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30 Seconds to Mars
Closing night of Dubai Music Week, 30 Seconds to Mars blew the audience away with a spectacular concert. The band was in Dubai to promote Jared Leto’s directorial debut with the award-winning musical documentary, Artifact. The band has sold out several tours and consistently hit billboard top charts with their music. Their most famous hits including; ‘King and Queens’, ‘This Is War’, ‘The Kill’ and ‘Closer to the Edge’. The band is composed of oscar winning Jared Leto, Shannon Leto and their lead guitarist Tomo Miličević. The show opened with a local band called Juliana Down, the most popular rock band in from the UAE. They opened with a bang of well composed music along with good interaction with audience both unfamiliar and familiar with their music. After their set the anticipation and excitement for the main show built up.
Ellie Goulding
The audience was in no way disappointed except maybe with the short length of the setlist. Leto’s stage presence is incomparable with many musical artists, he entered waving the classic 30 Seconds to Mars sign on a flag causing everybody to scream in delight. As soon as the first song started the crowd went wild with excitement. The highlight was definitely the musician’s interaction with the audience which made the experience all the more surreal. We won't forget the confetti canons and balloons which were released during the beginning either. Our favourite song was ‘This is War’ which was performed with immense energy. Since 30 Seconds to Mars has an incredible reputation for live concerts we were definitely expecting the best and we received just that. The band had exceeded our expectations. It was difficult to take our eyes of the stage. The performance was so mesmerising, that the partial deafness and excruciating leg pain from standing was actually worth it.
Winner of the BRIT Award for Best Female Solo Artist, Ellie Goulding, was part of the Dubai Music Week. After hours and hours of anticipation, Ellie Goulding opened the show with her smashing hit, featuring Calvin Harris, Outside- the seamless balance between Goulding’s vulnerable warble and the warping synths underneath. She looked radiant and full of vigour and the same could be said for the obstreperous crowd of two thousand. She followed Outside with all of her popular, billboard-topping hits like, “Burn”, “I Need your Love”, “Love Me Like You Do”, “Powerful”, “Figure 8” and, let’s not forget, her relatively new song, “On My Mind.” The background had its way of changing themes according to the genre of the song. Love Me Like You Do, was our favourite performance as she had the whole crowd completely mesmerised with her melodious voice. It actually gave us goose bumps. We have eagerly been waiting for Ellie Goulding to return to Dubai since her first performance for Sandance NYE with Paul Van Dyk, Roger Sanchez, Zane Lowe and Rita Ora. Ellie was well worth the wait!
by Ayesha Maqsood by Anusha Goyal