINX territory. It’s a nice way for SBS to highlight Dreamcatcher’s four-year history, and even though most of it is live performances (with a curiously missing one in 2019’s “Deja Vu”) it’s still a good way for those unfamiliar with the group’s discography to get a bit of a primer.

A few miscellaneous bits of news from the week include:

• Dreamcatcher appearing on ARA TV, with a few fun little covers (exclusively on the Seezn app platform)
• Dreamcatcher participating in another MNet song cover challenge, this time to Wonder Girls’ “Tell Me” (shoutout to SuA for once again showing off her moves here)
• A new “Visual Cam” version of Dreamcatcher performing “Odd Eye” from MNet, just in case you wanted to know what it was like to see Dreamcatcher up close and personal with their newest title track.

That’ll be it for this past week of Dreamcatcher content. It seems the group will be busy once again with a new set of promotions coming up, so I’ll be sure to report on those — “Wind Blows” is going to be great to see, even if just for a week!