On October 11th, my friends and I went down to Radio City Music Hall for LANY’s gg bb xx tour. I had been excited for this show for weeks since it would be my first concert after the pandemic.
I’m going to be honest — as much as I love LANY and their album, I mostly bought the tickets for Keshi, who was the second opening for them. Known as the “lo-fi prince”, Keshi is a Vietnamese American R&B singer and song-writer that my friends and I absolutely love. His more popular songs include “like i need u”, “drunk”, “beside you”, and more recently, “War With Heaven” from Shang-Chi. I listened to him so much throughout lockdown that finally getting to see him live still seems unbelievable.
We got to the venue early and watched Jake Scott start off the show. Although I only knew a few songs from him, he was incredible and I made a note to myself to listen to more of his music.
When Keshi came on for the second opening, we absolutely lost it. He had thirty minutes on stage and performed around 7 songs, 3 of which were unreleased songs from his upcoming album (so excited for that). As expected, he was amazing. I look back at the videos I took and immediately get post-concert depression. He closed his segment with “2 soon” and as he bowed, we reached towards the stage, mouthing “please don’t go”.
But our sadness was short-lived when LANY took the stage and swept the entire crowd off their feet. Since Keshi and Jake Scott weren’t the main performers, most of the crowd didn’t really seem to know their songs. They had come for LANY, and LANY definitely delivered. The entire show seemed to speed past. At one point the lead singer, Paul, accepted a pink cowboy hat from some girl in the front row and started dancing around with it. Later he was jumping off the stage, running into the crowd, climbing the audience seats, and singing from the center of the venue.
After a year of lockdown, I had forgotten how magical concerts are. The way the bass pumps against your bones, the flashing lights, the sound of a crowd singing to each other… it just felt so good to be able to experience that again.
The show ended all too soon. As the venue lights came back on while the confetti continued to fall we were all pulled back to reality.
Then the reality set in: I had a 10 AM class the next morning, and I was most definitely going to skip it.