Barely legal pop-punk musicians Luke, Calum, Ashton and Michael rocked the Mall of Asia Arena last March 12, 2016 with high-octane performances for their Sounds Live Feels Live tour.
Interestingly, the band starts the show with final track Carry On from their sophomore effort, Sounds Good Feels Good. They follow that up with crowdpleaser Hey Everybody!, a song for the underpaid dreamers, which ends with the crowd gladly chanting along. Next was Money, a song that would accompany your #TreatYoSelf nights, encouraging their fans to have fun and just let loose for the night!
Let me hear you sing this next song at the top of your lungs
The boys perform Disconnected, a track from EP She Looks So Perfect, which urges the listener to tune out their phones and be in the moment with them. The song ties up with the sentiment behind Don’t Stop, where the boys sing of “the girl that everyone wants to take home” and run away with her. The crowd goes wild and sings along, as if every one in the arena knows the lyrics to the chorus. Next, they sang about cinematic love in Heartache on the Big Screen, the perfect date in Waste the Night and breakup realizations with Castaway.
I wanna know if Manila can sing
Bassist Calum Hood takes the time to thank fans who “have been there since we’ve been in Youtube” before launching into Jet Black Heart. Next was radio mainstay Amnesia, which is a song penned by fellow pop punk rockers Good Charlotte. It was a sight to behold as their loyal fans held up color-coordinated glowsticks per section. The catchy Beside You has the boys longing to come home to be with their loved ones. The vivid Vapor and Voodoo Doll likens a girl to an addiction while End Up Here traces back to how he got addicted to her in the first place.
“Vanilla in Manila”
The band created a new song just for their fans in Manila, calling it “Vanilla in Manila” because they’re “vanilla men”. Drummer Ashton Irwin calls for everyone to jump around while guitarist Michael Clifford jokes about his blue hair not matching his red shirt and his OTP with Miranda Kerr. In true pop punk fashion, they sang about ditching the same, old boring job in Permanent Vacation and covered pop classic What I Like About You.
We are the kings and the queens of the new broken scene
The crowd calls for an encore and the band comes back with radio hit She’s Kinda Hot, a song for the new generation of self-proclaimed outcasts. They end their set with tales of American Apparel underwear, lipstick stains and tattoos in She Looks So Perfect. The whole crowd also held up uniform signs that read “Salamat, mahal namin kayo.” Talk about effort!
As they leave the stage, the boys clown around, reminding us that beneath all the fame, they are still the same old kids just having the time of their lives.