by For the first time as a Korean female singer, IU stood on the stage of the Olympic Main Stadium at Jamsil Sports Complex. IU’s solo concert ‘The Golden Hour: Under the Orange Sun,’ held for two days on the 17th and 18th, sold out all 88,000 seats within an hour of the ticket sale. As a result, IU has become the protagonist of a history that no female artist has written in the history of Korean popular music for more than half a century.
The entrance to the Olympic Main Stadium, Jamsil Sports Complex, known as a ‘sacred site for domestic popular music venues,’ is symbolic. Aside from the high rental fees and stage installation costs, an artist with a decent fandom can’t fill all the seats in a concert hall that can accommodate about 100,000 people.
Therefore, those who have performed here so far are only the best top singers of the time, such as HOT, Shinhwa, god, Cho Yong-Pil, TVXQ, Lee Seung-hwan, Lee Seung-Cheol, JYJ, Lee Moon-se, Seo Tai-ji, EXO, BTS, Psy, and NCT Dream. Among foreign pop stars, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Coldplay, and others performed. Among female artists, Lady Gaga performed in 2012, and IU is the first female artist in Korea. With this performance, IU is expected to mobilize the most significant number of audiences for female singers in Korea, and the ticket revenue alone is expected to reach about 8 billion won.
Aside from being the first female artist in Korea, IU’s entry into the Jamsil Stadium was unique in many ways. This day was also the 14th anniversary of his debut and the 10th anniversary of her first concert. IU started at Kyunghee University Peace Hall in 2012 and met fans once more at the same place the following year, 2014 Sogang University Mary Hall, 2015 Olympic Park Olympic Hall, and Jamsil Student Gymnasium, 2016 Olympic Park SK Handball Stadium, 2017 Jamsil Indoor The gym has increased in size every year, including the 2018 and 2019 Casepo Dome, and finally entered Jamsil Main Stadium for the first time in 10 years.
Some say that IU is a ‘Korean singer.’ This is because more than half of his music is consumed in Korea. However, this means that the other half is consumed abroad, and it is by no means easy for a solo female singer, especially a singer whose primary genre is a ballad, to achieve such a result in the idol-oriented overseas K-pop market, where the female fandom has a strong influence.
IU’s power comes from here. At the concert hall that day, domestic fandoms of various ages ranging from teens to 60s and many overseas fans were present. They performed ‘Team Sing’ in almost all of IU’s songs, and they enjoyed a special anniversary together while accustomed to giving official cheers. Although she is a female solo singer who mainly focuses on ballads, she has secured a considerable overseas fandom. And this is also the point that shows the possibility of expansion of K-Pop.
There were no gaps in the stage decorated with a small body. IU’s ‘Eight’ ‘Celebrity’ ‘End of Day’ ‘Meaning of You’ ‘See you on Friday’ ‘Palette’ ‘Strawberry Moon’ ‘Hold My Hand’ ‘Blooming’ ‘Story of Last Night’ ‘Good Day’ ‘Knee” While composing a set list of IU’s representative songs such as ‘Night Letter’ and ‘Love Poem,’ they presented stages that seemed to show their contemplation for the concept. For example, a pink moon-shaped hot air balloon was launched in line with the lyrics to the song ‘The Moon Is Rising’ in ‘Strawberry Moon,’ and when ‘Palette’ was sung, lights were painted on the seats one by one like a brush painting a picture. In addition, after the stage of ‘Night Letter’ with the lyrics ‘I will float the fireflies of that night / near your window,’ a vast drone show lit up the sky like fireflies.
At the end of the performance, IU said, “The laughter and words I made today were all sincere. The words I love you and thank you are too small to contain my heart. I could even feel that the people at the end of the day loved me. ‘This is possible,’ she said in awe. She spent three hours. She never even dreamed of this big stage in the first place. She promised she would go on for another 14 years as she realized what it was like to support her with a humble heart and not bubbly.”
