We weren’t going to let the rains stop us…
I got into George Ezra’s music a few months ago, with the release of his (underrated) single Don’t Matter Now. It was such a feel-good song that made me feel a little better about starting college and was one of those I played, and played until I was sick of hearing it.
Then, on a Sunday evening, a couple of weeks after his latest album Staying At Tamara’s was released, I decided to fill an hour and have a listen to it on Spotify. I was straight away in awe by my first listen of the first track Pretty Shining People (still my favourite on the album), but the rest of the album blew me away too. It’s rare that I’ll find an album where each track is as incredible as the last, but it really is.
So, of course I was ecited when my friends agreed to go and see him with me live, in my hometown! It’s always crazy when we have people I’m a fan of playing in my hometown (we had Olly Murs last year and McBusted three years ago), on my local green that in the summer I’ll meet my friends on.
Of course, since it had been sunny the past few weeks in England and had been shaping up to be the best summer ever, the rain would decide to pour down the day I had an outdoor concert – that’s just typical. But that wasn’t going to stop us…
Possibly thanks to the rain, the queue was a lot shorter than I expected, so unlike Olly Murs when I got there at 2, getting to the green at half 4 was plenty of time to ensure a good spot. I speed walked in front of my friends and managed to get the front row which I was super excited about, as I had been really hoping for it.
It was a good wait before the first act came on, just over an hour, but that didn’t matter as we had lots of room at this point to take photos and the like. It’s always a bit of fun using the hashtag ‘#LythamFestival’ on Twitter to get on the big screens, then getting frantically excited when you are featured and taking millions of photos of the screen to capture it before it moves onto more tweets.
The first band, The Tailormade came on at quarter to seven – they had supported Olly Murs last year so I knew what to expect, and they were similar to last year, performing the same Kayne West cover. The next support was Rae Morris, a past pupil at my own college, whose music I’d describe as having quite a haunting sound, accompanied by some interpretive dance and an outfit that couldn’t get any redder if it tried.
The other main act on the bill alongside George Ezra was Emeli Sande, who I was looking forward to as I know a lot of her music, especially the older stuff. I loved her slower songs such as Clown and Read All About it, but Wonder was my favourite as the crowd got really into it. She also waved at my friend and I was super excited to get a photo of it – I didn’t even realise I had managed to capture it until the day after!
Emeli performed a pretty lengthy setlist, she was on for about an hour which meant it was getting on a bit by the time George Ezra came on. The wait between the two of them seemed to last forever as everyone was impatient and rather squished. The only thing about being at the front was I seemed to get a bit squished with everyone at the sides of me, but I would rather be squished at the front to a barrier than in the middle of lots of people!
He finally came on at ten to ten, which I was really ready for by that point. He began with Cassy O’ which the crowd all got really into, shouting the lyrics at the top of our voices, it was super exciting.
He continued with songs such as Get Away and All My Love off his new album. As I mentioned earlier, my favourite song off his new album is Pretty Shining People, so that was a real highlight for me, it was incredible live!
It was also great to hear some of his older, well-known songs too such as Blame It On Me and Listen To The Man, a song I really like. I have been raving about one of his latest singles, Paradise for months so of course I was excited for that one.
I love how he explained how he came to write each song before he played it, and that was the case when introducing Paradise – he said he thought of the beginning of a song, wrote in his phone and didn’t come back to it for ages, then said ‘it goes my love… my love…’ and we all burst into the intro of Paradise.
I got really excited as of course, I love it, and after we sang the intro he gave me a thumbs up which was a really exciting moment! You can never be sure whether it was really to you but thanks to my friend yelling behind me ‘you got a thumbs up Erin!!’ and the fact I probably looked like an over-excited maniac singing along, I am quite convinced about this one.
The set only lasted an hour which, made sense as he came on so late, but was not long enough as it totally flew by! He ended with a couple of greatest hits, latest single Shotgun which got to number one (the average crowd goer was most excited about this one, people had been shouting ‘play Shotgun’ all night), and finally Budapest, the first ever song I heard of his.
It was definitely a wonderful night, not only as it was so close to home but because the concert was really good. I would definitely recommend him live – I’m actually devastated there’s no tickets left at my nearest venue for his next tour, although it could be said nothing would ever beat the front row of my hometown.
