On Sunday
the 6th of April I was at the Royal Albert Hall to see The 1975. I am
a h u g e The 1975 fan and they put on an absolutely amazing show.
I hadn't seen The 1975 in concert before, but I can definitely say that they did not disappoint. They put on a killer show which had the entire audience of nearly 6000 people on their feet for the whole night (apart from during Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You when Matty asked everyone to sit down; but I’ll get to that later).
This is the first glimpse I caught of the venue. I’ve never been to the Royal Albert Hall venue before and it is a beautiful building. I’m a bit of an architecture fan and was stunned by the detail on the exterior of the building.
The inside
is just as nice, you can tell it’s Victorian from the name and the
so-big-you-can't-miss-it statue outside the front of the building.
After
excitedly finding my seat and being given the seat closer to the stage by my
friend (whether she knew it or not) I had about 15 minutes
to take in the interior of the venue and it’s absolutely amazing.
The combination of the lights, the ceiling, the plush red seats (which not only had pull up seats like in cinema’s, but also swivelled left and right too), the layers of balcony’s and my closeness to the main stage, set the scene for an magical night. Looking around, I spotted several people running about excitedly wearing The 1975 tshirts and carrying what appeared to be merch, so I decided I wanted to be in on this and overly enthusiastically ran up the steps to one of the door people (I don’t know what their proper title is!!). I asked if I could get merch before the show began and was directed to door 6. I was currently at door 11 so was basically running around the corridors of the venue to get to door 6 and the merch stand. After dragging my friend along with me, we found the stand and I pushed my way to the front of the crowd and bought a tshirt and 2 posters. After being convinced it was too much to buy another tshirt, we returned to our seats and as I walked through those corridors clutching the posters and black tshirt far too tightly to my chest like it was my child, I have never felt happier. Even if the door lady did give me a weird look when I grinned so big you could see my teeth as I re-entered the main room.
After Marika Hackman finished her support act, there was a small break
before The 1975 came on stage. As the notorious 5 rectangles in the
background started to light up, you could feel the energy in the air that
something massive was about to happen.
They walked
onto the stage one at a time. First Ross, then Adam, George and then finally
Matty as the place exploded into a frenzy of screams and cheers. Even from the too-cool-to-care
20-something year old boys standing next to me who smelt of smoke and vodka and
cokes were shouting and screaming for the main man.
They didn’t open with an annoying speech about how grateful
they were for being able to perform at such a prestigious venue, they just dove
straight into their self-titled song The
1975 (the opener of disc 1 on their album) and then an amazing rendition of
one of their biggest hits The City.
Followed by Milk and
then M.O.N.E.Y. they played a few
songs back to back before Matty announcing to the crowd: “to all the people who
said this band wouldn’t work, welcome to fucking the royal albert hall”. The
place erupted and screamed even harder if it was possible to She Way Out.
After a few songs, Matty must’ve been interacting with some
members of the front row as I argued furiously with my phone to stop pissing
about at such an important event as he went on to announce to these lucky
people “what do you mean fucking Chocolate
we’ve been on 20 minutes?!” A definite highlight.
I should probably mention that (despite my phone being on 28%
battery and just generally being a pain in the ass) I took several videos and
pictures, but the videos will not make any cut of this post as they all contain
my awful singing/screaming, but most of the pictures featured are my own.
They played several of their album songs and some from their
selection of EPs. Heads.Cars.Bending
was even better than I could’ve ever possible imagined or describe to you.
There’s just something about seeing your favourite artist live that you can’t
put into words.
About halfway through the gig, they played the opening of my
favourite The 1975 song; fallingforyou.
I turned to my friend and desperately cried “THIS IS MY FAVOURITE SONG!” and as
she consoled my shaking shoulder by wrapping an arm around my shoulder and
pulling me close, Matty proceeded to announce that it was also his favourite
song. At this point the ambulance arrived and I was taken away. Well that was
probably the level of medical attention I should’ve received, I was absolutely
beside myself. I pretty much cried the whole way throughout the song whilst
trying to film it to re-enjoy later on (I watch at least once a day) and scream
some of my favourite lines and try not to collapse on the floor.
To add to the atmosphere; Ross, George and Matty all left the
stage to give Adam his moment. He played an indescribable version of Hnscc on his own, and for a song without
lyrics I felt a very strong connection with.
After the boys returned to the stage they played several
other hit songs from the album, including Is
There Somebody Who Can Watch You. It was absolutely stunning. I think it is
pretty much legally obliged that everyone see this so im going to drop a link
here.
He asked everyone to take a seat and remain silent throughout the song which some people struggled with but it was nice to hear a solid “I love you too” to a devoted fan. The performance was magical and a real privilege to watch. The raw emotion in this song and also in Me was a feast for fans lapping up the wonder that Matty has become to many devoted fans.
I'm going to put in loads of photos here because why not
The gig unfortunately had to end at some point but what a way to close. They took a few minutes to take photographs which have been posted all over Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc and I caught my own.
As the lights went down and I took my last glance at the boys I felt exhausted from all the blood in my head from headbanging and aching in my spine from my hair flips but totally ecstatic to have seen one of my favourite bands live.
The evening didn’t end there for me. I waited longingly for a
good 40 minutes after the gig right next to the stage door to try and meet my
heroes after the show.
It was kind of nice in a weird way to be squashed right next to complete strangers but also fellow fans who were still buzzing from the show. That is literally the door they would’ve come out of in the picture (!!) But as we approached 11:50 I really did have to leave otherwise I would’ve missed my train and been stranded in Liverpool Street Station until the next train home. After several mishaps with half awakely, not really focused tube changes from getting on the wrong line twice, me and my friend stumbled into the station, past a late-night cafĂ© and onto the 00:02 train back to Colchester.
I have never been so happy to see a share bag size of Walker’s cheese and onion crisps before in my life. We trudged into the Colchester train station at around 01:45 in the morning and after dropping my friend home I slumped into bed at 02:30 ish ready to have no sleep before going into college for my economics revision session at 9am the next day.
