Have you attended the concert of a singer popular with the tween-to-young-adult demographic this summer? Perhaps you, like me, enjoy the alternative girl-boss stylings of one Olivia Rodrigo; maybe you are parent to a burgeoning Swiftie who lucked out on tour tickets this summer; or, perchance, the latest Billie Eilish album finally hooked you. Well, if you couldn’t actually hear Miss Rodrigo, Swift, or Eilish at the concert, you may be entitled to financial compensation. Kidding (kind of).
Over the years, particularly in our odd postpandemic era of rewritten social contracts for public behavior, concerts have increasingly become arenas for audiences to scream-sing (or just plain scream) along with their favorite stars, rather than actually listen to the music they paid to hear. Though this issue isn’t a fresh revelation—people have been screaming over singers at live shows since Elvis first swung those hips, and I myself went wild during one too many songs at the high-decibel Jonas Brothers concerts of my youth—there used to be well-placed moments for yelling along, before concerts gradually devolved into incessant squawkfests. I’ll never forget the moment that radicalized me: At an intimate Tori Kelly concert I attended in high school, an unknowing audience cheered over her famed run during her viral cover of Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing).” The gall! This past summer, I have it on good authority—both from going to shows myself and from hearing the testimonies of those who have attended the tours of popular Gen Z artists—that things have only gotten worse, particularly at arena or stadium concerts, where novice ticket holders might be less self-conscious about their behavior.
Honestly? It’s understandable. It’s a new level of exciting to be young and to realize you’re sharing air with your favorite singers. That excitement has to be let out; that energy has to go somewhere! But eventually we figure out how to appropriately measure these bursts out, to be respectful of everyone around us and the artist onstage—a live-and-learn kind of scenario. The problem is that for many concertgoers these days, their first live music experiences occurred after we were all stuck inside for an extended period of time, a period during which we collectively lost all sense of decorum across the board. It’s not their fault that they didn’t get the unspoken contract we used to figuratively sign after losing our voice too many times in the postshow comedown.
So, how best to impart this lesson, to teach the youth that you scream when the artist asks you to, sing along when they ask you to, and, outside of that, maybe stick to just scream-singing the best parts to one of your favorite songs? I propose we look to one of the most formidable and disciplined fandoms around: K-pop stans.
Fans of Korean entertainment seem largely unfazed by the masses’ yearslong lack of socialization, partially because they already have a tried-and-true solution to this problem: fanchants. A fanchant is a planned vocal routine of chants for the audience to perform to accompany an artist’s popular songs. The chants are usually coordinated to accentuate specific moments of the instrumental, repeat key words in the lyrics, or even sync up with a particular moment in the choreography, and the routine is typically the full length of the song. You can think of it almost like audience vocal choreography or backup singing for the artist onstage. Many fanchants are made by the label and traditionally distributed via text guides. Here’s a comment on a K-pop subreddit explaining how the fanchant is distributed among fans when a song is first performed, generally at a televised music show in front of a studio audience of a couple hundred. Though nowadays most chants are made by the stars themselves and taught via video performance. This carries even more gravitas for the fan base, as most doting fans wouldn’t dream of going against their favorite singer’s wishes. For example, here’s the K-pop girl group NewJeans teaching the fanchant for their hit song “Super Shy.” And here, in a video recorded from an audience member at a live concert, you can hear the audience participating during the designated parts of the song.
The K-pop fanchant is so integral to the culture that there are compilations of people’s favorite fanchants from throughout the genre’s history. The most famous ones go beyond simple memorization or fun connections to the song and often require participants to nail difficult timing. Fans of the K-pop group Seventeen, who are often referred to as Carats, are known for nailing complex fanchants—like during the dance break in the song “Getting Closer”—that involve quickly rapping the names of all 13 group members. (Do not ask me why there are 13 members in a group called Seventeen.) Seventeen then upped the ante after one band member, Hoshi, made an even faster name chant for their song “Highlight.”
This isn’t a gendered practice either. Here’s a predominantly male group of Once(s)—the cheeky fan name for stans of the girl group Twice—doing the fanchant for the song “What Is Love?,” which includes some specific hand and body movements. The routines can also play into well-known fandom lore: Whether intentional or not, it’s noticeable that the boy group Stray Kids’ fanchants to their hit songs “Maniac” and “God’s Menu” leave absolute silence during Felix’s solos, making way for what fans have dubbed “the Felix effect,” a communal swooning for the member’s sultry deep voice.
Fanchants achieve two purposes: First, they give fans a role to play, bringing them into the performance. Second, they require attention, memorization, and practice, so fans not only feel involved but are kept busy and focused, often mitigating the issue of constant screaming throughout the show. In nearly every recording of a K-pop performance, whether during broadcast Korean television shows reminiscent of the live performances on TRL—here’s NewJeans performing “Super Shy” on KBS’s Music Bank, for example—or in videos taken from the stands at concerts, you can tell that fans abide by the rules of the chant. While in that crowd of people, you can actually hear the artists onstage and simultaneously express your gratitude for being able to share space with them.
Stars work hard to put on a good show and be heard; in return, we pay bucketloads of money to hear them. This is a perfect solution that honors both the artists’ work and effort as well as our time and money, and that creates a real give-and-take between audience and performer that makes live shows so special. Let’s all take a page from the book of K-pop stans, rally our troops, and get to work: Stop screeching, and start preaching the benefits of the fanchant.
