After a run in Ireland and the United Kingdom, Corella’s ‘Once Upon A Weekend’ headline tour went onto mainland Europe. On May 19th, they played a show in Cologne at Helios 37. It was the Manchester-based band, consisting of Joel Smith (vocals, guitar), Ben Henderson (bass, vocals), Jack Taylor (guitar), and James Fawcett (drums), their first show in the city and it was packed!
First on stage was Luna Bay, a band from London. They started with ‘You’. After the song, the lead singer Connor O’Mara, said: “This is so lovely, all of you coming out early to see us, thank you so so much” and they continued with ‘All In’.
For their third song of the night ‘You’ve Got It All’, they made everyone crouch down, to then jump up when the chorus hit. The fourth song of their set was ‘Hometown’, throughout which claps filled the room claps were present during their whole set. Afterwards, O’Mara expressed gratitude by saying “Thank you so much Cologne, that’s beautiful” and Rye said, “This is absolutely beautiful, this is our first time ever playing in Germany”, to which the crowd cheered. Their fifth song of the night was ‘Video Star’, which they released in December of last year, and it was followed by ‘Sleeping Away’, which they played for the first time on tour.
For ‘Little Amsterdam’ O’Mara said, “Alright Cologne, this next song we need all your help” and explained to sing “oooh, oooh, oooh, ooh” whenever it came up. They closed off with ‘Call the Night’, and fans erupted in cheers, O’Mara said, “Thank you so much, see you next time” and they left the stage.
Corella was on next, right from when they went on stage they had great energy, and the crowd had great energy right from the start as well, which both carried throughout the whole show! They started with the songs ‘Puppets’, ‘Caught Up’ and ‘Head Underwater’. ‘Let On’ was the fourth song of the night, which was followed by ‘Monday’. Later he asked who had seen them before and who hadn’t and after that “Are you guys gonna come back again?” and the crowd cheered!
‘Say You Wanna’ was the sixth song, Joel said “Alright guys are you still with me”, fans put their hands in the crowd. The next song was ‘Let Me Go’ and then ‘Bloom’. The latter has the lyrics “This right here’s the life we’re living” and it seemed to be a quote for the whole gig, people had fun, danced, smiled and lived! Corella themselves smiled and had fun on stage.
The ninth song was ‘Laidback’, towards the end of it Joel started singing “bada-bada-bada-bada-badadada” and followed with “It’s your turn now”, after the song he expressed gratitude by saying “Alright thank you very much”.
After ‘Waterfall’ Joel said that the tour has been amazing and that it’s amazing that so many people joined them at the show in Cologne. For the song ‘Lady Messiah’, the crowd got split in half, first, the left side was asked to sing the chorus “She’ll never know. She’s my lady messiah”, then the right side and together as well. After the song they left the stage, when they came on again for the last three songs of the night Joel expressed gratitude again and thanked the audience for having come down to the show.
Fans truly turned up for mosh pits, as during multiple songs, ‘Do You Want It?’, ‘Drifting’, Come Around’ and ‘Barcelona Girl’, there was one. During one of them Joel even went into the crowd and joined them.
