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YG Family 2014 Galaxy Tour | 4/5

SINGAPORE — It was a party of epic proportions at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Saturday evening. Not that anyone should be very surprised. After all, the concert boasted an impressive list of performers from Korea’s YG Entertainment, including big names like PSY, Big Bang and 2NE1. And any one of them performing alone would have sent the audience into a frenzy.

SINGAPORE — It was a party of epic proportions at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on Saturday evening. Not that anyone should be very surprised. After all, the concert boasted an impressive list of performers from Korea’s YG Entertainment, including big names like PSY, Big Bang and 2NE1. And any one of them performing alone would have sent the audience into a frenzy.

The great thing about having so many different acts in one show is that the audience never has to wait for more than a few seconds between each segment, which means there was virtually no lull during the concert — although that also means older-than-16 members of the audience like me had no opportunity to rest our deaf-from-screaming-fans ears or run to the restrooms.

2NE1 did a fantastic job opening the show with hits such as Crush, Fire and Come Back Home, thrilling the crowd with their polished dance moves, even though they just held their solo concert at the same venue last June. The girl group was followed immediately by hip-hop group Epik High, who got the audience laughing by promoting their own Twitter and Instagram handles and belted out tunes like Fly and Love Love Love (featuring 2NE1’s Dara). The boys of newly launched group Winner, who already have fans of their own, also entertained the audience with songs such as Smile Again and Go Up.

But it was, of course, the appearance of super popular boy band Big Bang that truly sent the crowd wild. The group got the sold-out crowd of 10,000 standing and jiggling to hits like Haru Haru and Fantastic Baby, while leader G-Dragon merely had to do things like touch his fingers to his lips and grab a bottle of water to get his fans screaming as if he had performed a miracle on stage. The show hit a more sombre note when Big Bang’s Taeyang acknowledged the absence of fellow band member Seungri, who had to skip the concert because he was involved in a car accident in Seoul on Friday morning, but assured fans that the 23-year-old was okay.

I particularly enjoyed the middle section of the concert, when the members of each band took turns to do covers of each other’s songs. G-Dragon sang his own version of 2NE1’s CL’s The Baddest Female, Epik High’s Tablo performed a lovely rendition of Big Bang’s Taeyang’s Eyes, Nose, Lips, and Big Bang’s Daesung and Winner’s Seung Yoon serenaded the audience with 2NE1’s Ugly. The highlight of the concert also was, for me, when Big Bang swayed their hips flirtatiously and tried to grab each other’s bottoms, as they did a cheeky cover of 2NE1’s I Love You.

But the true climax came when PSY, who came onstage only two hours after the start of the show, appeared on the scene to great enthusiasm — though we were not sure if the audience was more impressed by his vocal talents or his sense of humour. Speaking in fluent English — unlike many of his label mates, who could only repeat “Singapore, make some noise!” through the night — PSY got the audience rolling with laughter when he joked: “I know everyone is surprised because I am skinnier than you think.”

The self-deprecating singer also asked the crowd to be patient with him while he performed his lesser-known tunes, because Singaporean audiences were familiar with only two of his songs, Gangnam Style and Gentleman, despite his 14-year career.

Although the YG Family concert went way past three hours, the audience was understandably unwilling to leave the party — especially when 2NE1’s Minzy quite inexplicably said goodbye to her fans by doing a vertical split and pulling her leg over her head, prompting Big Bang and PSY to attempt to follow suit. But if Big Bang’s promise to come back to Singapore “very, very soon” holds true, it may not be too long before we find ourselves in the same place and with the same people, again.

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