Dreamcatcher Finishes 2022 Touring In Europe, Looking Forward To A (Slightly) Quieter December
K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall
The K-Pop septet concludes another successful, well-attended tour in the West, while releasing more content to keep fans engaged going into the last month of the year.
We learned over the summer during the North American tour for Dreamcatcher that the group had clearly missed being out and about and interacting with fans. I saw this personally at one stop during this tour and it was highly likely to be true at every portion of their travel months ago.
For Dreamcatcher, Europe has been a frequent place they’ve headed to during their career. Whether it was during their first tour (“Fly High”), in 2019 with their second (“Invitation to Nightmare City”), or just this past summer for festivals KPOP.FLEX and Primavera Sound, Europe has been a comfort stop for the group. So it was to nobody’s surprise that the announcement of a Europe tour came, and though scheduling and venue availability likely limited the number of stops, there were nevertheless plenty of fans ready to greet, cheer, and watch Dreamcatcher in their performance element. But as always, the content on the homefront continued for the fanbase overall. Let’s dive right in to all of how Dreamcatcher approached the end of their November with a bang!
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Dreamcatcher rolled through the rest of their Europe tour stops this week, stopping in Warsaw, London, and finally Paris to complete their circuit of the Western continent. As always, they dazzled with their performances, with a few modifications to the North American tour setlist that showcased new music from their most recent release, Apocalypse: Follow Us, as well as a few recent favorites. One of the most noticeable of these was 2021’s “Wind Blows”, whose aggressive choreography makes it, even for Dreamcatcher, a pretty intense song to put into a setlist. Nevertheless, fans definitely wanted to see it live and Dreamcatcher accommodated, crossing off another song from the list that they had yet to perform live in front of fans outside of South Korea.
One of the obvious signs of just how much Dreamcatcher had grown since their 2019 tour was the audience and ticket sales. I have a comparison thread on Twitter that shows off all the stops from then and now, and the differences are quite staggering (London, pictured above, was last played by Dreamcatcher to a crowd of 1,000 and their return in 2022 saw that number balloon by as much as 4 times that amount). While the increase in the fandom is more steady than it is meteoric (as is the case with many other, more traditional K-Pop acts), the fact that the group has achieved so many milestones in only three short years since their last tour, despite their unorthodox, yet unique concept and music, is still impressive.
It also feels like (as some fans have communicated) an “organic” kind of growth, as in there are few outside factors, such as a big or well-known company’s reputation, pre-built fanbase from member participation in a survival show, or other such things that help growth and sales along. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about the groups or companies that have those things — it’s just that Dreamcatcher, for all their humble beginnings, have carved an appreciable space in the industry mostly on their own, and that too should be recognized.
[embed]https://twitter.com/veryuselessdino/status/1596102493817012224[/embed]
Of course, with more fans comes more cool live moments from tours, and that delivered in spades for Europe. Paris, Dreamcatcher’s last stop, was by far their largest arena (a capacity of 7,000 that was likely sold at close to 4,000–5,000 or so). Between that and the fact that the tour featured, for the first time, remote lightstick control, it made songs like 2019’s “Silent Night” as much a visual as an aural experience, as flashing lightsticks accompany the group and audience’s hype jumping around for the song’s fast-paced instrumental conclusion. Given the fact that the Paris venue sold out, moments like these served as a wonderful cap-off to yet another successful, incident-free tour for Dreamcatcher.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVP0OpzDIkw[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp9PCSDqil8[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaTNvlrd5-Q[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL9zcVuUtdk[/embed]
Back on the home front, the content drip continued for Dreamcatcher’s past achievements. Two more vlogs dropped from both Siyeon (who I’m seeing brings a quirky, interesting style to her content that fits her personality) and SuA (who dropped a whopping 32 minute vlog anchored by a recording of her and Handong relaxing in their hotel room), continuing the deluge of NA tour content that we’ve come to expect from the group, while “VISION” promotions got another Dreamcatcher’s Note and Idol Champ celebrated Dreamcatcher winning a poll to get their own themed cafe complete with drinks and pictures. With the constant stream of content that we keep seeing, it’s probably as good a time as any to get into the group a bit more, as you get a really good look at what they’re like offstage.
[embed]https://twitter.com/DeuKaeVoting/status/1595803232001003604[/embed]
As for the group’s present and future, we found that Dreamcatcher ended up 15th out of 20th in the 2022 MAMA vote for Worldwide Fan’s Choice Top 10 (final ranking to be determined from Spotify and YouTube streams added to this). While some fans might seem disappointed with this result (especially in the wake of a mini-scandal where some misguided fans allegedly utilized an automated method to artificially boost voting rank in the pre-vote), I do think that this is nevertheless another milestone on Dreamcatcher’s set of them this year. The group and its fandom not only got nominated for their first MAMA award since its debut year but also held their own in voting by maintaining rank among some pretty hefty competition and much larger fanbases. While I think MNet would do well to perhaps separate the Top 10 by boy groups and girl groups in this category, participation in this was a learning experience for Dreamcatcher’s fandom in terms of their relative voting power and what they can do to better campaign for support in the future. Regardless of the final rank, that Dreamcatcher is here, in the midst of so many more groups with a much bigger footprint, is still impressive.
[embed]https://twitter.com/hf_dreamcatcher/status/1595663467478122497[/embed]
Lastly, the holidays mean that in the K-Pop industry, Season’s Greetings (which are merchandise packages sold containing new year’s type items such as calendars and planners around a theme) have begun to pop up. Dreamcatcher finally got to begin producing these items last year and this year marks a new set of concepts for Season’s Greetings. We saw trailers for “Dream’s Sunday Club” and “Dream’s Flower Garden” last week, and pre-orders are now open at selected vendors, some of which will include pre-order bonus photocards and a chance at winning a video call with Dreamcatcher members. Thematically, this year’s Season’s Greetings aren’t quite my jam, but many other fans will certainly take advantage to see the group in concepts that normally aren’t within their core album-based storylines. Either way, this is yet another revenue stream for the group that, combined with what the company and members will likely see from the Europe tour, should keep things financially secure for a while to come. Feel free to purchase to support if you want or are able to!
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Dreamcatcher is back in South Korea after their foray into Europe, and with a concert and some fansigns (so far) ahead of them, the hope is that they’ll get just a bit of rest before heading into December to finish off the year. As always, I’ll be reporting on all the Dreamcatcher-related goings-on, so be sure to clap, subscribe, and signal boost if you like what you’re reading. See you next week!
