Mandopop queen A-Mei dazzles Singapore crowd with 'Utopia 2.0 Carnival World Tour'
Celebrating her 20th year in the music industry, the first night of A-Mei’s ‘Utopia 2.0 Carnival World Tour in Singapore’ was nothing short of an invigorating experience right from the first song.
Throughout the three-hour show, A-Mei showed the crowd why she is the reigning Queen of Mandopop, with adrenaline pumping tracks, and soothing ballads, and in the process transforming Singapore Indoor Stadium into the biggest karaoke session ever.
Opening with “Fighting Ceremony”, and “Straight forward”, the singer came out in a shiny white ensemble that contrasted with her clad-in-black dancers.
Urging the audience to get on their feet and dance with her, the 44-year-old belted out “Are You Ready”, “On The Hill” and “What Do You Want”, all which are popular fast-tempo tracks.
No stranger to Singapore, A-Mei acknowledged some of her die-hard fans in the audience, both from Singapore and overseas.
“You might see that she’s dancing and jumping along to all the fast songs, but do you know that she does that for the ballads too?” A-Mei asked in Mandarin when she spotted one of her loyal Singapore fans jumping enthusiastically during her first greeting, drawing laughter from the audience.
One of the highlights from the concert was when the diva begun belting out a series of familiar ballads – “I Hate I Love You”, “Truth”, and “Want Nothing” – then asking her fans to take over the singing, which transformed the concert into a free-for-all karaoke session.
“I want to try singing the next song without crying,” the singer declared, asking the audience to turn off their penlight, and switch on their cellphone lights instead.
“If you have lost someone before, take this time to think of them and be thankful,” she said, subsequently singing “Listen to Me”.
The emotional track is dedicated to the late Chang Yu-Sheng, a Taiwanese singer-songwriter who led A-Mei into the music scene and was her mentor before his untimely death in 1997.
Without doubt, the biggest highlight of the night was when A-Mei took her fans on a walkthrough from her latest release in 2015 to the debut album in 1996.
Picking a song off each album, she performed some of the rarely-sung tracks such as “Journey” and “KATSU”, and also popular songs like “Brave”, “Early” and “May I Give A Hug”.
The popular kiss cam came on when A-Mei sang “Rainbow”, an LGBT-friendly track off her AMIT album.
Complete with rainbow-coloured laser lights and rainbow flags both on screen and in A-Mei’s hands, she was previously banned from performing the song in Singapore when she was here in 2014 for Spring Wave Music.
The displays of love throughout the three-minute track were met with booming cheers from the audience.
Having outdone herself with nearly 50 songs on the repertoire for ‘Utopia 2.0 Carnival’, A-Mei called it a night with her debut single, “Sisters”.
Perhaps her most well-known track, it was met with deafening cheers and loud sing-a-longs as the singer rounded off the concert.
While there was no encore for this three-hour long concert, the set list had been more than satisfactory for both fans and casual listeners.
Fans had to wait more than 18 months since A-Mei’s last concert in Singapore. Hopefully the next one will be sooner than that.
Follow Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore on Facebook.
