Concert Review: Ryan Keen, My First Band & Sunrise Avenue in Stuttgart, Germany

Hey everyone, I hope all is well! My semester break started a couple of days ago and I haven't really done anything productive so far, apart from attending my first concert in 2014!!
 Most of my readers aren't from Europe, so I'm even more excited to introduce a fantastic band from Finland: Sunrise Avenue. I bought their first record in 2006 and I haven't lost it, so that was already a promising sign. I have to admit that I didn't listen to their music properly for ages (unless one of their songs was on the radio), but their vocalist was on the last season of The Voice Of Germany and that drew my attention back to the band itself (yeah he's quite cute, that was a reason, too, but shhh). Luckily I have a friend who's also crushing on Samu big times, so we immediately agreed on going when we found out that they played in my city. 

Shortly after we arrived at the venue, a security guard came out and started to hand out bracelets. This was probably the best-organised concert I've been to so far: The venue consisted of three parts: The first part directly in front of the stage, a middle part and the rest. The security guard explained that those with a pink bracelet were entitled to stand in the first part, so you can guess what we did:

Thanks to these bracelets we actually ended up in the third row and I celebrated a little when there was nobody taller than me standing in front of me (just for the record: that rarely happens). However, since my friend is quite tall, there were two girls standing behind her who tried to argue with her ("You're too tall, how dare you standing in the front???") and this is one of the reasons why I prefer concerts where most of the crowd consists of guys. They don't turn into hysterical balls of too much excitement and they certainly don't try to argue with you because you're "too tall." 

I have to admit that I usually don't have the highest expectations when it comes to supporting acts, but this time I was proven so wrong it was fantastic. Ryan Keen, a singer/songwriter from Britain, was up first and it took him only one song to capture the whole crowd. I've never experienced it before that a crowd was so into the first act, but Ryan had this warm aura which totally fascinated me. He could have played for the rest of the evening and I would have enjoyed it a whole lot. 

He reminded me of John Mayer and Ed Sheeran, so if you like any of them, you should give Ryan a listen (you should give him a listen anyway, he's one of the most talented artists I've seen live)!

Up next were My First Band. Again I had no expectations, and again I had a whole lot of fun! My First Band slighty have the sound of The Killers, they just added some more fun to their performance. I'm not a big dancer, but I danced through their whole performance because it was impossible to stand still.  These guys perfectly managed to transfer their joy of playing to the whole crowd.

As much fun as I had with the supporting acts, I was really excited when it was finally time for Sunrise Avenue. I only knew a handful of songs, but in the end it didn't even matter. They played a big part of their current album Unholy Ground what was great because getting new songs to listen to is always a fantastic thing. However, my favourite moments were those when they played the old songs everybody knew, for example I Don't Dance (hell yes we all danced), Hollywood Hills or Fairytale Gone Bad. Fairytale Gone Bad was my favourite moment of the whole show because the crowd basically sang the biggest part of the song alone and I just love seeing the pure joy and happiness in the band members' faces when that happens. 

The whole thing happened on Valentine's Day and I'm not going to lie - I felt absolutely fantastic when I could tell everybody that I finally had plans on that day which didn't include eating ice cream and being mad at couples. And it was just really cute when Samu asked what Happy Valentine's Day means in German and you know the whatsapp emoticon with the hearts as eyes? Yeah, that was me from the moment the show started until a day or so after.
Sunrise Avenue will be back in my area in August and I honestly can't wait to see them again.