Venue: The Padang, Singapore
Date: 21st September 2019
Promoter: Singapore GP Pte Ltd
Review by: Anna F.
Special Thanks: The Singapore GP Pte Ltd Team
Photos by Lee Jia Wen: J.S. Ondara | Lighthouse Family | Gwen Stefani | Muse
The second day of the Singapore Grand Prix saw the likes of mega pop star Gwen Stefani and rock icons Muse – both acts deserving of the spotlight.
With her signature platinum blonde locks and bold red lipstick, Gwen strutted the stage with confidence and purpose, cleverly juxtaposing her older evergreen hit singles from her No Doubt days like “Hey Baby”, “Don’t Speak” and “Just a Girl” with her more poppy tracks like “Cool”, “Make Me Like You”, Wind It Up”, and “Hollaback Girl.”
A good decade since last performing here, she brought with her vintage productions doused in voguish affairs and high-octane anthems that got the audience moving and transfixed on what else she had up her sleeve for the night. And for a 75-minute set which was jam-packed with funkadelic beats and reggae undertones, her performance was indeed a sweet escape.
It was a marvel in itself that the super-hot female of a singer-songwriter is still going hard after all these years. Only stopping to chat up the crowd and catch her breath every now and then, the songstress hit all the right notes, and made it seem easy too. She also made the night of an audience member, when she signed her arm for a tattoo.
Underneath it all, the bells and whistles – the cheetah print-clad dancers and their perfectly choreographed numbers, the big band feel that was delivered in a grandiloquent manner with the inclusion of brass instruments, the moody non-upbeat tunes which were brilliantly segued into and out of – all made for an extremely entertaining night.
Work so hard every night and day, she surely does as her set alone showed – but we all know now she surely gets the payback.
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Following the final zipping and zooming of the night’s race, a little more preparations and adjustments by the techs, and a lot of mindless waiting around by the fans, the moment we were all waiting for finally arrived, when the arena-ready masters of rock, Muse, emerged from the shadows in all their glory, only to blanket fans with an impeccable performance from beginning to end.
Made up of Matt Bellamy, Chris Wolstenholme, and Dominic Howard, the English trio performed hits spanning their illustrious 25-year career like “Psycho”, “Plug in Baby”, “Propaganda”, “Starlight”, and “Mercy”, just to name a few. The sheer insanity of “The 2nd Law: Unsustainable” in a live setting is also worth a mention, as the lads put the ‘mental’ in the instrumental, shaming electronic music in just under four minutes.
Although at times, the theatrics and overall sound drowned out the frontman’s vocals, it was nevertheless an ethereal experience to witness all the different elements coalesce into a spectacle beyond one’s imagination.
With their intelligent use of iridescent lighting, mind-blowing technical elements in the form of wearables (Bellamy donned a jacket bedazzled with LED lights at one point, and not forgetting those infamous LCD sunglasses he wears during “Madness”), and instruments from the future, the term post-rock wizardry encapsulates the complete hysteria of their set on Saturday night.
Peppering their verses with minimum dialogue, the English rock band still managed to stupefy the audience with their musical ingenuity. The arena stalwarts’ antics were frenetic without careening off-course entirely, and every element was calculated and perfected with precision, intention and authority. Even Chris’ basslines ploughed sexy new depths and luxuriated in some major fretwork at times, sending shockwaves to our eardrums.
And as Ennio Morricone’s “Man With A Harmonica” intro to “Knights of Cydonia” kicked in, making our hair stand, and the smooth harmonica melody reverberated throughout the field, it was apparent that their older classics are the ones that still hit hardest – and those are not just the words of a nostalgia bore.
Confetti explosions, zombie dancers, and outrageous outfits – minus the flying drones over the audience, the elements that we fortunately bore witness to provided for an almost hallucinatory experience, which culminated in the realisation that these guys have definitely mastered the art of a live show, pulling out all the stops to put on a futuristic display no one will soon forget.
Our hopes and expectations were completely obliterated – but in the best way possible.