Tag: concert

2020 Goals

by melissay1, posted in Other, Theatre, travel

First of all Happy New Year!

Normally every year I make New Years resolutions but then it gets to this time of year and I feel very deflated that in my head I’ve done absolutely nothing towards achieving them. I’m sure like most people, my resolutions are always the most unrealistic things as the chances of me becoming a millionaire or the likelihood of me ever being able to be fit enough to run a marathon a day is so unlikely.

I was told instead of doing a resolution that I should try writing down a list of things that I’d like to do in a year then this time next year I can look back and see how much I’d actually managed to do in a year rather than being fixated on the one thing I hadn’t achieved.

This is probably just a year bucket list but I thought I would share some of the things on my list for 2020!

Do you have a list of things that you’d like to achieve / do in 2020? I’d love to know some of your goals too!

Blog

My big aim for 2020 is to make sure I blog 52 times – so at least once a week. I’d love to do more but I don’t want to commit to it if I don’t feel like doing multiple posts that week.

I have to admit as much as I love blogging, I quite frequently leave it until Saturday to write up and edit my posts as I tend to feel quite stressed out in a week with work. I want to be able to have posts ready to go and set aside even 15 minutes in a week to write or at least brainstorm blog ideas.

I’d also like to become more involved in the blogging community. I spend a lot of time reading posts from blogs I follow but I very rarely interact with them. I’d like to go out of my comfort zone next year and make a real effort to comment on posts more.

Obviously I do this completely for fun, but from a growth point of view I’d like to aim to get 200 followers by the end of year. I know this is highly unlikely but it would be a nice bonus if I could achieve this.

Books

I always aim low with my book reading goal as although I really enjoy reading I never want to put pressure on how much I read, but as ever I hope to read 20 books in 2020 – a goal which I’ve always easily doubled.

I’d like to try and write up my review for most books that I read. Although I mostly do this now I go through stages were I just binge read and then never bother to write anything up on any of the books I read even if I really enjoyed them.

This year I would like to make a real effort to participate in a reading challenge. Every year I half think about doing the popsugar reading challenge but then I end up not bothering. So early on in the year I’m going to write out the list and associate a specific book with each option and try and read as many of them as possible. I’m not going to aim to complete it but it would be nice to tick some off the list. I feel like this will help me read books out of genres I normally choose.

I would also like to put myself on a bit of a book buying ban – though not sure how likely that will be! The amount of books on my to be read shelf now is getting slightly out of control so in 2020 I would like to read books quicker than I buy them.

Music

My aim for 2020 is to see 6 concerts which I hope will be achievable enough especially when I already have four booked so far.

I have a separate two goals on my list for seeing McFly and Taylor Swift in concert which I know (assuming they don’t cancel due to illness etc) will happen, I hoped having things on my list that I knew I would do would make me appreciate the year more.

I also have wrote down to go to a festival. I already have a ticket to Glastonbury so I know I can tick this one straight off the list but I added it on as I feel like I take it far too much for granted that attending a festival is actually quite a big thing.

Theatre

I have set a target of seeing 6 theatre shows in 2020. I already have three booked so I felt that even with the expense of tickets that 6 shows in 2020 was still achievable. I’m hoping aiming for six will give the the push I need to go check out the shows that are on tour in my local theatres too rather than sticking to the West End.

Like with concerts I have separately wrote down things I actually have booked to see already – Be More Chill, Only Fools & Horses and Phantom Of The Opera. I’ve started to realise it’s important to recognise that going to go and see things even if I booked them in 2019 its still a privilege that I’m going and I should still acknowledge how lucky I am to be able to tick them off my years list.

Under the theatre category I have a couple of extra options as I would desperately like to see Dear Evan Hansen again and I have another box to tick for seeing Sam Tutty as Evan. His Evan was one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen and I would love to see him in the role again.

I would also like to see Six, a show which I always half attempt to see then end up booking something else I want to see more instead. Six is currently touring so hopefully it will be easier for me to see it now.

Travel

Travelling is abit restricted in 2020 as money is tight after two long haul holidays in 2019, so sadly I can’t have any big long haul destinations planned for 2020 so I thought I’d try and save and visit a European city for a couple of days or even go to a day trip to Paris on the Eurostar!

I recently read a statistic which was a crazy percentage of UK residents that had never visited Stonehenge…I am ashamed to admit that I am one of those people. So next year I would very much like to tick that off the list! Also on that list was Cheddar Gorge and Glastonbury Tor, which although I’ve been very close up I’ve never walked up the hill. So this year I’ve decided to put more UK based things on my list on things to do to tick off these places that I should’ve seen before.

I’ll probably add a few more places to the list but as of now my full travel list this year is –

  • Visit A European City
  • Visit Cheddar Gorge
  • Visit Glastonbury Town
  • Visit Glastonbury Tor
  • Visit Harry Potter Studio Tour
  • Visit London
  • Visit Madame Tussaud’s London
  • Visit A Theme Park

Personal Goals

I have a few goals that I would like to achieve for myself too. Lots of these are too boring to even bother to include in this post or too personal that no one would particularly care about them other than me, but some things on the list include – finish writing a novel, spend time more productively, use social life media more healthily and raise money for charity.

Hopefully as the year progresses I can update the things I’ve done through the year in a blog post but if I don’t do that I think it’ll be nice to revisit this in a years time and see how much I’ve managed to achieve.

Thanks to everyone who reads this post and I hope you all have a wonderful 2020!

 

2019 Favourites

by melissay1, posted in Other

I thought I would do a little wrap up on my favourite books / theatre shows / music of 2019. I think it’ll be nice for myself to look back on next year and see what my favourites are now in comparison to a years time. Plus I’ve really enjoyed reading other peoples 2019 favourite blog posts.

So without further ado, here is my top two favourite books, theatre shows and music of 2019!

Would love to hear what your favourites of the year have been in the comments!

Books

I decided to go off Goodreads for this one and pick out of the books that I’d given a five star rating too. Coincidentally I only rated two books as 5 stars this year and as even more of a coincidence they’re the last two books that I’ve read so typically my blog posts about them aren’t up yet so I don’t want to go into too much detail about them.

  • The Christmasaurus And The Winter Witch – Tom Fletcher

I love The Christmasaurus. I am completely out of the target audience for this series of books but they’re just full of Christmassy magic and has a dinosaur so what more do you want from a Christmas story.

The Christmasarus And The Winter Witch is book number two in the series. It’s sort of difficult to explain what happens without spoilers to parts of book one but all you need to know is that this book takes place a year after book one. William Trundle and his family gets invited to take a tour of the North Pole with Santa himself and discoverers the secret weapon to ensure all the children get their presents on Christmas Eve. But then everything goes wrong and the fate of all future Christmas Days rests in the hands of William!

If you’ve never heard of The Christmasaurus you must check out the first book first. It is even released as a musical edition where the songs are so catchy and fitting to the story. As its a children’s book you can expect the illustrations to be great and this book certainly has a great illustrator.

I purposely waited and read this book on Christmas Day and it provided that little bit of Christmas magic you need at this time of year. I find sequels tend to be not as good as book one, but The Christmasaurus And The Winter Witch is one of the few that is just as good.

  • Marriage On Madison Avenue – Lauren Layne

The irony that this book is in my best of 2019 list when it isn’t even out until 2020! However, I read this book this year so I feel that’s still fine for me to be classing it in this list. A blog post is coming up tomorrow about this book so I’ll edit this post to include the link once its up.

This story is about Audrey who doesn’t have the best luck in relationships. Her best friend Clarke is fed up of his mother trying to meddle in his dating life so tells her that he is engaged to Audrey. The pair are strictly best friends, always have been and always will be. They don’t feel any romantic connection to each other, that is until they start pretending to be engaged and the lines begin to blur.

This book is one of those stories that makes your heart happy and it’s genuinely one of the best romance novels that I’ve read in a long time. Your must read book for 2020!

Theatre

I saw a lot of shows this year. Although I can honestly say that I loved everything I saw this year (normally I see a few things that fell abit flat) but two shows are the real stand outs for me this year.

  • Beetlejuice

Whenever anyone gets me into a conversation about musicals, it doesn’t take me long to start talking about how much of an incredible performer I think Alex Brightman is. When I saw him in School Of Rock I left the theatre in awe of his performance so the minute I heard he was going to be staring in Beetlejuice I knew it would be amazing and I could only hope to get to America to see the show, which luckily I did.

Beetlejuice is an incredible show – end of. It’s hilarious with so many moments making you uncontrollably laugh, Alex Brightman’s lively portrayal of Beetlejuice didn’t disappoint in the slightest, the music is catchy and you’ll have it on repeat, the cast is insanely talented, visually the show is stunning and it even has a few special effects thrown in for good measure.

The show is shockingly being evicted from the Winter Garden Theatre next year so sadly as of the time of writing this it will be shutting very shortly so if you live near New York or have a holiday planned to go there, please get tickets to see Beetlejuice. I had never seen the film so knew very little about the plot but I absolutely loved the musical – it will not disappoint if you get tickets.

  • Dear Evan Hansen

If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all you’ll know Dear Evan Hansen was always going to be in my favourites list. I was lucky enough to see this show twice this year (Broadway and West End production) and words cannot describe how much I adore this show.

Dear Evan Hansen makes me uncontrollably cry more than anything I have ever seen but in a good way! This show really connects to so many people, myself included and I had to wait along time to see the show as it’s been a while since I was last in America and it wasn’t in London at the time but it was completely worthwhile. If you’ve not seen the show before I can only urge you to go and see it because its fantastic.

This show is a game changer in musicals for me. It’s such a simple story, the stage design is even simpler but it offers so much. The story is the real driving point, top that off with songs that you will listen to on loop for the foreseeable future and characters that everyone can relate to, it really cements itself as a musical that will stand the test of time.

I just can’t fully put into words how much I love this musical but if you get the chance to see it you really should take the opportunity to go!

Music

Like with the books I have got this from my Spotify wrap up and it looks like 2019 was truly the year of musicals.

  • Ben Platt

Number one on my list this year is Ben Platt. It’s not a surprise that Ben Platt ended up as number one as not only have I listened to his own album (Sing To Me Instead) on repeat, my listening of Dear Evan Hansen and The Politician is also classed as Ben Platt.

Ben Platt has quite a unique voice. I feel like you’ll absolutely love him or won’t like him at all. His voice for me truly gives you chills during some of his song – he is crazily talented. My favourite from his album is If I Dont Live Forever but I feel if you’ve not heard his music before a good place to start would be with the singles Bad Habit and Rain.

I was lucky enough to catch Ben Platt’s Radio City show which is going to be on Netflix in the new year and I can confirm he is vocally as incredible in real life as on CD. If you like Ben Platt in the slightest I can’t recommend seeing him live enough.

If you’ve never heard of him, check out his album or wait for the Netflix concert!

  • Will Roland

Will Roland being second in my top artists of the year really surprised me. This has obviously come from my obsessive listening of the Be More Chill cast recording (with probably abit if Dear Evan Hansen thrown in for good measure) as I was so excited to see the show on Broadway…then it shut early!

Will Roland is someone who I am desperate to see perform live. He has such an expressive voice and I can only imagine how fantastic he must be actually in a show.

The Be More Chill Broadway Cast Recording is one of my favourites. I’ve mentioned this before on my blog but I actually prefer the Broadway cast to the original recording. For me, Will Roland has the perfect voice for Jeremy and I think the songs sound even better when he sings them.

The whole album is good from start to finish and you can see how the whole thing went viral and brought the show back to Broadway.

I’m sure Will Roland will feature highly in my Spotify list in 2020 too as Be More Chill comes to London so you already know the obsessive listening is going to return!

  • Taylor Swift

I know I said I was only going to be doing two options for each but I feel like Taylor Swift needs a special mention. I know based on last.fm that I’ve listened to Taylor a lot this year but a lot of the ways that I listen to her won’t have been counted online. I play her music so much on vinyl and on my iPod which is so old it isn’t Spotify compatible.

Taylor Swift is one of those go to artists that you can chose any of her albums, play from start to finish and love every single song that’s on it.

I already know she’ll feature very highly next year as I get to see her headline Glastonbury which I already know is going to be one of the highlights of my year.

Ben Platt – Radio City Music Hall

by melissay1, posted in Music, Theatre, travel

Still continuing on my theme of blog posts from when I went to New York last month comes todays post about Ben Platt’s concert at Radio City Music Hall. It was quite a while ago now but I love Ben Platt so I really feel like I still wanted to post this up.

I have been a fan of Ben Platt for a while now after joining the fan train from his role as Evan in Dear Evan Hansen. However, in the UK I don’t think he’s popular enough yet to do a countrywide tour and when he did come to London earlier in the year I had already tickets for another event at the other end of the country so I couldn’t go – gutted was an understatement. So it’s safe to say when he announced a one off date in New York and it fell when I happened to be on holiday there at the same time that I was thrilled to finally get the opportunity to see him perform.

Radio City Music Hall is one of those iconic American venues. so many shows and award ceremonies have taken place in that venue. It’s somewhere that each time I go to New York I think about going on the tour of the building but for various reasons it’s just never happened. If you’ve never been to Radio City Music Hall before from the moment you step into the lobby you’re in awe. It’s a pretty spectacular entrance hall and from the second you step foot through the door its clear why this venue was chosen for Ben Platt’s one off show. It was certainly more special than your average concert venue which was only fitting considering that Netflix was filming the entirety of Ben Platt’s concert that night.

I had such high expectations from the concert and Ben Platt didn’t disappoint in the slightest. I love the slight awkwardness that he has on stage, I love how he engages with the audience between songs and I could listen to him sing for hours. His voice is phenomenal and it’s so refreshing to go and see someone perform live and they sound just as incredible as they do on the album without needing any fancy dancing or set to distract you from his voice. Vocally, Ben Platt must be one of the best around at the moment and hearing him sing in person truly gives you chills at various points.

Truthfully, I believe Ben Platt to be a lot like marmite. He has quite a unique voice and I think that you’ll even really love his music or not be a fan. I obviously fall in the really love his music category so for me I absolutely loved the concert from start to finish. Ben Platt performed songs from his Sing To Me Instead album and even through in a performance of his newly released single, Rain. My personal favourite from the night was the song, If I Don’t Live Forever, which is my favourite song from the album and somehow manages to come across even more incredibly live.

The set was simple, it was a small rounded stage – nothing flashy in the slightest. I expected more of an over the top production with it being filmed for Netflix but to be honest, Ben Platt doesn’t need it. His voice is all that is needed for him to put on a great show and the simplicity somewhat reflects the scenes in his latest Netflix show, The Politician, in which he sings at various points throughout. What I liked about the stage was that it also highlighted the talents of the band and backing singers as they weren’t pushed at the back, they even had a moment to shine themselves which I found quite refreshing for a concert.

I still can’t quite believe that I was lucky enough to be in the audience for this concert. Ben Platt has one incredible voice and it was fantastic to be able to watch him perform. What’s even more exciting that sometime in the future we’ll be able to watch the show on Netflix and I know I for one cannot wait to sit through the show again!

Sanctuary Tour – Aly & AJ

by melissay1, posted in Music

Changing it up from my usual Sunday book blogging this week as I recently went to see Aly & AJ in concert and I can’t wait to post this up, particularly as the European tour is very short so if you’re wanting to see them live you have to act fast as it’s sadly all over and done with on Wednesday.

Aly & AJ have been one of my favourite artists since I was at school, I was trying to pin point when I started liking the music and I think its probably a good 14 years ago now! I was definitely that kid who watched the Disney Channel 24/7 and one of my favourite shows at the time was Phil Of The Future which starred band member, Aly Michalka. Then when they started to make music together, Disney Channel used to play clips between shows and since then I’ve been a fan. I used to ask for their merchandise and albums for Christmas and birthdays as it just wasn’t sold in England at the time so its safe to say I’m a fan. Aly & AJ were the only band left on the list of artists I really wanted to see live and as they’d never done an overseas tour before I didn’t think it would ever happen unless I went to America to see them…well now I have seen them perform live and it was everything I’d been expecting it to be and so completely worth the wait to see them perform live.

I had a meet and greet ticket for the show. I have to mention this as I thought it would be like any other meet and greet, you know the drill, pushed in for a photo, a very quick small talk chat if you’re lucky but Aly & AJ kept the numbers low and made it the best meet and greet experience I’ve ever had. They took the time to talk to depth with every single person, introducing themselves, making an effort to ask your name and where you’d travelled from and they were genuinely interested in how you became a fan or just hearing about your life in general. They both made the conversation as if you were just talking to friends and must’ve spent a good 10 minutes talking with every single person, signing anything you wanted them to sign and taking countless photos. It was truly the best meet and greet experience and I have left with the greatest memories from it.

Tour support came from Audrey – to find her on social media search for @audreyismusic. I thought Audrey was such a great choice in support act, she was fantastic! Great vocals, a very expressive and lively performance and super catchy songs – what more do you want? Audrey performed all of her own music and I think if you like Aly & AJ’s music you will like Audrey which is why I feel she was a perfect choice of a support. My personal favourites from her set was Stampede which has only recently been released and Red Flag. Audrey got the crowd perfectly hyped up for Aly & AJ and I think a lot of people, including myself, will have watched her performance and gone straight home and downloaded her music. I know that I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on her social media pages and would certainly see her own show if / when she comes back to the UK.

You could feel the excitement building up in the room in the wait for Aly & AJ to come on stage. Everyone you spoke to had been waiting a very long time to see them perform and it was quite interesting how barely anyone was actually from Manchester and had travelled some distance to see the show. I think that alone proves how these few European tour dates were completely well overdue. Aly & AJ came onto stage and considering the relatively small venue, the amount of applause and cheers coming for them was like nothing I’ve heard before.

The first song of the night was Church, one of Aly & AJ’s latest songs from the Sanctuary EP. It was a great choice of an opening song with every single person in the crowd singing along word for word, something which continued throughout the night. Aly & AJ basically took a ten year hiatus between the first two albums they released and the two most recent EPs, but the set list was a great mix between both old and new albums. I had worried they wouldn’t perform any of the old music that I love so much so I was thrilled older songs were dotted in throughout the setlist, the first of these older songs that was performed was Closer, one of my favourites from the Insomniatic album.

The set continued with a number of songs from the two recently released EP’s. My personal favourite to hear live was Star Maps from the Sanctuary EP. However, every single song both old and new sounded incredible live and you can’t deny that Aly & AJ are really good performers. Vocally they’re both incredible and they know exactly how to work a crowd. I never thought that I would hear older songs such as, Like Woah performed live and it was such a wonderful experience to be a part of a crowd that thought the same thing but you couldn’t deny that the new songs were any less fantastic to hear live. For me, I didn’t realise how much I actually do love the new songs until I saw them performed live. The likes of Not Ready To Wake Up, Promises and The Distance saw the entire crowd dancing and singing along, loving every single second of the performance. Take Me was another personal favourite of mine to hear live, this was the first song Aly & AJ released after the hiatus and it is the perfect introduction to the new music and the chorus is particular was sung so loudly by the crowd. After performing an already jam packed set list, Aly & AJ left the stage after performing Rush. Although this song is from the first album they ever released, it sounds just as much of an anthem as it was when it was first released and for me it was my favourite of the older songs that they performed live.

Of course this wasn’t the end of the night as both Aly and AJ walked back onto the stage with the biggest smiles on their faces for the encore, I can only imagine it was just as good of an experience for them to hear crowds from a different country who clearly adored ever song they’ve every made as it was for the fans to finally see them perform. The encore consisted of an cover of Kacey Musgraves song Slow Burn, and although I have to admit I’ve never heard the original before I thoroughly enjoyed Aly & AJ’s cover. This led onto the title track from the new EP, Sanctuary, a song saying thank you to the fans which never seemed more appropriate as they were performing in a room full of people who had been supporting them for well over ten years. Sadly they only had time for one more song and of course it was Potential Break Up Song. I’m pretty sure that even if you’re not a fan of Aly & AJ that you will know or will have at least heard of this song so it only seemed fitting this was the final song of the night. Although the crowd didn’t stop singing and dancing along all night long, the mood somehow seemed to go from 100 to 110 during this song – to this day this song definitely seems to remain a firm fan favourite!

This tour was a long time coming and I really hope that Aly & AJ do come back to the UK one day. From the most perfect meet and greet experience, to the show that I’ve been waiting a very long time to see, to being part of a crowd that clearly shared my love of Aly & AJ…all this combined made this one of my favourite concerts that I have ever attended and if you get the chance you must try and see Aly & AJ in concert. I don’t think one person in that crowd walked out of the concert thinking anything less than wow, that was an amazing show.

Glastonbury Festival 2019

by melissay1, posted in Music, travel

Last week I could be found in the middle of a field in Somerset in a tipi (glamping all the way!) for Glastonbury Festival. I’ve been going to Glastonbury on and off since I was at school and to be honest I can’t imagine any festival in the world comes close to it. I mean where else can you see David Attenborough making a speech on saving the planet by reducing your usage of plastics, catch the likes of Liam Gallagher, Stormzy and Kylie on the same line-up and do a million and one things that isn’t seeing music performed, this year they even introduced Glastonbury On Sea!

I think I’ll probably do a few Glastonbury posts in the near future as I really want to write up my thoughts on glamping at the festival vs bringing your own tent on site, but for this week I want to talk about some of my favourite performers I saw at the festival.

Miley Cyrus

The minute the line-up was released Miley Cyrus was the name I was most excited about. I consider myself to be a massive fan of Miley and even went to see her on tour when she was still in her Hannah Montana days so she was always going to be in my favourite performers list. For me, I was intrigued to see her for the first time since her Disney days and boy has she progressed as a performer. Admittedly, Miley Cyrus is known nowadays as being quite controversial but you can’t deny that she’s a performer and vocally she is fantastic and has definitely massively improved since the last time I saw her. Her set list was littered with covers that the Glastonbury crowds knew, new songs from her latest album as well as her biggest hits, all whilst chucking in a few special guest appearances for good measure. Miley Cyrus well and truly got the crowds attention and I heard countless people declaring her as being their favourite performance from the weekend.

Lewis Capaldi

To be truthful I must’ve been one of the only people on the planet that hadn’t heard Lewis Capaldi’s music prior to Glastonbury. I have seen his face all around social media from videos he’s posted online and I have laughed at them but not once did I bother to check out his music. However, a friend constantly talked about how much she loves him prior to the festival so whilst I was there I figured that I had to go and see what the fuss was about. I went in to his set completely blind as to what his music / performance would be like and I absolutely wasn’t disappointed with what I saw. His music is exactly my cup of tea and I genuinely can’t believe I never bothered to listen before. I feel like he’s one of those people whose name has been hyped up so much that at fear of joining in with the latest popular trend you just never check it out but I enjoyed his set so much that his album was instantly downloaded the second his set had finished. Lewis Capaldi has an unreal voice, a personality that works so well on stage and I certainly have walked away from the festival as a fan and have told everyone how much I enjoyed his performance.

George Ezra

I have seen George Ezra a couple of times previously. I’ve always thought he was ok to watch at a festival but I’ve never really had an opinion on him more than he’s ok. Then last year I did a charity walk and one of the girls I did it with kept singing his songs including Shotgun as we were climbing up mountains, since then I just associate George Ezra with doing that walk and it brings back (somewhat!) happy memories. I’m not sure if that is the reason why I really enjoyed his performance or if he’s just really upped his game but George Ezra was one of my favourites from this years festival. Before seeing him at Glastonbury I’d only heard his most recent album either played on the radio or being sung half way up a mountain and I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded. I actually would go and see George Ezra if he performed locally now as even with a sprained ankle he put on one hell of a show.

Liam Gallagher

I think that if you play any of the Oasis hits anywhere in the UK people will always stop and sing along, so when you put Oasis frontman in the field singing a lot of Oasis songs its safe to say that it’s always going to go down well. I think Oasis is just one of those bands where people at least love the hits and know every single lyric. I’ve seen Oasis live before they split but this was the first time I’ve seen Liam Gallagher perform as a solo artist so I was abit sceptical as to whether to could deliver a performance to rival that of Oasis. However, he most certainly did and although much of the crowd was definitely there for the Oasis songs, when he weaved his own songs in they didn’t sound out of place in the slightest. I think many people, including myself, will be checking out his solo material now we’re back at home.

The Killers

I have to be honest, when The Killers were announced as one of the headliners of this years Glastonbury I was ever so slightly disappointed. I’ve seen The Killers live on a number of occasions now and I think if you’ve ever been a fan of The Killers or have even attended festivals you’ve probably seen them perform at some point over the years. I used to really like The Killers music but I’ve not been so keen on the more recent albums, however I thought that the performance was fantastic. I’d been quite vocally going around telling people how they just aren’t as good as more but the new songs actually came across really well live and seeing the performance made me realise just how much I did use to love the earlier albums.

I think my list of top 5 is probably quite predictable as they’re all big names. In most years at Glastonbury I’d usually tire myself out running from stage to stage seeing the last known names but this year is was just too sweatingly hot to even consider moving far from the Pyramid stage, so I ended up seeing most of the big artists who performed on that stage that weekend. Despite this, I wasn’t disappointed with who I saw and the above five artists were my stand out performers of the weekend.

Did you go to the festival or even just watched on television? I would love to know which performances you enjoyed, if I didn’t see that one I’ll definitely have a watch!

 

Taylor Swift – reputation Stadium Tour

by melissay1, posted in Uncategorised

If you don’t know this already, a fact you’ll learn about me very quickly is that I love Taylor Swift and have done for the past ten or so years now. Taylor is the one artist I listen to whose music connects to me more than any other, her lyrics are just so relatable! Top that off with the fact that her shows are, and have always been, magical and just a whole new level to any other show I’ve been to – so its safe to say I was always going to love the fact I could watch her latest tour as many times as I wanted on Netflix.

I was debating whether or not to write anything at all about the reputation tour on Netflix as I’m not sure if I’ll be able to write something like this without it being garbage, but as I’ve near enough watched it every single day since it was released on Netflix on the 31st December it naturally makes sense for it to be this weekends blog post.

Taylor spent the majority of 2018 touring the world with her reputation stadium tour and the Netflix show is the entirety of the show but from a closer than front row seat. The concert begins with a montage of Taylor throughout the years, documenting the negative comments the media has thrown at her throughout her years in the public eye. Taylor’s reputation is a key theme of this tour which is no surprise considering her reputation album was likely written around the time the negativity surrounding her was at its peak. Taylor disappeared from the public eye and now she is back keeping her private life to herself and doing better than she ever was before now she doesn’t care about her reputation.

The concert begins with …Ready For It? which by just the title alone was a perfect choice for the introduction to her stadium tour. This was a fantastic opener when I went to her concert and it is even more incredible watching on the Netflix documentary. This is then followed by one my personal favourites from her reputation album, I Did Something Bad. I just can’t explain how well this song comes across live and I feel that this song really showcases Taylor’s confidence in herself. Its from here Taylor continues performing songs from her reputation album and hits from her previous albums – with Love Story sounding every bit as current as it did when I saw her perform it on her Fearless tour.

A quick outfit change and Taylor moves on to performing her reputation hit, Look What You Made Me Do. This song is Taylor well and truly hitting back at the haters and the song is even performed with a giant snake raising up from the ground. Taylor has just completely embraced the haters but without being petty about it and it just comes across wonderfully on stage. Plus the choreography of the dancers is pretty amazing and one of the cleverest routines I’ve ever seen. I went through a stage last year where people I didn’t know were name calling me and that I was being called out when I did nothing wrong and I listened to this song so much at the time, its nothing like what Taylor went through but for me this song performed live is one of my favourites for that reason. I loved seeing Taylor embrace her ‘snake’ name on stage and I feel that her doing that gives people who are going through a bad time with their own reputations hope that you do get over it and grow stronger as a person from the experience.

This brings me on nicely to when Taylor speaks to the crowd between songs. Every tour I’ve been to her speeches just connect with the crowd and I know from my point of view, every tour I’ve been to of hers she always says the things that I really needed to hear at that point of my life and the reputation tour was no exception. This tour in particular I feel the message she was conveying of trying not to care about what people say about you and how your reputation is perceived to others is such an important one.

What I love about Taylor’s shows is her ability to make sure every single person in the crowd enjoys her shows. She had 2 smaller stages at the back of stadiums on this tour to ensure everyone had a very good view of the show at some point during the night. I feel like the smaller stages were many people’s highlights as it saw Taylor revert back to just her and an acoustic guitar performing stripped backed versions of current songs as well as a surprise mystery song from her back catalogue. The Netflix documentary sees All Too Well, as the mystery song performed that night which I’m fairly sure is most fans favourite song – this is definitely a nice touch for the Netflix show!

Back to the main stage, Taylor performs a mash up of Bad Blood with Should’ve Said No proving that the old Taylor is still around! This was one of my favourite moments of the tour and I’m sure it pleased both fans old and new. Don’t Blame Me was one of my surprise highlights of the show, I was indifferent to the song but when you see it live you just can’t help but love it and because of its live performance it’s now one of my favourites from reputation and one of the ones I’ve watched on loop on Netflix.

After the intensity of Don’t Blame Me, Taylor slows it down with just her and a piano performing a medley of Long Live and New Years Day. New Years Day was my instant I love this song when I listened to reputation for the first time and I’ve adored Long Live since Speak Now was released so for me I couldn’t have asked for a better part of the show. I know I’ve said this a lot but this is also one of my highlights of the show.

Sadly the show comes to an end with Taylor fitting in a couple more songs from reputation before finishing with We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together and This Is Why We Can Have Nice Things – two songs I never would’ve thought worked together but surprisingly do! It’s so sad that the tour is over as I could just watch Taylor perform for hours, particular nowadays as she has a real new found confidence that just oozes out when you’re watching the concert. Plus this show has stepped up a notch from Taylor’s previous tours yet maintained everything you expect from one of her shows.

The reputation tour is my favourite tour I’ve been to in years and if you can’t tell by this blog I’m so thrilled I get to watch it on Netflix. If you’re a fan of Taylor you’ll absolutely love watching and if you’re not a fan and have a Netflix subscription why not give it a watch? I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what an incredible show Taylor puts on.

Did you go to the reputation tour or have you watched the show on Netflix? I’d love to hear what you thought!