It was nine in the morning on Saturday and a mass of people were gathered by Namba Station in Osaka. They were all waiting for the shuttle bus bound for Maishima Sports Island, where Summer Sonic 2023 was being held. Despite the staggering 6,600-yen price tag on a two-day ticket and the long wait, enthusiasm for Summer Sonic in Osaka, one of Japan’s biggest music festivals, was off the charts from early on.

A lot of names in K-pop have shown up on the lineups of music festivals all over the world this year. Whether it’s NewJeans putting on a phenomenal performance at Lollapalooza in Chicago, TOMORROW X TOGETHER headlining the same (following their performance there last year), BLACKPINK lighting up the stage at Hyde Park in London, or Stray Kids headlining Lollapalooza’s Paris show, K-pop artists are taking over more and bigger stages as the genre turns heads in every corner of the globe.

There’s two reasons I went to check out Summer Sonic. First, I’m excited to see festivals outside of Korea. Most major music fests in Korea consult the Summer Sonic and Fuji Rock Festival lineups when figuring out which international singers to recruit for their own. You don’t often see singers like Blur, Fall Out Boy, Liam Gallagher, or YOASOBI performing in Korea unless they’re holding their own concert. It’s also uncommon for K-pop singers to play music festivals in Korea and getting a ticket to one of their concerts is a challenge unless you’re in the fan club. I wanted to see K-pop idols performing at festivals overseas, and seeing as Tokyo was already sold out, I headed to Osaka.

The first Summer Sonic took place in 2000 and has become one of Japan’s most important music festivals. The fact that it’s held right in the middle of the city has many benefits. The venues are easily accessible by public transportation, and the last concert ends at a reasonable time—by 10 at the latest—so that everyone can get home early. The Tokyo half of the festival is held in Chiba at Zozo Marine Stadium and Makuhari Messe; in Osaka, everything takes place on Maishima Sports Island. That is to say, both halves of the festival are held in built-up metro areas. Summer Sonic is famous for its unique setup: many of the singers perform in one of the two cities the first day, then swap to the other side of the country and perform again the next. Some performers also only play one city or the other. Tokyo also plays host to SONICMANIA the night before Summer Sonic starts, and some of the performers opt not to play the main Summer Sonic event in Tokyo, going instead straight to Osaka after.

I was greeted with a panoramic view of Maishima Sports Park the moment I stepped foot off the bus. The Summer Sonic grounds in Osaka are made up of the gigantic beachfront Ocean Stage, the Orix Buffaloes’ secondary Maishima Baseball Stadium that becomes the Mountain Stage, basketball team Osaka Evessa’s Ookini Arena as the Sonic Stage, and the Massive Stage, which is located in the middle of the park. It’s not quite as big as the Tokyo festival with its six stages, but neither is it small, and it draws a big crowd. The merch line alone was usually over an hour long. Even with arriving early, once I had bought some souvenirs and locked up my bags, I still only just made it to the actual concert in time for the 12:00 start.

The sun beat down on the second day, with afternoon temperatures in Osaka reaching a scorching 36ºC. What little cool there had been the previous day was gone, replaced with a sea of red faces enduring the harsh weather. I nonetheless braved through the fiery rays of the Sun, making my way to the Mountain Stage to see ENHYPEN. Seats were like molten to the touch, and the standing area was completely unsheltered from the brutal Sun above. And still, a whole slew of fans were there, waiting for ENHYPEN to take to the stage. Other than seats with obstructed views, the entire stadium was filled; even the standing area was filled to the brim.

The audience erupted into cheers as the group took to the stage and opened with a hard-hitting, band-backed interpretation of “Tamed-Dashed.” And thus the 40-minute performance, with a big banner and real flames on top, kicked off against the scorching heat. Next, they treated audiences to the same animated performance of “Attention, please!” that they had at their DARK BLOOD special showcase, exciting the rock festival fans even further. Even with the oppressive heat, the audience sang along passionately to ENHYPEN’s brilliant songs, including “Always,” “Forget Me Not,” and “Polaroid Love.”

When I had listened to ENHYPEN’s music in the past, I was imagining what it would be like to see them performing at a rock festival. I had high expectations for them, seeing as so many of their songs are perfectly suited for rock versions. At Summer Sonic, ENHYPEN made what I had imagined a reality. I loved the arrangement of “Bite Me” with its souped-up guitar riffs, as well as this version of “Blessed-Cursed,” which put the guitar and drums right at the front and sped things up considerably. With songs like the DARK BLOOD closer “Karma” and an even louder performance of “Blockbuster” than the one they did at the 2022 Weverse Con, ENHYPEN clearly understood what the festival atmosphere demands. Despite, as the group addressed, the unspeakable heat, ENHYPEN pulled off a flawless performance all the way up to and including their closer, “Future Perfect (Pass the MIC).”

Even though Summer Sonic has been known as a rock festival for a long time, what I witnessed over the two days I was there was a more all-encompassing festival when it came to genre representation. I don’t know if it was just the Osaka side, but rock festival staples like audience members dancing, jumping around, singing along, and making mosh pits weren’t things I saw much of. There was nothing aggressive about it. The crowds for Liam Gallagher, Fall Out Boy, and Blur were surprisingly quiet, but hip hop star Kendrick Lamar had an extremely passionate audience. While the audiences were relatively subdued as Gallagher sang Oasis’ hits, there was thunderous applause from the crowd when Lamar rapped and people were singing along and bouncing to the beat. I could sense the power hip hop held all throughout; people were absolutely packed in for Awich’s explosive performance on the Sonic Stage on the first day, and hip hop group Umeda Cypher had people screaming their heads off on the second.

Impressively, there was more demand for locally famous Japanese artists like Awich, QUEEN BEE, ZUTOMAYO, and YOASOBI than those from abroad. As the most popular singers in Japan today, it’s not just that everyone knows their names but that their top-tier, sophisticated music was also polished and festival-ready. The crowds for ZUTOMAYO and YOASOBI in particular were already so packed in before the music even started that no one else could get in. Festivalgoers who had traveled over from Korea had trouble deciding whether to see Blur or YOASOBI, but Japanese audiences didn’t seem to have much difficulty choosing. It was a sight to behold to see fans passing over both Fall Out Boy and Blur without hesitation as they moved out en masse after SEKAI NO OWARI’s performance over to the Mountain Stage to see YOASOBI.

The music festivals of today encompass all genres and have become destinations for fans of all tastes to come and choose who to watch based on their own personal preferences, not the performers’ popularity. The headliners are all still international acts, as usual, but they’re no longer always must-sees as was the case in the past. What’s emphasized now is the diversity of genres and personalities the festival can bring in, like Maisie Peters, Holly Humberstone, HONNE, and Jacob Collier.

Audiences have become more diverse as well. Every performance I stopped by at had a healthy number of audience members, but more often than not the overseas bands had smaller crowds. I wasn’t used to seeing people’s reactions limited to clapping and the occasional cheer and nothing more. Was it because they knew the artists would be back in Japan soon enough anyway? Or was it because these overseas artists simply weren’t their taste? Or maybe, as so many artists have lamented, it’s a byproduct of COVID-19 keeping people from the concert experience. As someone who buys a ticket at lightning speed if any of these international artists were to play Korea, it made me envy the kind of draw the music market in Japan commands and how firmly established their music festival culture is.

It’s clear that K-pop is one of the main forces behind this change. It was truly a historic moment when the entrance to the Marine Stage in Tokyo already had to be closed off by noon because of audiences crowding in to see NewJeans. The audience sizes during the amazing performances from K-pop artists like ENHYPEN, TREASURE, and TAEYANG proved just how popular they have become in Japan. Seeing how the shifting festival paradigm has K-pop artists now being welcomed into these events, it made me wonder what could be expected for festivals in the future—whether they will continue to expand and appeal to everyone, or stick with the romanticized image of the traditional rock festival. Things were a lot different than I was expecting. And actually, it made Summer Sonic that much more engaging for me.