Seeing Queen + Adam Lambert In Concert

Queen at the symphony

Lead singer Adam Lambert

I was five years old when Freddie Mercury died, and he hadn’t performed live for most of the time I had been alive. So, we younger audience members might have been a little more welcoming of Lambert. 

What you realize when he gets on stage is that Adam Lambert isn’t there for karaoke. He comes out swinging, dancing up and down the stage, belting out each note, and going through multiple costume changes to fit the theme of a particular number. No, he doesn’t sing like Freddie. He sings like Adam, and he has the rare talent of singing other people’s songs as if it’s his own. That’s when you can see why the band hired him as the lead singer.

A side view

The show

The show opened with a giant crown revealing the darkened instruments and the opening bars of Now I’m Here began to play.  As the drums kicked in, so did the lights, the crowd and the performers who suddenly appeared in their spots with Lambert standing at the top of the stairs and strutted his way down.

That’s when you could see the discrepancies in the different ages of members of the crowd. Those under 40 jumped out of their seats and threw up their hands and their phones. Meanwhile, the older people sat and clapped or just stared in awe. The crowd went especially crazy with Under Pressure and Radio Gaga, as expected.

In large stadiums, vocals tend to get lost in the music. At first, you could barely hear Lambert, but as the show went on, the vocals became front and center as he belted out every note with personality and perfection. The band’s catalog of songs is so diverse that the shift in genres, speed, and vocal range have to be taxing, especially for someone who didn’t write any of the songs.

Some of their songs are better live (Hammer to Fall, Radio Gaga). On others, I prefer the recorded version (Bohemian Rhapsody, Another One Bites the Dust). But they made sure to play all of the hits and most of the fan favorites in two short hours without feeling like the set was bloated or redundant. You can tell that they’re far enough along in their tour that they have a rhythm down, but their energy level is still high.

What brought the fans out

A lot of the fact that the show was sold out must have had to do with last year’s film, Bohemian Rhapsody (you can read my review of the movie here) which critics panned but fans adored, reminding those that, yes, Queen is a good band. And they still tour. Wouldn’t it be cool to see them play live?

It probably also made a bunch of new fans who had probably only known the band existed for less than a year before purchasing their tickets. But who cares? That’s how a band stay relevant, by appealing to multiple generations of fans.

I myself am not a big fan of many bands or artists that were introduced before the 1980’s. Queen is an exception. I’m from the Wayne’s World era of fans who learned about Queen from the famous car scene in the movie. 

Later, I learned the sports anthems from watching The Mighty Ducks and mimicking my friends in gym class. I didn’t know that they were Queen songs. I just thought they were songs made up for hockey games.

Bells and whistles

A band as established as Queen can pretty much sell tickets with their name only. As a result, they could phone it in, and people would still go to see them just to say that they did. But this band has never been about going halfway. You can tell that May and Taylor still generally love to perform, with each man even taking turns singing lead on a few tracks while Lambert went to change.

May performed Love of My Life on a stool with an acoustic guitar at the edge of the platform that extended out to the crowd and encouraged everyone to light up the stadium with their cell phone screens. But this was as low key as the show got.

Most of the time, there were crazy light shows, rotating screens, smoke, and confetti. At one point, a mirror ball dropped from the ceiling and spun around , shooting beams of silver light into the crowd and on the stage. Sometimes the performers would be raised up. In one case, May performed a guitar solo suspended about 20 feet in the air while glowing planets rotated around him as if he were the sun in the middle of the solar system.

During Bicycle, a motorcycle appeared, and Lambert sang while leaning back on it as it rotated in a slow circle. At one point, a larger than life image of Freddie appeared leading his vocal warm ups at Wembley Stadium which the crowd repeated back to him. Sitting where we were, I couldn’t see Freddie on the screen, but YouTube helped me to catch what I missed later on.

Closing the show

Two hours flew by as nearly 30 hit songs were performed. Some, like Seven Seas of Rhye and Keep Yourself Alive, were shortened and transitioned to other songs in a medley format, but you never felt shortchanged by the cuts. Having no opening act also made the time fly by. There was also very little talking in between songs.

The band seemed to have an unlimited reserve of energy, never faltering, never missing a note. They were playing like they were never going to stop, even as the confetti from the stage as the final notes of We Are The Champions reverberated throughout PPG Paints. And just like that, it was all over.

Have you ever seen them in concert?

Share your favorite memories of Queen in the comments below!

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