Riize makes history as first K-pop group to perform at ACL Fest

K-pop, one of the world’s most popular genres, finally had some representation at the Austin City Limits Music Festival on Saturday. Seoul’s Riize debuted at the Beatbox stage, becoming the first K-pop group to play the festival.

It took the boys a few tracks to get to the dancing — the first couple of songs played out like when a whole bachelor party gets onstage at Ego’s and karaokes “Where Is the Love?”

In other words, visually chaotic and charmless. Complete with lots of apparent lip-syncing.

But then Shotaro, Eunseok, Sungchan, Wonbin, Sohee, and, of course, this reporter’s favorite, Anton, got in motion. They danced with machine-like violence, perfectly in unison like pistons pumping in a V6 — like the “Bye Bye Bye” video, but for more continuous minutes.

The K-pop faithful — about 150 passionate fans toward the front of the stage — came alive too, gleefully cheering on their idols with reckless abandon. It wasn’t really about the music at all.

On Reddit forums, K-pop fans were excited that one of their favorite genre mainstays made it to Zilker. As a user named Kuromito wrote: “This year’s lineup is honestly so fire and diverse in genre, and I admire ACL’s team for that… Being an avid ACL attendee and native Texan, I never thought a K-pop group would attend ACL.”

“Since we are the first K-pop group to perform at ACL, many of the audience may not know K-pop well or may not know us,” Sungchan told Forbes. “We hope we can move and inspire people who might not know much about the genre, and spark their interest in us as well.”

How was the music itself? Riize’s brand of K-pop R&B and English-language lyrics that seem to be written by third-graders — “I’m such a loser / She such a weirdo / And I’m loving the combo”  —  hit you in the feels, in the bad way.

But sit back and enjoy the spectacle. There is art to be considered here.

As ChocolateDisco wrote on Reddit in response to a naysayer: “No. Let people enjoy Riize.”