Dreamcatcher Ends On-Stage Promotions For “MAISON” With Smiles, A Second Win And Big News
K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall
The seven-member K-Pop girl group conquered a long-time hurdle in winning on The Show, while releasing tons more content and an announcement that was long in coming.
It’s pretty safe to say that this past week for Dreamcatcher has probably been a good one for the group. Though this week marked the end of on-stage promotions for second full album “Apocalypse: Save Us” and its title track “MAISON” (presumably in order to get more time back to prepare for their upcoming appearance at Germany’s KPOP.Flex), Dreamcatcher ended it with a bang in more ways than one, finally winning on The Show in dramatic fashion. In the midst of that and a ton of promotions-related content, however, it wasn’t even the main headline of the week, as Dreamcatcher announced they’d be hitting the road on tour for the first time since 2019, returning first to the US. There’s quite a bit to go over from this exciting past week, so let’s get into everything that happened in Dreamcatcher-land for the end of April!
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The official Dreamcatcher channel was perhaps the least busy in terms of amount of comeback-related content this week but was no less significant in their contributions. We got to see the choreography for “MAISON” come together in a dance practice behind-the-scenes as well as what went into their mini-concert for the release of their album in another similar video. These have always been interesting to me because of the fact that it takes a lot to put together the final product, especially in K-Pop, so watching both the complex, tiring, yet visually appealing “MAISON” choreography come together was fun. The group’s thoughts about performing in front of their fans exclusively at an event for the first time in two years was equally as insightful.
The group’s official social media also continued the “MAISON” dance challenge, adding friends from (G)-IDLE, Everglow, and soloist Hong Euijin, while also beginning a Gahyeon-fueled “Playground” challenge as well. These are always fun just to see Dreamcatcher leverage their growing network of idol friends and peers, and for how fun they make the dance challenge choreography.
Finally, we saw the continuation of offline/online fansigns with three in total happening (one online-only for Chinese fans). I’ve missed these in part because of all the fun videos from random interactions and happenings, as well as the bonus of a couple more live performances of the title track (Dreamcatcher even did one of these in style by keeping their suit stagewear from earlier in the day on SBS Inkigayo). More importantly, however, it’s just nice to get back to some degree of normalcy even in the midst of an ongoing pandemic with the members being able to interact face-to-face with fans.
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Speaking of interactions, a double helping of vLives this past week continued Dreamcatcher’s dialogue with fans, with everyone taking part. Handong, Yoohyeon, and Dami dropped in some post-promotion thoughts and some funny moments (including Yoohyeon quoting a bit of profanity relating the story of her younger brother seeing her briefly back home), while the chaotic foursome of JiU, SuA, Siyeon and Gahyeon had a ton of fun eating snacks, talking with fans, and doing Donald Duck impressions, among other things. It was, not surprisingly, a pretty loose and casual interaction borne no doubt in part due to the relief of ending stage promotions, always a huge timesink.
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On the variety front, there was a veritable onslaught of content that came out from Dreamcatcher as they continued onward with promotions. Part of why I believe that this comeback era is not over just yet, even if stage promotions are over, is because of the sheer amount of appearance content we will get long past the time that Dreamcatcher is done performing “MAISON” live. This past week alone we got two appearances on popular Naver NOW shows, both returns for the group (G.O.D’s Lunch Attack and Moonbyul’s Studio Moon Night), two great performances of “MAISON” in different contexts with Genie and TongTong Culture, the group doing various activities or in games across multiple channels, and a behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to film the high-quality trailer video that went with Dreamcatcher’s recent collaboration with art and music site Wonderwall. And we’re not even done yet, with confirmed appearances on itsLive and iHeartRadio in the wings.
Combine all of this with the official content yet to come out (including what is likely to be a highly-anticipated Dreamcatcher’s Note regarding their first music show win) and fans will be well-fed for a while yet even a the group gears up for two traveling performance dates and their future plans for the summer, which I’ll be getting to in a bit. As always, Dreamcatcher and Dreamcatcher Company are ensuring, even in an instance where there was a longer-than-usual gap between promotions, that the content is going to be continuous and extensive, one of the group’s strengths as far as I’m concerned.
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All of the variety content, however, was wrapped around a final week of stage performances for “MAISON” filled with plenty of good memories and more critically, further testament to how far the group and its fandom have come by securing a second music show win on SBS MTV’s The Show. Some of the show-related content was plenty fun as well as emotional, with an energetic “On The Way Home” video for The Show, a full set of high-quality pictures of the members from Inkigayo (JiU | SuA | Siyeon | Handong | Yoohyeon | Dami | Gahyeon) , and a full dedicated behind-the-scenes segment including further first music show win comments/tears for Show Champion dropping. But the full slate of performances including Dreamcatcher in suits and in the styling they wore to start off this comeback provided a nice, visual bookend to what has felt like a couple weeks that have flown by. As always, Dreamcatcher provided some of the best visuals while at the same time never losing the intense and aggressive stage presence that performing “MAISON” demanded.
But of course, the highlight of the week was Dreamcatcher, at last, conquering SBS MTV’s The Show, squeaking by with a fourteen-point difference past viral and resurgent boy group DKZ to secure their second music show win. This one happened in somewhat dramatic fashion, with some fans believing this was the reversal of fortune from 2019’s eleven-point (yet fair and square) loss to Everglow during “Deja Vu” promotions. Dreamcatcher’s strong Broadcast score (The Show’s replacement for the fuzzier Experts metric) of 1460 of 1500 along with superior YouTube views and a close gap in voting overcame an unexpected 2nd place Digital streaming finish to eke out the win. In many ways, especially happening on the last live performance of “MAISON” promotions, it seemed almost poetic.
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For the group’s part, they were more committed to being a bit less teary and a lot happier on stage for this win, with pre-rehearsed speeches ready and a speed run of comments in multiple languages that saw Handong finally give her thank you speech to Chinese fans on a live stage and Yoohyeon flexing her ever-improving English skills. The encore performance was far steadier, yet no less emotional, and if you saw this stage in a vacuum you’d think Dreamcatcher had won twenty times and not two — they were that comfortable. As with their first win, Dreamcatcher held a celebratory vLive that was all smiles and laughter and thanked fans for giving them another accolade to celebrate for these memorable promotions, ones that have seen quite a few places they run in helping celebrate their long-sought-after show wins (such as TongTong Culture surprising them with a cake to mark the occasion).
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On a fandom note, as someone who’s had to watch this stuff go by since they were within striking distance of a music show win (and who is, of course, over the moon at them winning twice in one comeback), I do hope winning on The Show is a release of angst (and even a grudge) that some folks have held with regards to this particular broadcast. I saw signs of this, unfortunately, still in existence as the above encore stage was cut off (something that is done for TV time by The Show for every encore stage and not just Dreamcatcher’s).
While I understand some fans’ frustration with never winning The Show up til now, I’ve never bought into having bad or angry feelings towards it and SBS. Believing in supposed scoring shenanigans (later disproven through proper re-calculations), that The Show’s various unforeseen cancellations/changes were out to somehow screw over Dreamcatcher’s win chances, or doing unnecessarily salty things like calling The Show “The Shit” on Twitter or in other places, was never a good look for the Dreamcatcher fandom. All it did was create strife where it didn’t need to be and signal boost a negative opinion about a show that didn’t deserve it, especially given how kind SBS, the network owning The Show, has been to Dreamcatcher (not the least of which was SuA’s current weekly radio gig on Wendy’s Young Street, an SBS-owned show). Instead, energy should be focused on celebrating this win, one shared by everyone in the fandom who contributed, no matter how large or small, and for continuing to support and appreciate Dreamcatcher in whatever way individual fans feel comfortable and choose to do so.
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Such an opportunity to support Dreamcatcher and Dreamcatcher Company, by the way, presented itself in the other big news of the past week. After two years of not being able to do so due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dreamcatcher is going to be hitting the touring road once again, announcing a World Tour that begins with stops in the US from late June to mid-July. I believe this is the first of other legs the group plans on traversing (I wouldn’t be surprised to see them come through the EU and SEA regions, for example, later on in the year), so for those of you reading who aren’t from the US, I am confident, even though I can’t personally confirm it myself, that you’ll get your time to see Dreamcatcher live.
For now, US fans will be happy to see that eight performances across the country are in place, with a flurry of ticket sales that opened last Friday to a ton of fanfare and fans scrambling for the best seats. Even with the possibility of bots or resellers scooping up tickets, the fact that some places sold out of the best seats within minutes (and in LA’s case, the whole event) is a testament to how far the group’s popularity has come since their last touring opportunities in 2019. I’ve secured my own tickets and you can bet that I’ll be reporting in from at least one of the sites with a full write-up of everything that went on for the performance. For Dreamcatcher, Dreamcatcher Company, and the fans, this is a return to normalcy (and of a revenue stream) that has been absent for quite some time. There’s nothing quite like seeing Dreamcatcher live, as I had the opportunity to do so in 2019 the last time they came through the US, so if you’re able to and have the means, definitely be sure to sweep up tickets for yourself — it’ll be a great experience.
Dreamcatcher’s not done with promoting their second full album just yet, and we’re sure to hear more from them as well about their preparations to travel to Europe in just a couple short weeks. As always, I’ll be here to report on the latest, so be sure to clap, subscribe, and signal boost if you like what you see. See you all next week!
