TWS’s second tour, “24/7:FOR:YOU,” quite literally opened with a gift box on the stage opening and the six members of the group walking out. The group’s first tour, “24/7:WITH:US,” adopted TWS’s slogan for its title to emphasize their teamwork. This time, they turned that slogan into a gift for 42. From the box opening and right through to the encore, the audience follows along with each show like they’re unwrapping presents one by one. Along the way, they get an organic look at how the TWS boys—now young men—approach love. Below, we’ve put together a tour report with a behind-the-scenes look at the planning and production that go into a show like “24/7:FOR:YOU,” along with messages from the group to 42.

TOUR DATES
“24/7:FOR:YOU” runs for 15 shows in eight Asian cities, starting in Seoul and continuing on to Fukuoka, Hyogo, Kanagawa, Macau, Bangkok, Singapore and Kaohsiung. It’s TWS’s first time playing KSPO Dome, and their first time holding concerts in Bangkok and Singapore. KSPO Dome in particular holds a special place in their hearts. “I’ll never forget how amazing it was with 42 staring at us, and me and the rest of the group onstage staring back at them,” JIHOON said, reflecting on the Seoul show. “And getting to make our KSPO Dome dream come to fruition with the guys makes me even happier.” It was a similar case for SHINYU. “Getting to step onto the KSPO Dome stage like I dreamed of makes for amazing memories,” he said. “Now it’s made me dream of being there with 42 in even bigger venues down the line.” The tour will come to a close at the Kaohsiung Arena on October 24.

SETLIST
The setlist for “24/7:FOR:YOU” is made up of five “GIFT” sections and a double encore, the “SPECIAL GIFT.” According to Seonyeon Park of HYBE 360 Concert Production Studio 2, who directed the show, the main idea was to let fans feel like they’re opening one present after another, all the while wondering what’s inside the next one. The opening song, contained in the first gift box, was chosen after a lot of deliberation over “what emotions we want fans to get from the performance,” Park said, after which they landed on “hey! hey!” The idea to follow that up with “Countdown!” and “OVERDRIVE” and keep that swell of emotion going came directly from TWS. “We thought about the stage direction together so the show would feel like a gift,” DOHOON explained, “and we really talked through the setlist together too.” Director Haesu Lee of the PLEDIS Performance Directing Team, who oversaw the choreography, expanded on the approach with “hey! hey!” “I personally think the opening is the heart of the show,” he said, “so I put the dance break early on to make sure the song didn’t just pass by for the audience, but really conveyed the impact in that moment.” In Lee’s words, he made the final dance break go from duet dancing to solos to full group choreography to convey “the stirring, fiery youth of TWS, a unified group that relies on one another as they work toward a shared goal.”

After SHINYU closes out “Lucky to be loved,” the last song of “GIFT 1,” a prerecorded video starts with him opening his eyes. It ends on a close-up of DOHOON’s eyes, then cuts to DOHOON opening his eyes onstage as “Fire Escape” kicks off “GIFT 2.” The technique, Park says, was meant to make the video feel like part of the song that follows it. “We wanted the audience to be watching the show flowing smoothly, and then go, ‘Oh, it’s another song,’” she explained—song, video, song, all flowing into one another. Making its live debut on this tour, “Fire Escape” opens the section with mixed emotions, pairing moving vocals with a beat that gradually picks up the pace. “overthinking,” “All the Possibilities” and “Last Festival” follow—all songs that convey feelings for someone else with a steady voice, giving TWS a chance to show off their mature side and an emotional depth. It was also meant to show that “TWS has grown into the kind of group that can pull off a wide range of different looks,” according to Lee. The director shared the story behind “Last Festival,” too. “We kept the theater concept from the original music video and expanded DOHOON’s solo dance into solos for all six of them,” he revealed. In the clearest expression of their personal feelings, the boys went up on the video lift one by one and danced alone under a spotlight.

“GIFT 3” is the first time we get to see subunit performances. They perform three songs in smaller groups, then the six of them come back together for “Get It Now,” which opens with a dance break from JIHOON and KYUNGMIN. “After showing off their unique appeal through three subunit songs, it had to flow smoothly into them all coming back together,” Lee explained. “We put a dance break in the intro to build anticipation and excitement for the next song, and we wanted ‘Get It Now’ to show the fierce, raw masculinity of the group right when that curiosity peaked.” It was also the song KYUNGMIN was most excited about. “42’s been hyped for this song since the track sampler dropped,” he said, “so I was really excited for us to perform it in concert. I think that made us work even harder on it.” The show takes an unexpected turn with the next song, “Head Shoulders Knees Toes.” “It’s the most energetic song TWS has, both in terms of the song itself and the choreography,” Park said, “so we wanted to convey overcoming worries and a return to that lively energy TWS had when they first debuted.” And so, after the song finishes and before “GIFT 4” opens with “plot twist,” there’s a prerecorded video with everything from a volleyball to a name tag, a star, a paper airplane, a clock, and fireworks. According to Park, they “used things in the music videos for the singles from the early days up through to recent ones” as a way to “look back at the past.”

After showing audiences their mature side, and their fierce one, TWS moves onto “GIFT 4,” a section full of songs from “plot twist” to “You, You” that highlight the group’s originality. Park explained that this stretch was saved for the end so the show could close on “a real gift, one that leaves nothing to be desired.” “If I’m S, Can You Be My N?” incorporated parts of “SODA SODA,” which was still unreleased at the time of the Seoul show. It was a kind of teaser and a way to make the energy reach levels even greater than the sum of its two parts. “GIFT 4” then closes with a rock version of “Oh Mymy : 7s,” the song TWS opened their first tour with. This version takes the much-loved version they sang at the ROCK IN JAPAN FESTIVAL last year and turns the heat up another notch to give the show an extra “twist.”

42 gets to open the last present, “GIFT 5.” As the audience waits for the encore, a gift box appears onscreen, and it’s their mission to do a sing-along to make the ribbon come undone. Once the box opens, the group rides around the second-floor seats, singing “Why You So Bad?” and “Fire Confetti.” They bring that emotional segment to a close with “Back To Strangers,” and then they kick things back into gear with the encore, starting with “hey! hey!” The songs they sing for the double encore differ from show to show, but they always open, and close, with “hey! hey!”

BEHIND THE SCENES
“Simply put,” Park said, the starting point for “24/7:FOR:YOU” was to “do something the fans love.” In the year since the first tour, the bond between TWS and 42 had grown well beyond that between fan and artist and into something much closer and tightly linked, making the first question to arise during the planning stages, “What could the boys give to their fans?” From there, it came down to exactly what the name “24/7:FOR:YOU” says—making every song they worked on for 42 feel like a gift. The group, naturally, was on board with the idea.

Every gift starts by being unwrapped. Before the first song, the ribbon on a blue box comes undone and falls away, an effect less rooted in reality and more designed to capture “all the amazement of receiving an unexpected gift in a dream.” The team both used the fabric as a screen and had it fall away, bringing the ribbon coming undone to life as vividly as possible. It was the same thinking that went into keeping the main lights blocked until the “hey! hey!” dance break ends, then opening them up like light’s spilling out of a box. According to Park, the idea was for the present to open after all the amazement of the opening to reveal even more songs.

The most intricate changes involving the boxes come during “Fire Escape.” The song opens with video footage showing the group and backup dancers weaving their way through the space under the main stage until they climb up top. From there, they perform while escaping 12 boxes that make up a shifting maze. According to Park, the sub-stage sequence was meant to convey the idea of “the boys escaping a confusing place and ultimately arriving at the concert venue where 42 is.” To make it feel more vivid and in-the-moment, the sequence was done live rather than prerecorded. The box performance onstage began from an idea Lee had while listening to the song, thinking “it’d be magnificent if the boys stood on something like a podium and the whole thing felt sacred.” The result was a dreamlike performance where TWS breaks free of a place that never stops changing as the boxes collapse and come together around them.

According to Park, the subunit performances new to the tour were another result of TWS’s desire to “give 42 a present” while getting ready. The performances from the three subunits each had a well-defined flavor, divided between dance, vocals, and hip hop, and each one was built around a key color scheme—red, pastel, and green. “We felt the intensity of the color would make each one stand out and be more memorable,” Park explained. As with the color scheme, each performance was planned with a clear direction in mind. JIHOON and KYUNGMIN were directly involved in the topline and choreography for “SHIFT,” their high-octane dance performance. “The two of them are great dancers and are driven to perform, so the thinking was to let them do whatever they wanted,” Lee said. “We tried to capture their vision, even hearing them out on who we should bring in for the choreography.” What stuck with him most was how they prepared for it. “Even after rehearsing for the concert, they’d stay behind to work on the choreography,” he said, “and once it was done, they kept working with the dancers on all the little details late into the night, even with the tight schedule.” The idols have vivid memories of those late nights, too. “I remember staying up with JIHOON every night to talk through the choreography and figure it out,” KYUNGMIN said. “Even after group practice wrapped, we’d keep going every day, swapping ideas and putting it all together, all for that one song. I can still picture it so clearly.” JIHOON added to the sentiment. “KYUNGMIN’s a really important person to me, and since I’m older than him, I wanted to do everything I could to make him shine,” he said. “I basically went into it like, ‘I’m gonna make myself proud when I look back by giving this everything I got!’”

Next, YOUNGJAE and HANJIN perform “To You, Who Made It Through That Long Night,” a subunit song YOUNGJAE worked on the music for and both boys wrote lyrics to, capturing their trainee days after coming to Seoul from Gimhae and Henan. “We saw the lyrics as a reflection of their personal growth and circumstances,” Lee said, “so we worked toward a performance where you could feel the sincerity in the song, coming from two people who came from far away and ended up on this journey together.” They enter separately from opposite sides of the audience, meet on a rotating platform on the extended stage, and walk to the main stage together, directly echoing how the two of them came from far away to become part of the same team. The video backdrop of the road they took to Seoul was YOUNGJAE’s idea too. HANJIN said he wanted the song to convey “going beyond just comforting words and truly wanting to be there for someone,” adding, “I hope that, if people listen to it again someday when they’re really worn down or can’t see a future for themselves, they’ll feel it saying, ‘You’re not alone in this.’” As for YOUNGJAE, he “had a big hand in the lyrics, the music, the outfits, and the staging, so it meant even more to” him, he said. “After we performed it for the first time at our first concert in Korea, I read the reviews from 42, and every time I saw something like, ‘This song’s so good, the lyrics are so moving I got choked up,’ I was so grateful I was practically flying.”

Last up for the subunit songs is SHINYU and DOHOON performing the hip hop heavy “HOW DID YOU DO THAT.” The chorus is tightly choreographed, but beyond that, the pair lets the rhythm carry them around the stage. The idols perform against a bold green backdrop so “fans can really feel the pair’s energy,” according to Park. SHINYU and DOHOON were the ones who came up with the idea to spray water from the center of the extended stage to get the crowd pumped up. “We really wanted the whole audience to be able to move along to our music together,” DOHOON said. There was an extra sense of responsibility, too, considering it’s the last of the subunit songs. “YOUNGJAE and HANJIN leave the emotion hanging in the air after their song, and we have to carry that energy straight into ours and all the way to ‘Get It Now,’ and that pressure’s with me when I get up on stage,” SHINYU explained. “We try that much harder with our song so all the subunit songs can stand out all the more.”

The subunit performances “reflected the group’s input and ideas more than any other part” of the show, according to Lee. JIHOON and KYUNGMIN pitched a range of ideas for the backdrop and the height of the circular platform during their dance break, and YOUNGJAE and HANJIN had plenty of ideas for how they would move around onstage. SHINYU and DOHOON came up with ways to have fun with their song, like putting their heads together and spraying water from the stage to get the crowd going. “You could feel how passionate the boys were about the show and how many different ideas they had,” Lee said, “and that injected the concert with that much more variety.” Together, the group’s heartfelt input and passion made the perfect gift for 42.

42
When the gift box reappears on the screen after the main show, the audience starts singing even though there’s no one onstage because they have to get the ribbon to come undone for the encore to open. Hearing them sing’s also the part of the show that’s most memorable for YOUNGJAE. “42 did the fan chants so loud and went all out like there was no tomorrow,” he said, “and that made me so happy.” According to Park, “24/7:FOR:YOU” is full of ideas designed to instill “the feeling that the show isn’t complete until the audience takes part.” Otshow Otshow, the dress code introduced for the first tour, began when the group coined the term and even made a song out of it. Now it’s becoming part of the whole culture that brings TWS and 42 even closer together. In Seoul, the paper airplane confetti that poured down after “Nice to see you again” was a reply to 42 throwing paper airplanes at the group’s last fan meeting event, “42:CLUB.” The props in the video that opens “GIFT 4” came from the same idea. So did the clock countdown from the group’s debut prologue video and the opening of their first tour, which returns again to open the new tour as well as in “Oh Mymy : 7s.” And it’s the same reason that song closes out the main show this time after previously opening the last tour. “The early days are precious,” Park explained, “but we wanted each object to cause 42 to look back at how much TWS has grown and improved since then.”

The song 42 helps bring to life is “Back To Strangers.” As the group rises up on the rotating platform, a constellation descends over them and lyrics in the group’s handwriting scroll across the screen. The extended chorus flows directly into a sing-along. Park calls the song the heart of the setlist. “The song is about how you would still choose the same person even if you did everything all over again,” she explained, “and that overlaps with TWS choosing the group again and then meeting 42.” The video before the song is the same as the opening to drive the point home. The constellation, Park said, was “designed so that, without having to put up a message asking them to turn their flashes on, 42 would just get swept up in the mood of the show, automatically feel the urge to do something for the group, and turn their flashes on on their own.” And as the tour went on, 42’s constellation has appeared every single time without fail.

 Nowhere does the group contribute so many ideas as for the encore. The selection of songs keeps changing right up until showtime, all to figure out what fans would love most. It was clear the boys “prepared for this show with everything they had,” according to Park. “I never expected fans to love it this much, so I think it’s great our earnestness came through. All of us, the group and myself included, go back and forth every time. It’s, ‘This should be good,’ and then, ‘Or maybe not?’ I really think we all put everything we had into making this show.” HANJIN summed up the significance of “24/7:FOR:YOU.” “I wanted 42 to head home at the end of the night thinking, ‘I’m so glad I came today,’” he said. “That was what this tour means to me.” Open the box, wrap it back up, and leave everyone looking forward to what’s next. The gift of “24/7:FOR:YOU” keeps on giving until Kaohsiung on October 24.