My Chemical Romance close off their Milton Keynes Stadium stint
My Chemical Romance say farewell to the 30,000 strong audience at Stadium MK with an emotional performance.
Photo: Beemer
What a weekend. I feel so grateful that not only did I get to see My Chemical Romance — a band that are present in some of my earliest memories — I got to see them twice with two completely different experiences.
The support acts on both days were incredible and did a really good job getting the crowd excited for the main show of Placebo and MCR. I would be a liar if I said I was overly familiar with Cassyette, Barns Courtney, Charlotte Sands and Starcrawler, but I enjoyed every second of their sets — especially that of the latter, who I will be listening to more of in the future.
Leading on from the support acts, Placebo were incredible; both days they blew me away. They are a band I find normally chills me out when I listen to them, yet their performance shocked me with how powerful it was, the visuals on the screens really complimented the sound they were producing.
Placebo played a perfectly balanced mix of their old classics and new bangers; I thought the setlist was perfect, and going off the reactions of the people around me I think most would agree.
It was on the second day when I was sitting in the stands as Placebo started their set that I actually understood the scale of what was going on around me. As I watched people flood onto the football pitch where I used to watch the MK Dons play with my granddad, it hit me how many people had been waiting for this moment. It was surreal.
It is truly impossible to put into words the excitement and overwhelming emotion I felt as My Chemical Romance finally took to the on stage.
I never thought I would get the chance to see them, in fact, they where one of a few bands that made me wish I was born a bit earlier just so I would have had the opportunity. But a decade after they were last in the UK I finally got my chance and it did not disappoint. As aforementioned, they are present in some of my earliest memories; specifically when I must have only been five or six years old sitting at the top of the stairs, in the house I grew up in, listening to Black Parade on repeat on an iPod shuffle.
When I say it was the best live performance I have ever seen, that’s probably an understatement. Leading up to it, I wasn’t sure if they would carry the same energy anymore — I was so wrong; the energy they brought into both shows was something that inspired me.
Opening with Foundations of Decay — their new single and instant classic — on both nights was a fitting way to start the shows I see mark the return and new era of MCR.
Apart from the first song, on both days the setlists were different while sharing a few core songs, on both days there was not a single song they played that I wished was replaced by something else.
The experience was one of beauty. The emotion I felt from the 30,000 people around me was unrivalled; looking around at the crowd and seeing all the torches people were shining created a sense of unity that’s been missing in our lives for a while now.
I have a huge amount of respect for all the bands, as there was a hugely noticeable show of empathy and compassion when fans were passing out due to the heat. They seemed genuinely concerned about the safety of the fans and took the time to assure this was minimised multiple times between the songs, assisting security in locating people in need and asking everyone in the crowd to take a calm step back to assure the people at the front weren’t crushed. While a simple concept, it’s been shown by other artists to not be something that’s excepted.
I’m not afraid to say that when Welcome to the Black Parade was played, both days I shed a tear. Although it’s not my favourite song of theirs, it is definitely the one that holds the most nostalgia for me.
By far the best-performed song in my opinion has to have been Mama, the energy was insane and seeing the Kings of emo bounce about on stage during their performances of this timeless classic was nothing short of fantastic.
Teenagers, I’m Not Okay (I Promise), Dead, Na Na Na and, as previously spoken about, Mama seemed to gage the best reactions from the crowd and for good reason.
A lot of the people there must have felt similar to me; like they had tripped and fallen into the early 2000s, where life was simpler and the stresses of the pandemic and the divides in our society were no longer relevant.
On the second night, Gerard Way said something that stuck with me; he was talking about his dislike for the control technology seems to have in everyday life. For me, this took on a different meaning, as I’m looking around and finally feeling like life might be normal again after the two years we spent growing apart from each other during the pandemic.
The words he said were: “we deserve to live a real life, with real people.”
That will stick with me forever.