I finally got to see Sam Smith live at the Manila leg of “The Thrill of It All World Tour” at the SM Mall of Asia Arena! I remember regretting not buying tickets for his first concert here three years back. His album “In the Lonely Hour” was our soundtrack when playing mahjong back in the days so I knew all of the songs of that album by heart. I knew that this time, I just had to watch. Yes, I watched it ALONE!

I booked the first ticket I saw in General Admission because I knew I’d be going alone anyway, and that I really just wanted to hear Sam’s voice live. Yeah, of course his voice is legit – that’s Sam Smith for crying out loud! I just can’t believe how relaxed he is the entire night, despite belting out those notes. I need to learn how to sing like he does (wow), effortlessly switching from chest to head voice, to a falsetto that’s not full of “air”, if you get what I mean. I’m not a professional singer, nor do I have any training on singing, but I get it – he sings like that because he has good technique!

Going back to the concert, I was expecting most of the songs to be coming from the new album, because the title of the tour is after all – The Thrill of It All (the title of his current album). But, I missed a lot of the songs on that album that he didn’t sing such as Burning, Scars, and – The Thrill Of It All (surprise). Still, we got to hear his top hits from the past, my favorite rendition for that night being Lay Me Down and Money On My Mind (my first ever Sam Smith song). He did mention at the start of the concert that he didn’t want people to be leaving the venue sad and depressed – so I guess is team took care in choosing the right balance of songs, if not, adding in more of the upbeat ones like Omen and Nirvana to the set list.

It was such a fun concert that I wish I went with someone who’s as much of a fan as me! As I am running out of friends who I share the same interests with, that will be a bit of a challenge. Still, I’m glad I went because the moment Sam went up on stage and did his first song, I literally got teary-eyed and thanked myself for just being there! Haha. But the audience was great too, everyone was interacting and dancing up on their feet to the upbeat songs, or raising their phones to the emotional ones. I also noticed a lot of Asian neighbors coming to watch – there was a group of Thai people in front of me and some Malaysians or Indonesians standing in line to the hotdog stand outside. I guess music does unite people! I will also be traveling to Japan next month for a concert so it’s not an uncommon thing.

Anyhow, I talked enough. I haven’t posted in a while, but I will try to resume my daily blogs again. If you want to see some of my poor quality videos from the concert, you can head over to the Google Photos album I created. Click here to see some of my video recordings of the concert.