The Diary of a Concert (Convert?) Mum
This epic’s backstory can be traced to 2020. If the world wasn’t wonky enough, not only did that year give us Covid-19, it gave my household KPOP. The combination of the two meant an inordinate amount of spare time and nigh on unrestricted tablet usage for my daughter to build up quite the knowledge and adoration. And bill.
We’d just missed the 2019 tour, thankfully, with the mandatory Korean miltary service that followed in 2023, I felt sure they’d retire from this game. Surely? Surely not, as hinted to by the ready-to-go solo projects released shortly before their time began.
In the between years, we (I) bought the lunch boxes, the plushies, the bigger plushies, the keyring plushies, the Christmas plushies, the band-member specific version of the album, the Japanese version of the album. The lightstick. The official books. The unofficial books. The bags. The plushies for the bags. Seriously, this machine makes Alan Sugar look amateur.
Fast forward to January 2026, album and mammoth tour announced, including London. A no brainer, if I can get tickets. Big if. To get presale access, you need a code. Fine, this is not my first rodeo, Bangtan Boys. To apply for, not get, a code, you had to fill in a membership form on the Weverse (KPOP’s DC Comics but for…KPOP). Fine, I work in the NHS, unnecessary admin is my jam. To fill in the form to apply for the membership to queue for a code, I had to shell out £15. What? Anyway, this is going to be long enough a rambling, paid the bloody membership, joined the bloody queue, got the bloody tickets, which sold out worldwide within 30 minutes.
My daughter has been playing it cool. “Quite looking forward to it” she said, as I reminded myself of how much I’d paid. But, as the weeks passed, the album was released, and we paid £30 a head to watch a recorded live concert cinema showing of the show I’d paid £450 plus £15 for a form for a queue for a code for, excitement started to build. Enough about me.
It is time. BTS, Arirang Tour, London. A mum’s eye view.
Sunday 5th July, 2026
Location: back garden/kitchen table
T minus one day. Sundays are for rest, they are for not looking at your work emails, not checking Teams, and certainly not micro-threading multi coloured bead bracelets to give away to BTS Army tomorrow. Yet, here we are, and thank christ for varifocals because these beads are tiny, and my patience is thin. As well as the burden of ticket costs and travel, the moral burden of whipping a child out of school for a gig, and the burden of wondering what the mothershit has happened to me, I now bankroll craft kits to GIVE THINGS AWAY FOR FREE.
However, on my weekend-ly morning walk around the local cemetery, yes I was listening to the tour setlist, yes I am getting a bit excited. Shut up.
Monday 6th July 2026
10.30am
Location: our driveway, South Wales
T minus 9 hours til stage. Here we go, off down the wrong way of the M4 for this time of year, should be headed to a Pembrokeshire idyll, but no, we are headed to someone’s permit parking spot in Tottenham, that we’ve paid 35 quid to borrow for the day. Just remembered ULEZ too, bastard.
11am
Location: back on our driveway, South Wales
Wasnt convinced daughter had turned straighteners off. She had. Start again.
12.55pm
Location: Reading Services
£13 in Pret on two coffees and a slab of rank cake, child got a strawberry sandwich in Marks’, minger. Didn’t see any identifiable fans, but wasn’t really looking, needed a wee and a macchiato.
2.20pm
Location: paid for parking spot
Roasting. Passed an ad board for BTS’s own Oreos.
3pm
Overpriced caff, shit veggie burger. Lime and soda = sparkling water. Livid.
4pm
The streets surrounding Spurs Stadium. Absolutely teeming with k-poppers and their designated drivers. The spirit at these shows is wonderful, the freebies made are being swapped and given away, from home made keyrings to bracelets, to stickers and more. An intellectual property enforcement team’s wet dream.
4.20pm
The Money Pit.
We enter the main merch store, it is fucking insanity in here. 200 bunce for a hoodie, the ‘member tshirt’ my beautiful little cashcow wants is sold out. Who the hell spends £60 on another lightstick because it is updated now? Me. That’s who.
4.45pm
The Streets
More freebie swapping outside as well as in a local community centre, and then, the Holy Grail. Free beers? No. Some American hero only snuck the aforementioned Oreos in her suitcase over from Washington DC! PURPLE BTS BISCUITS. THAT HAVE BEEN ROLLED UP IN SOMEONE’S JEANS! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?
Also, got interviewed by Radio Shoreditch. Basically famous.
4.50pm
The Queue
The last time I snuck prohibited items into a show, it was Creamfields 2001 and it was not water bottle tops and they were not snuck in my bra. Needs must. 450 quid for tickets and you want me to risk spilling my water? Absolutely not, pal.
5.45pm
Seats.
Via More Merch to get the London Exclusive tshirt that set me back £86, we are sat, but sat so high that we are looking down on the massive monitors. Only two hours to wait, because KPOP overlords and support acts are not bedfellows, that’d stick quite the dent in the anticipated $25 million each of the seven band members are going to make just from this tour. It’d be spaghetti hoops all round if we paid for support, wouldnt it. The staging is clever – centre stage with four catwalks heading towards each corner, and 12 mega-screens angled so everyone, everywhere, sees everything. Bravo.
6.50pm
Bar queue, I need a pint.
6.52pm
“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats, the show will begin shortly”. Bastard.
6.53pm.
Back in seat. No show. Sent the husband back to Bar Queue. Got pint.
7.20pm – 9.30pm
Showtime! How do I know? The SCREAMING IS REAL. And a ninja is on stage with a flamethrower.
I need to balance concert content here with the realisation that none of you bougie Geese fans give two tosses about KPOP, not even these kings. We are where we are.
The tour setlist is like for like, we know what’s coming, a heady mix of their new album, Arirang, which I’m almost certain is Korean for ‘banger’, and older hits. The first of three sections kicks off with Hooligan, Aliens and into old favourite (I’m told), Run BTS, each member flexing between a mass of dancers, and most of them rocking statement jewellery I’d happily wear. Frankly, I think I recognise that chunky chrome multi-strand chain, albeit mine is more Etsy and less Dior.
‘Like Animals’ is my first highlight, I genuinely think this is shaping up to be my song of the year. After a few slow jamz, including comeback single ‘Swim’, they jeff off under some voile panels wafted about by the dance troupe. They go, the screaming does not.
About 7 mins later, after talcing themselves out of that pleather, they’re back and THV (My stan? Who I stan? My bias? Whatever) is giving bottom-half Lisa Winter Workwear, with his crop wide leg trousers and chunky boots. We are meant to be. The filling in this setlist sarnie starts with 2.0, into ‘Normal’, another album favourite, largely owing to the lyrics “kerosene, dopamine, chemical induced”, which I am fond of switching to “plasticine, ketamine, chemicals for you”. It feels a bit cruel playing FYA/Fire back to back in 30 degree heat, with piss-taking amounts stadium-wide pyro unsuitable for perimenopause. This section closes with older hit ‘Idol’, for which they circle the stadium between the standing areas and the seats, followed by the full suite of dancers. Credit to them, somehow they manage to make people in a huge stadium feel close enough to them for it to matter to those for whom it matters.
Third section starts and on they come and, as is customary, each wearing some of their own tour merch. Which I assume they paid for like I did. As ‘Come Over’ starts, tens of thousands of people raise up blue banners that were crowd-funded by fans to welcome them back to the UK, with any remaining funds being donated to two charities. Sidenote: KPOP fans do cut a bit different, you know, whilst absolutely fucking maniacal about bands and members, it does feel a bit like a community, and not the Suede-fan type, the good ones. The band see this banner action, read them out and are clearly very visibly touched.
Here we go, we are into ‘Butter’ and ‘Dynamite’, two very sickly sweet pop anthems that catapulted their fame much, much further in the early 2020s. This was my daughter’s gateway, these songs are their ‘Laid’ by James, if not ‘Sit Down’. You can tell they are churning these out because they have to.
DJ time. Each tour date includes two “surprise songs”, differing per show. London Day One gets ‘Life Goes On’, a single released shortly before they paused for military service, and ‘Dionysus’, which opened their last London show in 2019 – highlight two.
We are on the last leg, the band take time to each say some words and interact with the crowd, helped by an interpreter. Seven of them, each having a good few minutes, still chat less than Brian Fallon at a Gaslight show.
A chilled end with ‘Please’ and ‘Into the Sun’, which closes with a spectacular firework display over Spurs Stadium, and we are done.
I semi-joked recently about Stockholm Syndrome and being force-fed KPOP for six years, which is true. But it’s also true that this has grown on me, I think mostly down to seeing my 14 year old daughter absolutely glow, not just at these shows, but in the lead up thereto. The bracelets, the making signs, the choosing the outfits. The shows I have taken her to have included that sense of community, of everyone being welcome; there is a hugely diverse “Army” of BTS fans around the world and it seems everyone matters. And that’s big for teenagers and young adults to sometimes find it hard to find their identity, their people. Well, that “Army” now includes, at least on part time basis, a 46 year old sarcastic public servant from South Wales. Deal with it.
Lines I spoke:
(To husband): “Sorry love, I’d leave you for Taehyung”.
(To anyone): “They’re wearing Stone Island clobber! In a football stadium! Hoolies!”
(To no one): “Last thing a heatwave needs is pyro for fucks sake”.
Tues 7th July 2026
12.10am
Membury Services
Hazelnut Twix and an espresso
12.20am
M4 westbound
Asleep off the back of an espresso.
1am.
Home. Goodnight. Missed me, havent you?
Words by Lisa Whiteman-Pearce
Picky Bastards 