It’s been a long time since I last wrote about attending concerts but there was one concert I attended this week which I knew I wanted to blog about, even before attending it.

If you do know who ‘The Click Five’ are, I guess you’re pretty familiar with the pop/punk-rock era of mid-2000s where I was still a student in the pre-spotify, pre-youtube and pre-social media days. In all honesty, I was really excited when new of their tour came, but then reality set in when I realised none of my closer circle of friends were keen to watch the concert. Most of my friends just know a couple of songs and it wasn’t ‘enough’ for them to want to pay for it. Months past and they sold out on their first show, added a second show and I was still hesitating up till the last weekend before the concert. As they haven’t toured for the past 15 years, there wasn’t any ‘setlist’ I could refer to, and I was only familiar with their first album songs. Furthermore, the full band did not reunite and the last video I saw of them was just 3 of them doing acoustic renditions of their songs, and they didn’t have a drummer. That made me hesitate a little more as I really love the beats of their songs (which are strong on the drums) and do I really want to ‘settle’ for just the acoustic songs? Anyway, I made the decision to buy the tickets after seeing the KL setlist (which was their first stop) and 2 main reasons that made me decisive – there was a drummer (not the original member) in their tour + a keyboardist (so that makes them still 5 people) plus they sang my all time favourite b-side track ‘Say Goodnight’ which was the last song of their first album. The new lead singer (replaced from the second album) has never sung this song live before, so wow, it was a done deal – I was going.

I settled for a seated ticket (with a middle view) that I bought off stubhub (FYI: this website is pretty much a scam in their fees, but sometimes you just have no choice), although I would have preferred to be in the mosh/standing area for such concerts but it would have been lonelier given that I was alone. Furthermore, I couldn’t ‘queue’ early as I was working from the office in the day, plus I would have my bag with me so it would have been pretty uncomfortable to be standing the night but oh wells, no regrets 🙂

Where should I begin?

Sometimes when it comes to the music industry, I really miss the ‘old days’ where friends could just form bands and have this slight chance of success. The best part of it is that they usually write their songs, which makes everything more special. These days, especially in the asian pop realm (okay fine, majority k-pop), most of the bands/groups are pretty much manufactured and trained to perfection, and my friend was saying that it was because that formula was proven to be successful and could guarantee cash returns (which is what investors want at the end of the day). I might just be yapping but I really love the older days when things were just a little simple. Well, I’m still glad that most of the bands I like and supported in my younger days are still kind of active – a1 (I last saw them in 2023) and Simple Plan (they just released a song with Avril Lavigne). Also, back then, the exposure to music were mainly from traditional radio and MTV channel which means that you got exposed to a lot of new music, discovering new favourites organically. I still remember that I discovered Simple Plan from MTV channel with their ‘I’m just a kid’ music video. I can’t remember how I discovered Click Five but I know I heard their first album song a couple of hundred times – when we still played music from CD players. Although I don’t think I had their original album.. if you know what I mean. Also, without the internet, without ChatGPT, we don’t really get ‘exposed’ to the singers as a person/individual, but truly focus on the music. Which is why I actually didn’t know any of the members names without doing a Google Search. Back in those days, we could only get information from print media like magazines and newspapers or tabloid news. This is such a far cry from how it is today. Singers/Bands/Groups can be portrayed as influencers, even before we hear their music. Fans can just pre-order albums in advance without even hearing a single song, which means that ‘music’ is slowly becoming less and less important compared to the ‘appeal’ that they are selling. I don’t know how things got this way but things are really so different now.. As much as I miss the old days, society progresses and we all move on..

Yea sorry for the long digression but these are thoughts that I want to revisit sometime in the future. How will the music industry continue to evolve and would physical concerts still be relevant or would we slowly evolve in the metaverse realm or perhaps just experience music through tiktok with just 15 to 30-second snippets? Gosh, I hope that day would never come but who knows ><

Let me start with the setlist (in case there’s anyone still bothering with blogs and find my post on google)

1. Catch Your Wave
2. All I need is you
3. Happy Birthday
4. Addicted To me
5. Time Machine
6. I think we are alone now
7. Good Day
8. The reason why
9. Don’t let me go
10. Throwback (Unreleased New song)
11. Empty
12. Pop Princess
13. Summertime
14. Hot to go
15. Mary Jane
16. Just the Girl
17. Flipside
18. Say Goodnight
19. Headlight Disco
20. Jenny

The Singapore setlist is exactly the same as KL, so I believe it would be the same for the entire Southeast Asia tour.

Let me try to recall my emotions from that exciting night.

The lights were pretty blinding for me up on second floor and the music was a little too loud at the start but I think they adjusted midway and things got better. As I typed, I am listening to their KL concert on Youtube (cause someone recorded the entire show) and ohmy, the first song’s quality was similar to my experience in SG where the lead singer did sound a little ‘off’. Catch your wave is a song from the first album which means that it was recorded by the previous lead singer (who decided to leave the group and go solo after the first album) and somewhere on wiki, they did mention that the new lead singer has a lower range which perhaps made him struggle while singing the higher range Catch Your Wave. Nevertheless, still pretty proud of him to sing the popular song despite not being able to deliver the perfect pitch.

The songs that stood out to me were really the First album songs – especially Good day, Just the Girl, Say Goodnight and Pop Princess. The most popular song of all time for them I believe would be ‘Jenny’. There’s something amazing about songs from that era is that you will usually know the lyrics to their chorus and you can yell it out with them. I guess they take this into consideration during songwriting somehow.. do they? It’s also crazy how I don’t ‘jam’ their songs so much these days yet the lyrics just ‘stayed in my head’ all these years. It’s not like I ‘revised’ the lyrics before the concert but gosh, the lyrics really flow naturally for me, especially those first album songs. Really iconic. These days, I don’t even remember much of the songs and even if I do, it is probably just the 15/30 second snippets from reels, and not the full song.

Another part I enjoyed is that they also did a couple of songs on acoustics (without the drums) – it started from ‘Don’t let me go’ till half of ‘Empty’. They had a couple of guitar changes here and there, depending on the songs they were singing and even for ‘Hot to Go’, they invited a fan up to stage to take over the lead singer’s guitar and play two cords for the chorus of the song.. and that’s just pretty cool? For day 2 (which I didn’t attend), they invited a local singer up on stage to join in for a song as well. Really cool to have that bit of interaction with the crowd to make it more interesting. The song that made it to my ‘hit list’ during the concert was ‘Empty’ – an emo-rock genre which is quite an enjoyable song for me. I like the drops in the song if you know what I mean.

Also, it was pretty unexpected but we did have a new song (like since 15 years ago?) which they wrote on the fly for this tour and they had the courage to perform it too. Pretty raw for now but I’m excited for the final masterpiece. The ‘throwback’ song was so relatable cause it has lyrics like ‘take me back to 05’ (which was their debut year) and yea, so relatable until I can remember the lyrics. There’s something charming about singing and playing the guitar together at the same time.. similar with artists that can play the piano and sing at the same time.. Looking forward to the actual release.. it better come!

Also, during the concert, they did mention like how they didn’t think that this reunion could happen cause it has been so long but despite not having social media (until only recently. Well, their Instagram followers are like 3k when I first discovered the account and it is 5k now), their songs were doing well on spotify (I had their songs in my saved list for a long time), which they said that it gave them the opportunity to do this tour and make a ‘comeback’. I hope this would continue because that was the case for a1 – and they are still active since reuniting 9 years ago. I guess it’s good to know that musicians can be a proper career for a longer period of time. I want to see my favs for a long time too.

Oh, and other was one part I remembered for ‘Pop Princess’ where he wanted the crowd to go low like bend down and do a jump together with them. I guess this is like a rock concert fun kind of a thing? I remember they have this quite frequently for Simple Plan where Pierre would make the crowd jump together which can get the crowd really high and jumping. Sometimes, sometimes I wonder.. I mean they get old the fans are also getting old so.. how many year more can we jump? hahaha.

Flipside was also a really lovely song which had familiar beats but I didn’t knew it was their song. Oops. Anyway, they saved the best for the last which was ‘Jenny’. There’s this portion where the crowd was just singing louder than them. Easy and simple lyrics just get the crowd going.

I really love physical concerts. I hope that it is something that never dies and that it remains something that I enjoy doing. If I get to speak to my younger self, I wouldn’t have imagined that the older me would be splurging money on concerts and having the opportunity to see those people that were only on TV. I mean back then.. you wouldn’t really think that these western artistes would perform in Singapore? It sounds like such a far-fetched dream but hey, look where we are now. ALL my favs (from the younger days) have performed in Singapore. I guess it’s also pretty amazing that I did grow up to be a decent human being with an income to afford such entertainment in my life. Times like these I need to remind myself to be thankful for having a job in such times of crisis.

Anyway, for my kind readers who bothered to read through my mess (yes it’s messy cause I don’t proof read what I write), here’s 2 videos that I uploaded on YouTube which I took from the concert – my 2 favourite songs!

I hope you feel the joy and excitement through this post. It has been 4 days but I’m still very living through the happiness from that experience!

^^