Why BE:FIRST’s “RONDO” Feels Different From Earlier Songs
A darker, more unsettled performance — and a clearer sense of who BE:FIRST has become
At first, “RONDO” felt difficult to fully process.
The atmosphere is heavy.
The structure feels restless.
The lyrics — written by the members themselves — move rapidly between confidence, tension, humor, confrontation, and self-awareness.
At times, the song even feels openly challenging.
In another group’s hands, some of these lines might come across as overly aggressive or self-important. But BE:FIRST performs them with such overwhelming conviction and technical control that the confidence rarely feels unearned.
And yet, none of it feels random.
The more I watched BE:FIRST’s newly released Special Dance Performance video for “RONDO,” the more it started to feel less like a conventional performance piece — and more like a statement about where the group currently stands as artists.
Not necessarily clearer.
But sharper.
More deliberate.
More willing to leave discomfort unresolved.
A Circle That Never Fully Settles
The performance video immediately establishes a strong visual concept.
The six members sit separately in a circle of single-seat sofas, all facing inward toward the center before quietly standing up and beginning the performance. Shortly afterward, the title “RONDO” appears alongside the Japanese kanji “輪舞.”
Literally, the characters suggest something close to “circular dance” or “dancing in a circle” — an image of movement, repetition, and continuous return.
Before going further, it may be worth sitting inside the atmosphere of “RONDO” itself.
That idea quietly becomes the structural core of the performance itself.
Everything in the video suggests movement around a shared center: rotation, return, exchange, repetition. But interestingly, the choreography never feels overly symmetrical or perfectly locked in the way idol-group performances often do.
Even while moving together, the members feel distinctly individual.
That tension — between unity and individuality — has always existed inside BE:FIRST. But “RONDO” may be one of the clearest examples of the group embracing it rather than smoothing it over.
The camera work helps reinforce this feeling. The editing is stylish without becoming intrusive, allowing the natural groove and physicality of the performance itself to remain the focal point. Rather than aggressively directing the viewer’s attention, the video trusts the performers’ presence to carry the tension of the piece.
The tension never disappears, which may be exactly why the performance feels so alive.
From “BF is…” to “RONDO”
Watching “RONDO,” I kept thinking about “BF is...,” a track released on BE:FIRST’s first album BE:1 in 2022.
(For readers newer to the group, I previously wrote a broader introduction to BE:FIRST and their artistic identity here.)
At the time, the group was still in a very different position. “BF is...” felt like a declaration — a song built around defining who BE:FIRST wanted to become, particularly as they stepped into spaces like rock festivals where idol-adjacent groups were often met with skepticism.
There was ambition in it.
A sense of self-definition.
Almost a need to prove themselves.
“RONDO” feels different.
Not because the ambition is smaller, but because the need for explanation seems weaker.
The song does not feel particularly interested in making itself easy to decode or universally comfortable. Instead, it feels driven by the confidence that the group can hold together even inside instability — musically, emotionally, and visually.
That difference feels important.
“BF is...” carried traces of aspiration.
“RONDO” feels closer to self-recognition.
Not perfection.
Not arrival.
But a much stronger awareness of their own artistic identity.
Skill Is No Longer the Main Point
Of course, BE:FIRST’s technical ability remains extraordinary.
But what stood out to me in “RONDO” was how little the performance seemed interested in simply showing that skill off.
What matters here feels slightly different now.
In groove.
In atmosphere.
In timing.
In tension.
In the strange balance between looseness and precision.
That distinction matters, especially for a group like BE:FIRST, whose performances are often discussed primarily in terms of synchronization or technical execution.
“RONDO” feels less concerned with choreography as a clean visual arrangement and more concerned with dance as musical expression.
That difference becomes especially meaningful knowing that all six members participated in writing and composing the track, while SOTA also contributed choreography. The result does not feel like a performance delivered to the group by outside creators. It feels internally constructed — shaped around the instincts, personalities, and rhythms of the members themselves.
In older terms, “singer-songwriter” once implied artistic authenticity.
But BE:FIRST increasingly feels like something harder to separate cleanly into categories — vocalists, dancers, writers, composers, choreographers, all influencing one another at the same time.
That creative overlap may be one of the reasons the group’s performances feel unusually alive.
Turning Discomfort Into Impact
What makes “RONDO” especially interesting to me is that the song seems fully aware of its own discomfort.
The gothic atmosphere.
The heavy beat.
The abrupt tonal shifts.
The almost confrontational confidence in some of the lyrics.
None of it feels accidental.
More importantly, none of it feels hesitant.
There is a strong sense that BE:FIRST understands discomfort not as a weakness, but as something that can become musically compelling if handled with enough control and conviction.
That growing confidence in ambiguity also feels connected to other recent BE:FIRST releases, including “BE:FIRST ALL DAY,” where the group similarly seemed less interested in direct explanation than atmosphere, rhythm, and implication.
And “RONDO” feels built on that confidence.
Not confidence in perfection.
Not confidence in universal accessibility.
But confidence in their ability to transform instability into momentum.
What struck me most was that this confidence does not seem to belong to just one member. The performance carries the feeling of a shared internal understanding between all six performers — an unspoken trust that the tension, looseness, unpredictability, and friction inside the song will ultimately hold together because of who they are as a group.
That may be why “RONDO” leaves such a strong impression.
Not because it tries to smooth out its edges,
but because it refuses to.
Perhaps that is why the title “RONDO” feels so fitting.
Not simply because the song repeats or circles back musically, but because the entire performance feels built around continuous motion — tension rotating between six distinct individuals who never fully dissolve into uniformity.
The song keeps moving.
The energy keeps shifting.
The balance never completely settles.
And yet somehow, it continues to hold together.
Like a dance that keeps turning without collapsing under its own momentum.
輪舞.
Written by Lily-K | BMSG Pulse
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