May | 2013 | Shuffle

After discovering a few new local bands I felt I should mention some musicians I can’t get enough of lately, outside of Sheffield. I have a pretty diverse taste in music so don’t be confused that you’re seeing rap followed by rock, etc…

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Seriously can’t get enough of these guys at the minute. The new track ‘Can’t Hold Us‘ is one of the catchiest songs I’ve heard in ages, and while it may start off too fast for me to sing along to, the chorus certainly isn’t and I can already picture the chants being shouted back to them at festivals. It’s an upbeat, feel good song and definitely one that I imagine will be huge this summer. I’ve only given their album The Heist a few listens at the minute, but so far so good. Check it out on Spotify.

Fall Out Boy
ARE BACK. After disappearing off the face of the music world for quite a while, they’re back with a brand new album Save Rock And Roll. And it doesn’t disappoint. A lot of bands when they go off and sneakily write a new album come back with a completely different sound, but this is simply Fall Out Boy doing what they do best, with their alternative/pop punk sound. They’ve done a bunch of collaborations too, with the likes of Big Sean and even Elton John making appearances, with the latter joining the band for the album’s title track.

I never thought I’d get the chance to see Fall Out Boy live again after I did in 2008 (god that makes me feel really old) but I’ve just splashed out on a Leeds festival ticket so they are definitely on my ‘who to see’ list.

Imagine Dragons
It was a only in the Easter holidays when I was sat with the music channels on my TV and ‘Radioactive’ came on, and I knew I’d heard it before and really liked it so took note of the band singing it. Since then I’ve been listening to their album Night Visions non-stop and I’ve realised just how good they are. Full of festival ready singalongs such as ‘On top of the world’ these guys are gonna find themselves with an even bigger fanbase in no time.

Toning it down slightly for slower tracks like ‘Bleeding out’ and my personal favourite ‘Demons’, the bands front man Dan Reynolds certainly fails to disappoint with a voice like that.

Listen to their album here.

Of Monsters and Men
Their 2012 ‘My Head Is An Animal’ album is full of infectiously catchy choruses such as those in ‘Little Talks’ and ‘Mountain Sound’ that will instantly put you in a good mood. It’s also really nice to hear a band with a combination of female and male vocals too which is what stood out to me. Whatever music you’re in to, they have such a different but easy listening sound that I think they’d be hard to dislike. With such a wide selection of instruments to create such unique, melodic sounds and their contrasting vocals its hard to compare them to anyone else.

I might be a little slow jumping on the bandwagon with these, my reason for thinking so being that ‘Little Talks’ already has over 58 million views on YouTube, but if you haven’t listened to them before than I definitely recommend you do.

2013 is definitely going to be the year for this band, with them playing loads of gigs over the summer including V Festival and Glastonbury.

Okay so I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve been a McFly fan since they started out nearly 10 years ago. I’ve seen them live an uncountable number of times, and loved every minute. But I can safely say last night was the best fun I’ve ever had at a gig of theirs.

This was due to a number of factors. The fact I love their music, yes. The fact we were stood right at the front of the stage, definitely! And partially down to the vodka too I guess, which cost an extortionate price of £5.50, I repeat: FIVE POUNDS FIFTY. To our annoyance we also found that not once were our bags, or barely even our tickets checked once in the venue, so we could have sneakily brought our own drinks in for free.

But whatever, this was my view for the evening, so I certainly wasn’t complaining…

Being this close, we could have been conscious of the boys being able to see us singing our hearts out and dancing around like loons, but that didn’t stop us. And although we didn’t quite get dragged up on to the stage, or the marriage proposals that myself and Lottie were after, between us we did manage to get a plectrum plus Dougie’s water bottle. Well we stole that from the stage, cos THAT’S HOW CLOSE WE WERE.

So, I should get down to mentioning the gig itself. The tour was called ‘Memory Lane’, after the song from their 2005 album Wonderland, which is literally one of my ultimate favourite songs of theirs. And although at first I thought, oh yay another greatest hits tour, with this year being their 10th anniversary as a band it seems pretty fitting.

Support came from a band called ‘The Vamps‘, we didn’t manage to catch them as they were on quite early but I’ve been told they were good. From looking on their YouTube page I can see why they were chosen to support McFly, they’re young, alright looking and they’ve even done a mega cringey version of McFly’s song ‘That Girl’, amongst various other pop covers including One Direction and Taylor Swift.

McFly came on at an unusually early time of around 8.45, but maybe it came round quicker due to the nights ‘host’ Ant Brant (or as they called him ‘Mr Antastic’) keeping the audience entertained for a short while. I say entertained lightly, because sorry but he’s really not very funny. Now if anyone remembers the band V (around back in the early McFly days and sang ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’, he was a member.

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The show began with an acapella version of ‘Memory lane’, but soon enough the curtains dropped to reveal their impressive stage set up, the distinctive intro to ‘That Girl’ kicked in, and the whole place went nuts.

The set list all in all was great. On top of all of their greatest hits including ‘5 Colours In Her Hair’ and ‘Obviously’, they were sure to please their older fans by performing some album favourites that haven’t been played live for a long time. One of the best parts of the set for me was when they played my favourite 3 songs from the radio:ACTIVE album: ‘Corrupted’, ‘Nowhere Left To Run’ and ‘Lies’.

They then toned it down for a short while, with Tom putting down his guitar and moving over to the piano as they performed a brilliant stripped down version of ‘I’ll be OK’, followed by the ballad; ‘Bubblewrap’.

Not wanting to let their audience get bored, naturally after the band had performed ‘Smile’ we were greeted with Danny stopping the show to request various hats to be brought out for each member. Ant Brant returned to the stage, the sax players even stepped down to join the band, and they performed a cheerful medley of covers consisting of ‘It’s Alright’, ‘Don’t worry Be Happy’, and ‘Y.M.C.A’.

The show was soon to come to an end, with Tom announcing before they played the full version of ‘Memory Lane’ that it was their last song. For Dougie to then pick up his setlist and inform everyone that it wasn’t, it was in fact just the encore and that they would soon be returning to play three more. But in all fairness everybody knew that anyway, what band doesn’t do an encore?

Off they went for a minute or so, and as they came back and Tom picked up his pink ukulele we knew what song was coming next. After a good sing and dance to ‘Love Is Easy’ with it’s catchy chorus and ‘do do do do dooo’s’, it was time for ‘All About You’. They then went on to end their 1 hour 45 minute set with what was definitely the best and most heartfelt singalong of the night: ‘The Heart Never Lies’. All in all I couldn’t have enjoyed it more, and whatever your opinion is of bands like McFly, you really can’t deny their talent once you’ve seen them live. Even my dad would agree there, I only ever had to beg him once to accompany me in seeing them live (when I was 11) and he still happily came along again!

I took a few video’s, YouTube destroys the quality of them a fair bit, oh and sorry about our singing haha…

Corrupted: