It’s April 25th, and Waiting for Smith is back in Munich. The last time he was here, he played a support slot, but tonight he’s playing his first headline show in this city at the Strom.
First on stage is the English singer Benedict Cork. He comes on and the crowd already cheers. The first song of the night is called ‘Down for Forever’. After the song Benedict asked the crowd “How’s everyone feeling?” and he went on to talk about it being his very first time playing in Munich. The second song is called ‘Wildfire’, one of the first songs he ever released, he says. After the song someone from the crowd shouts “Beauty Queen’’ at Benedict, which was a great transition into the third song of his set he introduced saying “I will play my new song that came out on Friday, it’s called ‘Beauty Queen’”. Before the song starts he follows this with saying that it’s emotional, as well that he wrote the song about three years ago during the lockdown in London and that it’s about him thinking how much he loves music, playing live shows and having human interactions, when that all he could at that time was doing live streams with his phone and facetiming his family. After the song he says that this track is from his album, which comes out on May 10th! Benedict also mentions “It’s been about two years in the making, I wrote it all over the course of a year, recorded it all last year.” He continues by saying that he’s now going to play the first song of the album, called ‘Soulmates’, which was released on October 12th last year.
For the next part of his set he encourages the audience to sing the words “Now I don’t you know who you are”, during the song ‘Funny How Things Change’. It sounded beautiful when he explained exactly what he wanted them to sing, and it sounded just as great during the song itself. The last few songs of his set were ‘The Lucky Ones’, followed by ‘Dream Of You’ and ‘Have A Good Life (See You Never)’.People were hugging during his set, clapping after his songs, smiling and happy to be there.
Now on is Waiting For Smith, alias of Harry Lloyd (vocals) and for this show consisting also of Tom Veltien (guitar), Jonny Brister (drums) and Rich Zbaraski (bass). The audience cheered when the set was about to start! They opened with the song ‘White Light Of Love’ and after the song Harry said “We’re on a mission to spread some joy”. The next song was ‘Hopelessness of Love’, fans put the flashlights on their phones, singing along to the words; “and I thank you”, and Harry encouraged the audience to think of the people supporting them in their lives, as well as reminding them to be thankful for what they have.
For the third track called ‘Trade It In’, he asked the crowd to shout the words “Fuck Yeah” during the song to “let it all out”. The fourth song on the set was ‘Raised Up’, and is the title track of his upcoming album. Fans started to dance the Macarena during the performance. The fifth song was ‘Let Light In’, and includes a part in Xhosa, a language spoken in South Africa. Fans hold up their phone lights for it and sing along. Next up were ‘Small Things’ and ‘So Much Love’. After this Harry let the crowd choose between the songs ‘Life She Don’t Lie’ and ‘Song for Grace’. ‘Song for Grace’ won! Harry was alone on stage and fans sat down for this one. Before the song ‘Nature’s Mind’, someone from the crowd said “we love you”, Harry responded with “Love you too”, he repeated it in German: “Ich liebe euch”. People chanted “Zugabe” (encore) after it. The band didn’t understand what it meant, as it was said in German and because of this Harry just started jumping on stage. To end their set, they did the song ‘Save Me’- people were clapping during it.
During the whole set the positivity and good energy coming from on stage got transported through the whole crowd!
