Justin: It’s OK that your kid screamed their lungs out for Katseye at MOA

It’s been more than a week since I experienced Katseye and my ears are still ringing.

Roughly 8,000 people, mostly teenage girls, showed up at the Mall of America on Oct. 19. Some camped out the night before to secure a primo spot for the show. Those who decided to sleep in a bit filled the three upper rings above the rotunda, passing the time by playing cards, slurping iced coffee and practicing their dance steps.

“It’s the most people I’ve seen at the mall since I’ve been here,” said Kate Witte, who joined the MOA’s public relations staff in February.

From a musical standpoint, the concert wasn’t worth the fuss.

The K-pop style group, which was making its Midwest debut, only performed three songs, all to heavy backing tracks. The five young stars (sixth member Megan Meiyok Skiendiel is sidelined with a minor back injury) spent more time waving and blowing kisses than busting moves.

In between numbers, KDWB’s Falen Bonsett and Colt Parkey lobbed them softball questions straight off the pages of an old Tiger Beat magazine. At times, the affair felt like one of those never-ending acceptance speeches at an awards dinner.

“We had no idea we had so many fans in Minnesota!” said band member Daniela Avanzini, who later earned a rabid response when she stuck up for girls with big hair. “What is this?”

But the “Eyekons” didn’t react like they were being shortchanged.

Breann DeWitt‚ 21, didn’t regret driving more than three hours from Grand Rapids, Minn., with her 12-year-old cousin Madilyn Hatt, who was experiencing her first concert.

“We don’t have a lot in common because of our age difference,” DeWitt said. “But we have this in common.”

Vyenna Vue, 21, spent a good chunk of the show mirroring the performers’ complicated choreography.

“I’m a dancer, so I can relate to their hard work and dedication,” said Vue, who like so many others discovered the group through TikTok and the Netflix series “Dream Academy,” which documented how they were selected from more than 120,000 applicants. “They have star quality.”

Vue said her mom thought she was crazy to stand in line for three hours. But didn’t she do anything similar when she was your age?

Vue thought for a moment.

”Yeah, probably,” she said. “She’s flown to Las Vegas to see the Backstreet Boys.”

It would be no surprise if a lot of these fans’ parents had logged a “crazy” amount of time waiting around the MOA in the ‘90s when pop stars like Hanson, NSYNC and Christina Aguilera routinely caused a stir.

The tradition of fan fervor in the Twin Cities dates back even further.

When Madonna played the St. Paul Civic Center in 1985, girls not old enough to drive showed up with lots of lace and bare midriffs.

During the Beatles’ 1965 concert at Metropolitan Stadium, which was located on the same grounds MOA was built upon, some teens attempted to pull the locked steel door off its hinges to get inside. Police were armed with smelling salts for fainters.

As far as I could tell, nobody destroyed any property for the Katseye show, although I was almost trampled by a small mob who rushed to get a better view when the band re-emerged for a meet-and-greet session.

What made the excitement a bit strange is that the group is just getting started. Katseye has yet to chart with a hit single. And while there were plenty of homemade signs welcoming the visitors, few were wearing any Katseye merchandise, a reminder that the band gave its first concert only three months ago.

One of the reasons the group has attracted so many fans so quickly has to do with its diversity. Three of the members are Americans, but as a group, they have ethnic roots in Venezuela, Cuba, the Philippines, India, Ghana, Switzerland, Italy, South Korea, China and Singapore.

“They’re just like us,” said Gao Lor, 21, who is of Hmong heritage and showed up at 7 a.m. She was thrilled to meet a 15-year-old fan in line who came all the way from Miami.

Bonding over a shared interest can be an exhilarating experience. Just don’t call it “hysteria,” a mistake I made when I reached out to Stephanie Choi, an expert on K-pop music who teaches at the University of Buffalo in New York.

“I strongly oppose the use of the term ‘hysteria,’ as it has contributed to the popular misogyny that devalues leisure activities, particularly those of women,” she wrote in an email. “Elements of K-pop fandom, such as fan-chants, fan-led donations and charitable activities, and other forms of fan support, are highly organized efforts that result from collaboration and should not be dismissed as hysteria, associated with irrationality and unproductivity.”

My bad. Truth is, “adult” fans at shows can be a lot more irrational and unproductive.

At ELO’s show in St. Paul last month, I put up with folks in neighboring seats who drank so many beers that they spent a good chunk of the concert in the restroom. Whenever they returned, they talked loud enough to make Jeff Lynne’s mumbled singing even harder to understand.

And I’m not immune to getting carried away. I’m about to fly to Canada to see Bruce Springsteen, even though I’ve already seen him nearly 20 times. It’s an expensive, inconvenient journey — and I’ll savor every minute of it. When he plays “Thunder Road,” there’s a good chance I’ll respond like a teenage girl.

I just hope I have my hearing back by then.