Concerts!
Whoops! Again, it’s been a little while. My bad.
Not much has happened since I last wrote. It’s been paper writing, group work, and not much fun. I also got sick in between the concerts that I’m going to tell you about.
On March 30, I went to see Taylor Swift at the O2 in London. It was tons of fun! I was able to pre-order my tickets last October so we ended up with AWESOME seats. Her opening act was pretty lame (some Irish Christian band), but when she finally came on it was awesome. I was a little concerned that she wouldn’t sound great live, because some of her TV performances that I’ve seen have been less than impressive, but she was actually great. I was also surprised that the show wasn’t sold out (they said it was, but there were way too many empty seats for that to be the case), but the O2 is a huge venue that can seat up to 23,000.
Taylor played mostly songs from her newest CD, but also some older ones. And she had a cute set with good costumes. There were a LOT of kids and their parents there so it wasn’t much like any of the concerts I’ve been to (aside from when I was in junior high going to see Christina Aguilera), but it was still a ton of fun. I can see why she wins so many Entertainer awards!
Last night, I was able to go see Katy Perry at Wembley Area in north-west London. Katy Perry is super popular here, I guess the Brits have taken her as one of their own since she married Russell Brand. She had 3 shows in a row in March that sold out the day the tickets went on sale, so she added this one. Then this one sold out (capacity of about 12,000), and then she had to add ANOTHER London show at the O2 in October.
For Katy we had general admission tickets, which I’ve always thought is the best way to see a show… only kids, grownups, and weenies get seats, right? Absofruitly. And for Katy Perry, is there really going to be any danger of a mosh pit? Not even a little. People didn’t even push each other. However, I was still sick and didn’t have the energy I usually have for shows like that, so we didn’t get very close. But it ended up being fine, and I was able to see quite a bit despite my size.
She had two openers, one that was UNBELIEVABLY BAD - some French band where the lead singer wore a yeti jacket and creeped me out and then proceeded to sing terrible terrible “songs.” Then she had a DJ, DJ Skeet Skeet, who basically started a dance party while they changed up the set between Sucky French Band and Katy - where there’s normally that 30 minute gap where you’re miserable and really want the show to START, you got to dance instead, to some really great tunes. It was great, I think everyone should do that.
Now, if I thought Taylor Swift was an awesome entertainer, Katy Perry is world class. I don’t know how she hasn’t won awards for entertainment. She had over 15 costume changes in as many songs (about 8 in just one song!), with no real lag in the flow of the show. She had a story tying everything together, an amazing Candyland-like set, and the whole arena even SMELLED like cotton candy - but not enough to make you want to barf, just enough to make you like “whoa, it smells like cotton candy.” SO AWESOME!
We had quite a few frustrations concerning transportation getting to and from Wembley (thanks a lot, London), but we made it there and back relatively unscathed.
I’m getting lazy, so I made a Flickr to show all the pictures:
And if anyone is interested, here are the set lists for the two shows:
Taylor Swift:
- Sparks Fly
- Mine
- The Story of Us
- Back to December
- Better Than Revenge
- Speak Now
- Fearless
- Fifteen
- You Belong With Me
- Dear John
- Enchanted
- Long Live
- Love Story (encore)
Katy Perry
- Teenage Dream
- Hummingbird Heartbeat
- Waking Up in Vegas
- You’re So Gay
- Peacock
- I Kissed A Girl
- Circle the Drain
- ET
- Who Am I Living For
- Pearl
- Not Like the Movies
- [mini jam session where she sang Rhianna, Jay Z, Gaga, and Willow Smith]
- Thinking of You
- Hot N Cold
- Last Friday Night
- I Wanna Dance With Somebody [Whitney cover that I was SUPER jazzed about!]
- Firework
- California Girls (encore)
