Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
P1Harmony has been one of my favorite male K-pop groups in this modern age. My taste actually tends to veer towards the R&B side with artists like DEAN, pH-1, and Crush among my faves, so I always felt P1Harmony’s sound offered something similar with songs like “Get Back” and “If You Call Me“.
Needless to say, when the group revealed that they would be coming to Texas for their P1ustage H : UTOP1A tour, I was pretty excited! I actually intended to see them earlier during the week at their show in Sugar Land, but I was still in New York City during that day after attending the 2024 Head in the Clouds NYC festival over the previous weekend. Thankfully, when it comes to Texas, K-pop groups are pretty much (almost always) guaranteed to hit the Fort Worth/Dallas area.
This show took place at the Music Hall at Fair Park, and it was actually an indoor venue rather than an outside one. However, I wasn’t prepared for the intense cheering of fangirls. While I had anticipated some level of it, the fact that it was in an indoor venue really amplified both the cheering and music, and my ears actually hurt quite a bit. I even got a notification on my Apple Watch saying that sound levels just hit 95 decibels.
Needless to say, the excitement was palpable, and P1Harmony opened with “Street Star“, “Emergency“, “Everybody Clap“, and “Heartbreak Drum“.
Keeho, being Korean-Canadian, did most of the audience engagement. Of course, this made sense given English was his native language. He also took a moment to address Jiung’s absence due to his thigh injury during an earlier stop of the tour, which was a touching moment for both them and the group. The group wished him a speedy and healthy recovery, and mentioned they would be continuing touring as a quintet for the time being.
Afterwards, they performed “I Am You” and “Butterfly“, slowing things down a bit, before going into “Killin’ It“, and “Back Down“.
From there, each of the five members went straight into their solo performances, with Theo covering Stephen Sanchez’s “Until I Found You“, Intak covering Victoria Monet’s “On My Mama“, and Jongseob covering ASAP Rocky’s “Praise The Lord“. Meanwhile, Soul took an unconventional route and danced to an instrumental, and then Keeho finished with a cover of SZA’s “Kill Bill“.
I thought the pacing of the setlist was odd because all five of them performed their solos right after another. It would’ve been much better if the Soul and Keeho did theirs later during the setlist in order to break up some of the tedium, as the group would go on to perform like 14 more songs with hardly any stops. This is also where Jiung’s absence felt the most notable too.
Here’s a list of the remaining songs on setlist: “Pyramid“, “Black Hole“, “Look At Me Now“, “Fall In Love Again“, “BFF (Best Friends Forever)“, “Doom Du Doom“, “JUMP“, “Follow Me“, “Countdown To Love“, “I See U“, “Late Night Calls“, “2Nite“, “Do It Like This“, and “AYAYA“.
======
As someone who really enjoyed the Killin’ It album, I was glad they performed all the tracks on there. I had a great time at the P1Harmony show, and my only real complaint was the mentioned timing of the solos. I’m also sure that once Jiung comes back, the remaining shows on the tour will feel much more complete. Get well soon, Jiung!
Oh, and I’ve also bought some earplugs for future indoor concerts … I won’t be caught unprepared again.
