Dreamcatcher Hits Touring Road In Europe, Renewing Commitment To Their Music, Fans, And Each Other
K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall
K-Pop’s resident rock/pop girl group begins their second tour in 2022 in earnest, against the backdrop of wonderful news about their future in the industry.
By now, fans have come to expect that Dreamcatcher’s bread and butter pretty much comes from their touring and travel, and the return to the road for many musical acts this year means that the competition for venues and dates has been fiercer than normal. Nevertheless, Dreamcatcher managed to secure five dates for a trip through Europe as part of their end-of-year activities, and even though it’s been three years since they last came through on an individual concert basis, they managed to kick things off in style. As always the case with Dreamcatcher, however, that wasn’t the only news they had to share this week. Let’s take a look into all the news from the group from this past week!
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Germany and the Netherlands were the first two stops on the Dreamcatcher Apocalypse: Follow Us 2022 World Tour in Europe and both Berlin and Tilburg got to experience for the first time Dreamcatcher’s performance of their latest songs outside of South Korea. The performance setlist included all of the group’s latest album tracks, and the focus on pandemic-era song performances continued as recent hits got many of the remaining spots.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KF2C0SW1Cc[/embed]
As has been the case every time they’ve been on the touring road, Dreamcatcher was entertaining, funny, and impressive live. For many who were there, the concert seemed to go by in a flash and there were plenty of memorable moments both from a performance and a ment standpoint. With three more dates to roll through, Dreamcatcher has plenty of tour to go, but if the first two stops were any indication, we’re in to see many more great performances.
[embed]https://weverse.io/dreamcatcher/live/1-108739432[/embed]
As if that wasn’t enough, we got a quick stop-in on Weverse Live by youngest member Gahyeon, who talked a bit about why she hasn’t been vlogging after having done so much of it for prior tours (she felt the content has been getting a bit same-y and wants to wait til she has something unique to share), recent news about the group’s future (more on that in a bit), and how they’ve been doing on the road. Even though the group is no doubt busy with travel, performance, and some R&R when they can get it, it’s nice to hear from the group when they’re able to pop in, even if it’s only for twenty minutes to an hour.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m6M-Q6hcdo[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Sedem9RyI[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOISDpsQZDI[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPo-SCq92Nw[/embed]
For as exciting as Dreamcatcher’s present is, there’s still plenty of content from Dreamcatcher’s recent past that they have yet to share with us. With “VISION” promotions over, we continued to see some of the behind-the-scenes from their shortened music show trek from that era. We also saw that the North American tour content has resumed in earnest, and this past week we got SuA and Yoohyeon sharing part four of what appears to be a metric ton of content the group filmed for fans during their summer foray in the West. Last but not least, we’re still getting variety content over a month since album release, and part 4 of Dreamcatcher’s “Welcome to Idol World” experience brought with it fun games, a nice meal, and Siyeon once again displaying her strength with a clean watermelon sundering. My retrospective on “VISION” era is coming up soon, and in it I’m likely to mention all of the new appearances we have seen the group participate in, which have brought, I think, a fresh look to their variety exploits as well as an increase to their visibility.
[embed]https://twitter.com/puppy_yeo/status/1593353262023016453[/embed]
But for all the buzz about Dreamcatcher’s past work and their present, hard-working tour performances, some of the most impactful news this past week came from Dreamcatcher’s future. Standard maximum-duration contracts in K-Pop are 7 years, and with Dreamcatcher close to entering their 6th, occasional questions were raised as to what might happen when the time neared. Complicating matters was the unknown status of former MINX member contract status (for JiU, SuA, Siyeon, Yoohyeon, and Dami) and whether or not it was synced up with those who joined the group later (Handong and Gahyeon).
[embed]https://twitter.com/hf_dreamcatcher/status/1592684070148132865[/embed]
Well, at least for the foreseeable future, fans won’t have to worry, as Dreamcatcher Company announced that all seven Dreamcatcher members renewed their contracts for an unspecified amount of time, ensuring that we will likely have a few more years of Dreamcatcher music and group content to look forward to. Usually, a renewal period lasts around three years, which if this is the case with Dreamcatcher, will take the group to around 2025–2027, depending on if the renewal period begins on the date of renewal or the end of the prior contract. Either way, my mentality hasn’t changed in this regard — it’s not worth it to worry about how much time we have left with Dreamcatcher, only to enjoy the time that we have with them as far as music and them doing things as a group. With recent revelations that the group has made comments implying they’d love to be performing for a long while to come, this becomes even more important.
[embed]https://twitter.com/PhoenixRed/status/1592353249516027911[/embed]
I recently did a comparison on Twitter of how much the group has grown, slowly, but appreciably, by looking at their Berlin audience from 2019 versus now in 2022, and I think that this was really the best time for them to commit to more years, both from a company and from a group perspective. From a business perspective, it makes sense — Dreamcatcher Company, to no surprise, is invested in ensuring Dreamcatcher is happy, and is pulling pretty much all of their revenue from the group’s slow and steady success. The group themselves need a bit of time to see about shoring up the domestic following and audience through individual opportunity to create a more stable future for themselves, if they want to continue in the entertainment industry in South Korea post-contract. In many ways, Dreamcatcher Company and Dreamcatcher need each other, and they know it.
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But I also think that the group and company, in one of those rarer instances in the sometimes difficult-to-gauge behind-the-scenes environment of the K-Pop industry, have a genuinely good personal relationship with each other. While we can only tell what is outwardly shown to us, until proven otherwise it does seem everyone treats each other like family and have a healthy back-and-forth. Dreamcatcher appears to have more agency and input into what they want to do and take on, while the company has taken a unique strategy that has made their (at the time) risky investment in a non-traditional concept/music K-Pop group pay off by creating a unique niche they occupy. Dreamcatcher, to me, has a good reputation among girl groups as “the group you want to listen to when you want to hear something different in K-Pop”, and while that means the domestic following has been a bit more slow-paced to catch up to their far-superior global fanbase, it has resulted in sustainability that makes a contract renewal make complete sense.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_T1WariO5Y[/embed][embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIuodjhsrcw[/embed]
It probably also helps that the group has achieved a ton just in 2022 alone, and seems poised to continue to do so, while also trying new things. Last week’s news that the group’s second Season’s Greetings offerings is just one example, with “Sunday Club” and “Flower Garden” being two new concepts the group can use to explore showing another side of themselves. With this plus this past summer’s Love Catcher and Love Stealer concepts, the group appears to have the freedom to explore different things they or the company might want to try to freshen things up, while still reserving their core image and concept for their music.
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Obviously, fans will point to the group’s first (and second) music show wins this year as a metric for their success, but there are plenty of others to point to (the most recent being their second nomination since debut in a MAMA award category). You’ll all see this for my year-end look back, but this has really been a great year for the group achievements-wise, which makes a contract renewal all the more timely. Fans, thankfully, can breathe easier knowing the group will be around for a bit longer, and from Dreamatcher’s reaction to the loud cheers and chants that broke out when they announced their renewal news to the audience in Tilburg last week, they likely feel the same.
Dreamcatcher seems to be far from finished for the year, with the rest of their tour, at least one end-of-year-concert appearance in Korea, and a few fansigns to close things out — and that’s from what we know so far. Regardless, we’re likely to see the group stay booked and busy, and for me to end up recapping all the news as per usual, so be sure to clap, subscribe, and signal boost this content if you like what you see! I’ll see you here next week to wrap up the rest of the European tour and talk about all the latest from the group.
