I was conflicted about taking my 11-year-old daughter to the sold-out KATSEYE show at TD Garden Wednesday night.
I’m not a huge fan of the girl group’s music, for starters, and their hyper-choreographed dancing, while impressive, likely limits how much they actually sing during performances. And don’t even get me started on their tassels and high heels and barely-there outfits.
Tickets were also outrageously expensive. Even nosebleed seats were going for hundreds of dollars on the resale market.
But the sole reason to take Faith, my only child, who had never been to a concert, was huge: It would make her so, so happy.
With a little help from my younger brother, who’s in the ticket business and knows how to sniff out good deals, her father and I broke down and bought two fairly decent seats — for $412 each. I know. This is by far the most I’ve ever paid to go to a show, and I hate that so many fans can’t afford to attend big concerts anymore. Instantly sold-out shows and the voracious ticket-resale market have turned popular acts into entertainment for the elite.
In an attempt at cultivating a small degree of fiscal responsibility, we asked Faith to contribute $100 for her ticket. Sure, it’s allowance money that we’d given her in the first place, but draining most of her savings sends a message: We’re only willing to spend money frivolously if she is. Parenting!
Faith is a girl who loves her pop culture heroines obsessively — first Elsa from “Frozen,” then Taylor Swift — and when we surprised her with the tickets last week, she was so excited she nearly cried.
Before we went, Faith helped bring me up to speed on the group. KATSEYE is the product of a partnership between an American record label and a Korean entertainment company that conducted a worldwide search for talent. Instructors used “K-pop methodology” to train 20 finalists for months, then winnowed the group down to six on a months-long survival-style show in 2023. The winners hail from South Korea, Switzerland, and the Philippines, along with three Americans who have roots in India, Latin America, and Asia.
This is their first arena tour, and two members are already on hiatus. The pressure of becoming a global pop star must be enormous, and leader Sophia Laforteza was up front about the need to take a break to focus on her mental health. I appreciate that the group is normalizing the need for self-care, but the fact that “K-pop methodology” apparently involves learning how to dance in heels and strutting around in lingerie does not bode well for me accepting Faith’s dreams of joining their ranks.
Is this really as far as we’ve come?
But I must admit, the show was a blast.
The four members performing at the Garden Wednesday night – Yoonchae Jeung, Lara Raj, Megan Skiendiel, and Daniela Avanzini – are truly talented, and the communal joy of thousands of people singing and dancing in unison is magical, especially when so many of them have special $69 light sticks programmed to change colors and flash in unison. Lara even wrote one of their songs, the empowering breakup ballad, “Unloveu.”
The Katseye crew gave it their all, walking through the crowd to greet fans and dancing so enthusiastically that two of them ended up in flat-heeled boots by the end of the night, one with both knees wrapped.
And unlike a friend of mine whose mother took her to an *NSYNC concert back in the day and graded papers the whole time, I was cheering and singing along.
A mom I met in the merch line told me she was sold on the group after watching the documentary “KATSEYE: Wild Hearts,” which she said revealed them as caring, genuine people, even if they dance ”practically naked.”
Yes, the overtly sexual nature of their shimmying moves and glittery bodices and booty shorts are hard to square with the fresh-faced tween girls who adore them. And the pre-recorded backing vocals and lack of a band made it more of a pop culture event than a live music show.
But this is the world we live in. And staying up way too late on a school night with my daughter, who told me it was the best day of her life, made it all worthwhile.
My favorite moment might have been right before the show started, when Faith leaned over and asked: “Can I sing the swear words?”
On the best day of your life, singing along with your favorite group, with your mom by your side? Hell yes, you can.
Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her @ktkjohnston.