Source: Weverse
I Know I Love You
This may be the best opening line to any concert, at least to the thousands of MOAs at Microsoft Theater. Seeing the five members of Tomorrow X Together (TXT) in person is already overwhelming, let alone hearing the live version of 0x1=LOVESONG as soon as the concert begins.
It goes against conventional wisdom to reach the climax right when a concert is starting, but what choice does TXT have when their discography includes 0x1=LOVESONG (pronounced zero-by-one lovesong). Critics call it the best K-Pop song of 2021. K-Pop fans love it whether they are MOAs (Moment of Alwaysness, the official name for TXT fans) or not. TXT themselves love the song, so strong that member Beomgyu was heartbroken when he first heard it.
0x1 is a whirlwind. The song expresses a kind of love so desperate, yet so sincere. It’s a rock love anthem without the common guitar-bass-drum set-up (later TXT performed the song at Lollapalooza with a live band). Even though TXT is known for their synchronized and detailed choreography, in 0x1 the members focused more on the raw emotions than specific movements to portray someone “sad, and miserable, and have lost everything and want to be saved.” On a scale from one to ten, TXT’s performance dialed the intensity to a twelve. MOAs nudged things to fourteen.
I’m full of problems, love sick
No way to go
I was fine to die
I'm a loser in this game
The lights switched on. The members greeted the audience. I heard cheers louder than FC Barcelona matches I’ve been to. My neighbor Samantha, a mother who went with her daughter, told me, “Wow, they are AMAZING!”
“I KNOW!!”
Tomorrow X Together looked poised and full of energy, despite finishing another show less than twenty-four hours ago. Their first costume consists of a pink uniform bedazzled with baroque lacing and cherry-red hearts. They took us on a three-hour magical journey.
And magical, it was.
Source: Twitter
Weeks have passed since the concert, but I can still remember the tingles, chills, and adrenaline from that night. This is my attempt to capture the experience in sequence of the twenty-six-song set list (think about the physical energy required to perform them back to back!). Right after I finished writing, I knew I had to start over. This one night was three years in the making for Tomorrow x Together and MOAs. Their story, along with their music and fans, need to be told with more than a few paragraphs of a typical concert review in the corner of the local newspaper.
Now I can't stop thinking bout you
When I'm sinking alone
Where art thou?
International MOAs had few chances to meet TXT in person due to a global pandemic. In early 2020, when mass lockdown became the norm, TXT was about to release The Dream Chapter: Eternity, the last installment in their Dream Chapter trilogy.
With a global tour postponed indefinitely, the 2022 Act:Lovesick concerts presented a conundrum to the artists and the fans. TXT is a three-year-old group, but this is their first world tour seeing their fans. Normally that would happen in a group’s second year, not its fourth. The sudden transition from performing in front of people to empty seats shifted their perspectives suddenly and dramatically. You can tell the boys were not taking things for granted. Their eyes were sparkly the entire evening. Their smiles were beyond genuine.
Tomorrow x Together and MOAs under one roof. What would’ve been an obvious statement is now enough to make fans burst into tears.
The magic resumes.
Wishlist is a playful song about buying a gift for someone You like, in contrast to the desperate love You experience in 0x1. Trying to figure out Your crush’s secret is no easy task, but it’s all worth it. The segue to Blue Orangeade explains why.
Despite being complete opposites, You and the special one are complementary like orange soda with the color blue. Such contradiction makes little sense on paper, yet it makes perfect sense in real life.
Seeing the members perform their debut song for the first time since 2019 is a surreal experience. None of them were twenty at the time and now all are in their twenties. Before you realize, three years have passed.
Magic extends the sense of love in the atmosphere. The English track explodes in optimism. The group choreography was clean, synchronized, and addictive. Getting the crowd to chant “Everybody clap your hands, if you’ve got a broken heart just take a chance” was cathartic, egging You to be brave once again.
But the catharsis didn’t last long. There lies a key to understand TXT’s magic: it’s not always the bubbly energy.
Ghosting is one of those songs that brings out a thousand stories with a thousand people. It is brilliantly produced. The musicality is comforting. Except this feeling is incomplete, if not a lie outright.
During the pandemic, Tomorrow X Together continued working - for the fans, but even more so for themselves as to not lose their motivation and themselves. Performing in front of cameras instead of your fans was devastating to a new group, especially one that had high expectations from fans and even more so from skeptics.
Ghosting is a product of that soul-searching process, most clearly seen in Beomgyu. The EP Minisode1: Blue Hour is a continuation of the earlier Eternity, dealing with the depth of human relationship and one’s understanding of self and the world. It is equally a turning point for TXT’s theme, growing beyond the common concerns of adolescence in to realms of the essence of human emotions.
Amidst this global social experiment on loneliness, melancholy, sadness, confusion, and all feelings of hurt and lost, TXT’s music tells fans that “we understand what you are going through because we go through that too”. Ghosting implicit discusses how relationships fade away, the role digital technology plays in making people feel more connected yet lonelier and more anxious (notably with the text bubble feature and the fear of missing out), and how an entire generation has lost their precious youth through no fault of their own. Taehyun and Soobin poetically captured the “disoriented emotional state of a boy who has been detached and cut off from the world” with their lyrics.
I blankly look at your newly posted
Hashtag ‘Today_TheSkyIs_SoPretty’
I can’t believe it, all in my world already
You’ve logout, I realize
The listeners could feel it too. Comments under the YouTube video (and many Twitter threads on its lyricism) is an archive of our psychohistory:
Honestly, this song feels like riding a bike through a meadow after a heartbreak, the sun just started to peek outside of the clouds, making the sky bright but still grey. your fingers flowing through the flowers and the wind blowing your hair around. - youmakemydawn
Ghosting gives the "it's okay to cry, let it all out" vibe. - stan txt
In this case Ghosting expresses a sense of hurt that ring hollow and gradual, but cuts deeper than anything else precisely due to the gradual process. The significance is deeper than nostalgia. Sure, the nu-gaze style reminds listeners of 80s indie music. Yet the bigger meaning is that 2020, a time of dramatic changes, is now over with MOAs and TXT under one roof enjoying a song about being ghosted by people you care about (and assume care about you) and feeling empty. The sense of hope from the song “I’m still here though [waiting for you]” is much stronger now the members are singing in front of MOAs and taking selfie videos with the crowd.
In a similar sense, even though the attendants wore masks (yay!), the mere fact of thousands of fans gathering together reminded everyone subconsciously that perhaps we are finally over the pandemic. If not medically, definitely mentally.
And at the end of the song, the members suddenly disappeared from the stage, leaving falling feathers on the stage, ending the first chapter of the concert on love, unanswered.
All of a sudden you disappeared, dis-disappeared
Like a faint ghost, dis-disappeared
In this room where only echo remains
I’m wandering around alone all this time
I’m like a ghost