The American pop-rock band Imagine Dragons, headed by singer Dan Reynolds, and brilliantly supported by skilled guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee and drummer Daniel Platzman, left the Georgian audience wowed at their August 31st concert in Tbilisi’s Mikheil Meskhi stadium – many of whom had tears in their eyes and smiles of joy and appreciation as they sang along to the well-known hits.
Blog by Katie Ruth Davies
While GEORGIA TODAY was not officially invited to cover the event due to our GM’s political leanings (which, incidentally, do not affect our balanced and neutral news coverage in the slightest!), we went along anyway, because when Imagine Dragons is coming to the little Republic of Georgia, it is too good an opportunity to miss!
I took my kids (also fans of the band) for their first ever concert experience, getting there three hours early, as I was a little nervous, wondering if the infrastructure and level of security would keep them safe enough in the crowded Star Ring. I was impressed. Three-level entrance gates with friendly and helpful security staff, the rugby pitch well-divided and covered by top grade non-slip flooring that also allowed the grass to breathe (uptick from the environmentalist in me!), plenty of bars around to get affordable drinks (water 3gel – it could have been much worse!), numerous rubbish and recycle bins, and plenty of clear signage marking toilets, exits and zoning. Well done, organizers – BSA!
The Georgian support band Killages played an absolutely brilliant set of alternative hiphop songs in English, with an excellent graphics display and very impressive handling of the stage and crowd – especially as lead singer Gugamchr claimed it was their first such event. They even threw in a Georgian song that we could sing along to. The perfect warm up, and a band well worth the successful future that awaits them.
And then the crowd went wild as the Imagine Dragons team came on stage, belting out international favorite Believer, fast followed by other crowd-pleasers, Thunder, Radioactive and Bad Liar among them (according to Billboard, “Believer”, “Thunder”, and “Radioactive” were the three best performing rock songs of the 2010s – we can believe that!).
Paper (another environmental uptick, thank you!) confetti was several times shot above the crowd, bursts of smoke shot up at the most powerful moments of songs, and giant balloons were bounced around the stadium. Lucky neighbors living in the street overlooking the stadium shot fireworks from their balcony, complementing the display on the ground.
Between songs, animated stories were presented on the big screen, stories which spoke of love and appreciation of nature, of life, of personal growth. Indeed, Dan himself embodied these sentiments – at one point breaking off from the high of the singing to share an inspiring message for those struggling with depression, mentioning his own experience and telling us the value of staying and living out our lives to the fullest. This was, very appropriately, followed by “Demons,” which had many of the audience in tears as they happily shouted out the words with the band.
With tears in his own eyes, Dan thanked Georgia for its warm hospitality and beauty, and, perhaps unprepared for how well the audience had sung along, promised that Imagine Dragons would be back. We certainly hope so!
Blog by Katie Ruth Davies
