Anne-Marie amazed by Malaysian fans singing “Rockabye” live to her

Most people won’t want to party on a Monday night but not Anne-Marie fans – oh no. The old and young alike (we’re talking young, like, primary school kids young) packed KL Live to catch the singer live in person at her first ever show in Malaysia.

Despite having some waiting to do, since the opening acts only appeared on stage at around 8.30pm, the crowd – even the kids – did not grow restless and were happily singing along to the opening acts’ performances.

First up were local artistes Amir Hasan, Bunga and Layla Sania who performed “These Days” (Rudimental’s smash hit featuring Jess Glynne, Macklemore and Dan Caplen), followed by Andi Bernadee who sang his hit singles, “Satu Peluang” and “Donde”.

(L-R) Layla Sania, Amir Hasan and Bunga performing their cover of “These Days” (Photo source: MORETHANGOODHOOKS).

Andi Bernadee singing his hit singles (Photo source: MORETHANGOODHOOKS).

After the opening acts left the stage, the crowd had to entertain themselves for about 15 minutes more before the main star of the evening, Anne-Marie, finally took the stage at around 9pm.

“Ciao Adios” was the perfect song to kick off the show, which saw a very energetic and lively Anne-Marie utilising the stage well as she ran from one end to another, greeting fans at both the lower and upper levels of the venue. 

Being very animated, it wasn’t just her facial expressions that were on point as the singer seemed to narrate her every song with her whole body; her hands busily gesturing while her legs even did some high kicks, befitting a decorated Karate champion.

Now who’d say “no, I’m not singing along” to this face? (Photo source: @CHRISCHEW).

After performing “Cry” and “Do It Right”, she told her crowd of just-as-energetic fans that she was going to switch it up a bit. She often sings about break ups with bad boyfriends, but in her next song, she was going to sing it from a bad girlfriend’s point-of-view. Of course, her next song was “Bad Girlfriend”, which she then followed up with “Alarm” and “Heavy”.

Before moving on to “Perfect to Me”, the singer told the crowd to holler at parts of the lyrics that resonate with them, so that she didn’t feel alone since the words were personal to her. 

Sure enough, the performance was punctuated with shouts and hoots as the singer belted out lines like “I'm not a supermodel from a magazine, I'm okay with not being perfect” and “So I eat my body weight in chocolate and ice cream”. (Speaking of eating, one of the Malay phrases she learned to say to her Malaysian fans was “Saya suka makanan kamu”, because she said that she really enjoyed eating Malaysian food).

She performed “Can I Get Your Number?” and “Let Me Live”, before teaching the crowd how to sing along with her for “Trigger”. She asked fans to sing the part of the lyrics that went “That won't fix it any quicker, we don't have to pull the trigger,” complete with a gun hand motion for the word ‘trigger’. Needless to say, fans were energetically waving their “guns” in the air during the song.

Her crowd of fans was always ready to sing along to her songs (Photo source: @CHRISCHEW).

After performing “Then”, during which she really let her emotions flow through, she prepared to sing “Rockabye”, asking her fans to sing along as well. She sang a bit of it just to see if her fans knew the lyrics. To her pleasant surprise, they sure did. Not only that, they continued to sing the full chorus all by themselves! The singer and her band gawked in wonder, unable to hide their amused smiles as the whole hall reverberated with the sound of the crowd singing the song to Anne-Maire instead of the other way around.

“Are you trying to make me look bad?” the singer joked when the singing died down, while at the same time praising her fans for singing so well.

For the next three songs that she performed as the show came to an end, namely “Rockabye”, “2002” and “Friends”, the crowd were singing along even louder than before.

Anne-Marie wearing a Malaysian jersey given to her by a local fan (Photo source: @CHRISCHEW).

Finally, before saying her goodbyes, the singer did a quick wardrobe change into a jersey emblazoned with the word “Malaysia” on the front (courtesy of one of her local fans, who was excitedly screaming at her from the front row) and took a group photo with the crowd, leaving a lasting happy memory for her Malaysian fans.

(Photo source: @CHRISCHEW)