I don’t want to brag, but I’ve been to three concerts in the past three days. I got to see Lorde, Sky Ferreira, and Ed Sheeran in concert, and each was just mind-blowing to see. Because I’m a broke college student and concert tickets are so expensive, I usually only go to concerts where I absolutely 100% love every single song the person sings. Which basically means I’ve only seen Taylor Swift in concert. When I heard Lorde was coming to Boston, I just thought “why not?” I mean, I really like her music (I’ve been listening to The Love Club EP and Pure Heroine on repeat these past couple weeks). She was playing at Boston Calling, an annual music festival Boston puts on. The ticket is kind of expensive ($85-ish) but it gets you into a day of a ton bands, games, and “free things” (I got three pairs of sunglasses for “free”! (I say “free” because essentially part of my ticket went to paying for them)). And you get this cool wrist band so you can come and go from the festival, which allows you to explore Boston when bands you don’t know/like are playing. So the day I was going, Lorde was going to perform as well as Sky Ferreira, whose music I recently discovered and have quite enjoyed.
When I got to the festival, Sky Ferreria was beginning her set, and I must say that girl can sing. I was kind of skeptical because her vocals on her album Night Time, My Time have a lot of effects on them, so I thought she would be a bit pitchy. But, no, this girl can belt out those tunes. It was fantastic. She didn’t do much but stand there and sing, but she really didn’t need to. It was breathtaking, the bass beating loud and the drums vibrating against my soul. Even I, the guy who has never danced in public in his life, joined in the mosh pit. Yes, it was that good.
Then there was a five hour delay until Lorde…we were evacuated because of the weather…it’s actually a long, epic story for another time. But, it was worth the wait.
I know Lorde is only seventeen and only just started out in her career, but her performance was so spectacular it was legendary. The lights flash, and she’s dancing/headbanging (her hair flips are something else) and she’s just owning every single song. It was just so thrilling to see her bring her songs to life. What I enjoyed the most was that she didn’t sing the songs like they are on her record. She made them slightly different. The best was her performance of “Team.” I can’t really explain what she did, but she made it a total dance number…it was just so incredible. Without a doubt, I would see Lorde in concert again. I wish her set was longer than fifty minutes, though…
Now, I just got home from Ed Sheeran. I’ve seen him in concert before, but man what a talented guy he is. He’s a one man band, where he strums his guitar/smacks his guitar to make drum beats/sings sounds and puts them on loop. It was inspiring as a musician to see. But really I thought was great was how he connected with his audience. He talked with us like he was talking to us personally…like, I felt it was just me and Sheeran (in a not creepy way). He told us a story about how he saw a chicken get run over by a car, and then he essentially watch the chicken die…so he wrote a song about it. Then he played the song for us. I’m not even joking.
At one point a girl screamed out “I LOVE YOU” and he actually stopped playing and looked up at her and smiled and said something like “wouldn’t it be funny if that was on the recording.”
He started off the show saying “I want you guys to sing these words as loud as possible. If you don’t know the words, make them up. You’re not doing it right unless you lose your voice.”
I have a boatload of pictures/videos I can/want to share, but it requires me to do some editing/uploading and I don’t quite have the time yet…look for that in the coming weeks (#busycollegestudent)
