EXO, who debuted in 2012 and are celebrating their 14th anniversary this year, successfully held their sixth solo concert tour, ‘EXO PLANET #6 – EXhOrizon’, from the 10th to the 12th of last month at the KSPO Dome (formerly Gymnastics Arena) in Songpa-gu, Seoul, during their debut anniversary week.
This marked EXO’s first group concert in a whopping 6 years and 4 months. Following their 2019 performance, the pandemic hit, and the members’ military service gaps began. While they stayed busy after returning with their eighth studio album ‘REVERXE’—even winning five music show awards—both the members and fans had been longing for a solo concert for a very long time.
Fans’ reactions were explosive as the setlist was revealed throughout the first day. The selection was truly “legendary,” featuring not only title tracks but also fan-favorites and songs beloved by EXO-L (the official fandom), all paired with high-energy dance performances.
The new concert ‘EXhOrizon’ was brought to life by the same planning and production team that worked on SUPER JUNIOR’s ‘SUPER SHOW SPIN-OFF : Halftime’ in 2024 and KAI’s first solo concert ‘KAION’.
CBS No Cut News conducted a written interview on the 6th with the head of SM Entertainment’s performance planning unit and the senior lead of the performance production/creation unit. In the first part, we dive into the production stories centered around the heart of the concert: the setlist.
Here is the Q&A.
1. The title of EXO’s sixth solo concert is ‘EXhOrizon’, a combination of EXO and ‘Horizon’. During the first day, Chanyeol mentioned it means “as the end and beginning of the world, if we truly become one, a path to a new world opens.” How did this name come about?
Planning Lead: ‘EXhOrizon’ is a portmanteau of EXO and Horizon, the point where the end and the beginning meet. It signifies that taking one step forward from this boundary, where a new balance is created, opens a new world. We felt this suited EXO perfectly and wanted to capture the meaning of the journey shared by EXO and EXO-L. Rather than simply reminiscing about the past, we strongly hoped this performance would make everyone look forward to EXO’s present and future.
2. The show begins with a report stating, “Tonight, you must look closely at the sky. A quiet and strange total lunar eclipse is coming, where the moon loses its light and slowly turns red.” The VCR seems to reflect the group’s lore. Could you explain how EXO’s worldview was integrated into ‘EXhOrizon’?\nPlanning Lead & Production Senior: It started with the ‘Short Novel’ included in the 8th studio album ‘REVERXE’. In that story, members other than KAI are living ordinary lives, having forgotten their superpowers, and it ends with them gathering for a meal and waiting for a total lunar eclipse. To ensure organic connectivity between the album and the concert, we wanted the show to start from that scene and expand upon the worldview EXO has built so far, just as the title suggests.
3. The opening song was the debut track ‘MAMA’, and the finale was ‘Your World’. These songs carry a lot of weight. What was the background for choosing them as the start and end?
Production Senior: Since it had been so long since their last concert and the main keyword of this album was ‘regression’, we wanted to convey the meaning of ‘returning to the beginning’. We set the location where they moved to avoid the red energy in the opening VCR as the temple from the ‘MAMA’ music video, and we wanted to recreate the visuals from the ‘MAMA’ era as much as possible for their first appearance. As for ‘Your World’, we felt that if it’s an EXO concert, this simply had to be the ending. (laughs)
4. As seen from reactions like “They’re actually doing this?” and “They’re doing all of these?”, ‘EXhOrizon’ received high praise for its setlist. Could you tell us the process of completing it?\nProduction Senior: Because EXO has so many masterpieces, we had a lot of worries. It took over a month just to finalize the setlist. There were dozens of songs we felt “must be included.” The hardest part was balancing the songs from the 8th studio album ‘REVERXE’ with the ratio of songs they had performed versus those they hadn’t in previous concerts.
We looked into what stages fans missed most, such as the so-called ‘Club Time’ featuring ‘PLAYBOY’ and ‘Artificial Love’. Basically, we first decided on the songs that connected to the VCRs according to the performance synopsis, and then added songs that complemented them. That’s how ‘Gravity’, which fans love, was dramatically included in the final stage.
5. The reaction to ‘Crazy’ from the 8th studio album ‘REVERXE’ was incredibly hot. Did you expect such an enthusiastic response? What was the core element you wanted to show in the ‘Crazy’ stage?\nProduction Senior: I believe the core of ‘Crazy’ is the performance during the section where the BPM increases. The choreography was created by BADA LEE, who has shown great chemistry with EXO in the past, so the stage stood out even more thanks to her. Since the choreography turned out so well, we expected the fans’ reaction to be enthusiastic to some extent. (laughs)
6. Fans also praised the unique production for each song, such as ‘Wolf and Beauty’ with the white and red moons merging, ‘Don’t Go’ with flower-shaped lifts and lasers, ‘Forever’ using crowns as objects to express a narrative, ‘Crown’ ending with members climbing aerial stairs, and ‘Flatline’ with lights on the ceiling creating a starry sky. Are there any specific production points you’d like to highlight?\nProduction Senior: Overall, we wanted the entire venue to look like one big painting. For ‘Wolf and Beauty’, we wanted the process of the total lunar eclipse to sweep across the entire audience, not just the LEDs. For ‘Don’t Go’, we wanted five butterflies to fly across the whole venue, so we used laser mapping on the walls above the seats. For ‘Flatline’, we wanted to express the lyrics “becoming each other’s salvation and finally meeting in the world” as the ‘universe’, so we intentionally added an instrumental break to allow the audience to look up at the sky.
‘Forever’ was a stage created from an idea by choreographer JRICK, who was in charge of the overall performance for this show. He suggested showing the process of members finding pieces of a crown and joining them together through performance, and we attached magnets to the crown pieces so they could actually merge. When the crown merged and floated into the air, a giant crown was completed on the upper LED, which connected perfectly to the story since the next song was ‘Crown’. For the exit scene of ‘Crown’, we wanted to show EXO, having ascended the throne, crossing the boundary toward a new world and moving to an even higher place. We aimed to connect the story in line with the planning intention of the concert.
