P1Harmony Does it Like This

On Monday, Sept. 29, George Mason University’s Eaglebank Arena came alive with the sharp beats, impressive harmonies, and thrumming bass of K-pop. P1Harmony hit Fairfax for the second stop of their fourth North American tour, P1ustage H : MOST WANTED, and they brought the heat to the GMU campus. 

“Be prepared to not sit down; it’s a crazy show,” P1Harmony’s leader, Keeho, recalled fans saying about the first stop of the concert. “I’ve never been to a show where I jumped this much.” And that energy carried to the Virginia stop.

Fans, called P1eces, jumped, danced, and sang their hearts out for the full three hours of the concert, starting with the opening performance from AMPERS&ONE, a younger group under the same label as P1Harmony, all the way through to the encore. Outside of brief moments known to K-pop fans as “ments” where the artists took breaks between songs to communicate with fans and comment on their experience, there wasn’t a single minute of downtime. 

The concert began with a VCR—which, for those who have never attended a K-pop concert, is a video introducing the concept of the show and setting up the vibe—that showcased the six members of the group using the superpowers they possess in their music video universe to avoid an asteroid collision on a spaceship. After narrowly circumventing that crisis, though, their ship was sucked into a black hole, and the whole arena went dark. Lasers and stage lights flashed as the black hole transported the group from their universe into this one, and the venue erupted with cheers when the members jumped onto the stage and launched straight into their opening song: “Black Hole.”

The sextet performed seven more of their hit songs, including title tracks “Scared” and “DUH!” before retreating backstage. Each member changed into a new outfit and took the stage one by one in solo covers of songs they love: Jiung sang “Uptown Funk” by Bruno Mars; vocalist Keeho rapped “Phresh Out the Runway” by Rihanna; Soul performed an emotional dance solo; Intak stole hearts with “Good Kisser” by Usher; Jongseob wrote original Korean verses to cover “Sticky” by Tyler, The Creator; and Theo rounded out the solos with a guitar in hand to sing “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes.

After another costume change, Jongseob and Intak came back full-force with their hip-hop duet, “WASP.” The other members joined after, also in new outfits—all-white ensembles with their names spray-painted on their backs—to continue the concert’s energy with more songs like “Work” and “BOP.” The whole arena screamed, “Pretty girls like pretty boys like me,” along with Intak’s iconic line in “Pretty Boy,” a song about defying society’s expectations of masculinity.  

The group briefly slowed the concert down to sit on the stage and croon about overthinking and anxiety in “Stupid Brain,” a b-side track in their recent all-English EP, EX. The audience swayed back and forth, shining phone cameras and waving lightsticks to the slower beat of the song. P1Harmony then quickly brought the energy back with a performance of the titular track, “EX,” followed by older songs like “Everybody Clap” and “Do It Like This.” The venue shook as the crowd jumped up and down enthusiastically for every raucous chorus of “JUMP.”

After rounding out the show with “Flashy,” the members pretended to say their final goodbyes to the audience, thanking them for their love and support. Not a single P1ece moved from their seat after the group left the stage, however—they knew the game. After a few minutes of anticipation, the screens behind the stage lit up to explain that “All P1anetary functions have ceased,” and they needed movement to provide energy for the energy core. The screens then instructed audience members to dance along to well-known P1Harmony choreographies, offering several lucky P1eces the opportunity to appear on the screen.

Once the energy core was sufficiently charged with energy from fans, a countdown appeared. Fans excitedly screamed “3! 2! 1!” with the screen, cuing in the encore. The concert finished with a five-song encore that started with another new English song “Dancing Queen,” followed by charged tracks “SAD SONG,” “Killin’ It,” and “AYAYA.” The group ended the show, fittingly, with their song “Last Call,” gazing around at the shining lights and smiling faces in the crowd before bidding their final goodbye to fans.

“The energy of the concert was through the roof,” said Angelica Bailey, a P1ece of four years. “It was genuinely the hypest concert I’ve been to this year. It was everything I could have hoped for and more.”