On October 2, BIGBANG kicked off their North American tour with a thrilling show at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. Under the auspices of mega tour organizer, Live Nation, the five-member boy band is tackling one of most ambitious K-pop to reach the United States.

BIGBANG performed before a sold-out Vegas crowd, who gathered to powerhouse Korean pop group deliver their first American shows since the Alive Galaxy Tour in 2012. 

G-Dragon, Taeyang, Seungri, T.O.P and Daesung dominated the stage at Mandalay Bay, exuding their polished aura that was cultivated through nine years of live performance. 

Audiences were treated to explosive stages that incorporated high-powered choreography, pyrotechnics, and other special effects, making their stadium performances the largest scale of any K-pop tour to visit America.

While many acts deliver a set of 20 songs, their set-list incorporates up to 25 of their greatest hits and fan favorites from their latest album, “MADE.” 

According to a report published by YG Life, the group sold out their shows in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Anaheim. 

“Even after BIGBANG’s concert at the Mandalay Bay Event Center started fans that didn’t have the tickets refused to go home and stayed around,” said the writer for YG Life. “This demonstrates BIGBANG’s enormous popularity.” 

BIGBANG was greeted by a large crowd, when they arrived at LAX, for their October 3 show at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Their Los Angeles stop was a star-studded event, which was attended by some of the biggest names in American pop.

“Celebrities such as Black Eyed Peas and those in the show business came to see BIGBANG’s concert at the Staples Center,” said the report published by YG Life. 

Their west coast concerts were attended by more than 30,000 fans. 

BIGBANG will travel from the western states to deliver a two-night performance for the New York metropolitan area, at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ. 

The Prudential Center performances will take place on October 10 and 11, before fans and members of esteemed American mainstream media outlets like the New York Times. 

“Partly that’s because onstage, BIGBANG is more theatrical than moody, and partly because several of the group’s recent singles – songs like ‘We Like 2 Party’ and ‘Loser’ – are notably more mellow than its hyperkinetic early work,” said New York Times music writer, Jon Caramanica, in response to the juxtaposition between their videos and on-stage presence. 

BIGBANG travels from Newark to perform before Canadian audiences in Toronto, on October 13.

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Adrienne Stanley is a contributing editor at KDramaStars. She is also a contributing music writer at KpopStarz, MTV Iggy and other publications. When she is not listening to “We Like 2 Party,” she can be found on Twitter. (@retrogirladdy). 

Source: KPopStarz 

  
Remember the woman Seungri apparently had a ‘scandal’ with?

It turns out that she’s a translator! She had an interview with a Taiwanese outlet and said, “I translated 3-4 years ago [for Seungri]. I’m not in charge of translating for Seungri now, but I was requested to translate for BIGBANG’s recent Taiwanese concert and to take care of personal schedules. That’s why those kind of pictures were taken. I’m not a prostitute.”

She added, “I hope people don’t think of me as a prostitute or someone with big breasts. I don’t have any kind of relationship with Seungri like was reported or the way fans think. I don’t want to become famous, so I never even thought about things like that. For the past 4-5 years, I’ve been translating for Korean celebrities and I often had coffee or ate with them. That’s why I didn’t know that those pictures would be so problematic.”

Source: AllKPop

  
In the elaborate, stylish video trailer for BigBang’s new tour, this K-pop megastar boy band appears in its own highly stylized Tarantino flick, full of screeching cars, curvaceous women dancing in dimly lit spaces and threats of imminent violence. It’s safe to say that won’t be replicated onstage when the tour comes to the Prudential Center in Newark on Oct. 10 and 11. Partly that’s because onstage, BigBang is more theatrical than moody, and partly because several of the group’s recent singles — songs like “We Like 2 Party” and “Loser” — are notably more mellow than its hyperkinetic early work.

Those new songs mark the end of a three-year hiatus for BigBang and are part of the roll-up to its forthcoming album, “Made” (YG). This tour takes its name from that album and may also be the last time the full BigBang five perform as a unit before, one by one, they enlist for mandatory South Korean military service. (8 p.m., prucenter.com)

Source: NY Times