Thursday, November 21, 2013

OneRepublic Live in Manila!

Okay so this blog post is two weeks late. However, I was looking forward to this concert for a really long time - I bought the tickets in late August, more than two months before the show - so I definitely still need to write about it. :)

I watched OneRepublic when they performed in Manila last November 6. Unlike the concert of The Killers where I was in the "mosh pit", my friend Meg and I sat some distance away from the stage at Upper Box B. I arrived shortly before 8pm, which was when the show was supposed to start, and to my initial dismay, I saw that the Smart Araneta Coliseum looked like it was only half full and I started feeling bad for OneRepublic. However, the show didn't start until about 30 minutes later (which was good as I had time to eat the overpriced Jamaican patties I bought there before getting fully settled). Just as the show was about to start, I realized that the coliseum was now packed. Awesome!


I have only one album of OneRepublic - the first one, Dreaming Out Loud - and I knew only a few of their songs from their succeeding albums (pretty much only those that they released internationally like Secrets, All the Right Moves, Good Life, and Feel Again, all of which they performed). This, of course, didn't stop me from fully enjoying their concert. What was fantastic was that most of the crowd seemed to know every song that they played that night. Every time they would start a new song, the crowd would go wild and in several cases, the people in the audience would be singing along. My friend Meg told me that she didn't expect to enjoy the concert as much as she did (she had already watched them perform live before in Singapore). You could sense that OneRepublic were feeding off all this positive energy, because at some point during the show, Ryan Tedder mentioned that they want to come back to the Philippines and do two shows! Their post on twitter after the concert proves just how much they enjoyed their concert here.


While I've always known Ryan Tedder to be a fantastic vocalist, hearing him live just made me a much bigger fan. He was able to easily slip from soft to loud and he effortlessly switched from chest tone to head tone like it was nothing. His ability to sing falsetto with just as much volume and projection as his normal chest voice was impressive, and he showcased his lung power by belting out some really powerful notes. He even went absurdly high in his falsetto range and each time he did, he got everyone in the crowd to cheer wildly. He also showed his artistic ability and control by playing around with his voice, going jazzy and stylizing a lot of notes. Absolutely brilliant!


I first discovered OneRepublic when I heard Apologize on the radio several years ago. Granted, what I heard was the Timbaland version. However, I was so drawn to that song that I searched it on youtube and kept playing it. I ended up buying both OneRepublic's "Dreaming Out Loud" CD and Timbaland's "Shock Value" CD. I even sang that song twice in company events and people had come to relate that song to me (it was a staple in my karaoke repertoire haha). So it was natural that the one song I was looking forward to hearing the most was Apologize. I wasn't disappointed. They even tossed in a bit of audience participation that made the experience really unique. Check out this video of their performance of Apologize:


video uploaded in youtube by isparkleen

I now know what I want for Christmas - the OneRepublic "Native" album! LOL I am hoping that they do come back to the Philippines like they said. If they do, I am definitely going to watch again and I will even try to get a front-row seat. :)
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)