For years us Malaysian fans have been begging and dreaming for Keshi to make a stop here – and on the 2nd and 3rd of December, Keshi made our dreams come true at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Hall during his HEAVEN/HELL Tour 2022! With it being his first ever time touring in Asia, it’s safe to say we were all anticipating a great show and we definitely weren’t disappointed.
The show opened with Japanese producer and artist, Rei Brown. With music of a similar genre to Keshi’s, his opening performance was one that many of us enjoyed as well. The Indie pop singer performed a few of his songs for us, including: ‘Honest’ and ‘Forever’. After his performance, random mainstream pop songs were played and to our surprise the crowd still went crazy!
And alas, after several rounds of chanting “KESHI, KESHI, KESHI!” The lights dimmed down and a montage of pictures with lyrics from his song ‘blue’ signalled the man of the hour when he walked out and everyone just lost it – it was a mixture of cheering and “I LOVE YOU KESHI!” or both at the same time. The montage then transitioned into his opening song ‘GET IT’ accompanied with visuals on the big screen and big bright lights that matched the rapid beat of the song. Everyone could feel the energy levels of both Keshi himself and the crowd shooting through the roof!
Before starting his next song, he gave us a “WHAT THE F*** IS UPPPPP!!” followed by a few more words of greetings to which we all responded by screaming our lungs out, before getting into his hit single ‘SOMEBODY’ as the crowd sings along word-for-word, keeping the same ‘scream our hearts out energy’.
He instructed the crowd to “sing it with me, you ready?” before delving into another of his hits ‘beside you’. You could hear the crowd’s voices echo through the hall as we all sang along with him, song after song as if we’ve been waiting ages for this exact moment – well, WE WERE! Before starting his next song he told us “I feel like it’s long overdue – me coming to Asia” and we couldn’t agree more!
“Now how many of you guys have been listening to Keshi for a long time?” he asked to which the crowd responded with screams and cheers, indicating many who were present have been longtime fans. “There’s a small EP that I put out before ‘Skeletons’, I’m not sure if you guys have heard of it but it’s called..” Before breaking into ‘like i need you’ which is the name of both his song and EP – we loved his play on words! And to no one’s surprise at this point, the crowd once again went crazy as the intro of the iconic single played, drowning us all in an immense sense of nostalgia.
The setlist then followed in an impeccable order, combining songs from both his newer and older albums, balancing them out perfectly according to beat and rhythm. He performed his newer songs like ‘TOUCH’ and ‘MILI’, then followed by some of his older songs like ‘i swear i’ll never leave again’, ‘drunk’, ‘skeletons’ and ‘always’.
One thing we really appreciated and made us feel super connected to him was definitely the amount of interaction with the audiences. One of the funniest happened when all of us were scream-chanting for him to “TAKE IT OFF! TAKE IT OFF! TAKE IT OFF!” – yes we were asking him to take his shirt off, to which he replied with “You guys already know I can’t do that here.” Everyone burst into laughter because we all knew he was right. But hey, at least we tried.
Before we knew it… “this is gonna be my last song for tonight,” he said before performing ‘ANGEL’ – but it was bittersweet for us because although his performance was breathtaking, it was going to be the last one for the night…. or was it?
The crowd was determined to get one last taste of Keshi before saying goodbye, as everyone stayed in the hall and chanted “WE WANT MORE!” even when he and his band left the stage after ending ‘ANGEL’. Thankfully, they came back out! Not only did they return, but they returned with ‘2 Soon’ and the performance was an out of body experience. His vocals, his energy and the visuals all played their roles perfectly, giving us the most magical closing to his first night in Malaysia.
If we had to choose our favourite performance of the night, it would have to be ‘drunk’ where everyone was just singing along and waving their phone flashlights side-to-side. We looked around the hall during the time and honestly, seeing a whole crowd of floating lights while Keshi serenades us with his voice is an experience that we can’t fully describe with words.
Still couldn’t believe i get to see him up this close 🥹🥹 #keshiLiveInKualaLumpur #KeshiinKL #Keshi #KeshiMalaysia #hellheaventour pic.twitter.com/VznOTLnRtG
— mia | ticketing service MY 🫶🏻 MEET IKON SOON (@shuurang) December 3, 2022
All in all, the entire experience was one that felt safe and comforting. Thanks to Keshi’s constant interaction with us, it made us all feel like we were connected to each other. The way we would singalong to him word-for-word in synchronicity is something that you’d think is just a gimmick we see in movies, but it truly felt surreal.
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