Despite feeling under the weather yesterday, I still made my way down to The Meadow at Gardens by the Bay for the first Jennifer Lopez concert in Singapore. (Heck, I paid for it hence I would go since I still am well enough to walk.)

When I arrived the place at about 8.20 pm, I was very surprised that there was still such a huge queue to get into the place. I would have expected that most of the people would already be in. Then again, I assume that everyone knows that Jennifer Lopez is a diva and wouldn’t start on time.

True enough, Jennifer Lopez only took to the stage at about 9.05 pm despite the 8 pm printed on the ticket. Then again, overseas, it is common to have at least one opening act so the main act only comes on stage at about 9 pm or so. In Singapore, we don’t have no opening act and we have to settle for standing around to chat while the music goes on over the speaker system.

Before I go on, here is her Singapore set list (do tell me if I got it wrong):

• Get Right
• Love Don’t Cost a Thing
• I’m Into You
• Waiting for Tonight
• Goin’ In
• I’m Real
• All I Have
• Feelin’ So Good
• Ain’t It Funny
• Jenny From The Block
• Hold It Don’t Drop It
• If You Had My Love (Acoustic)
• Until It Beats No More
• Let’s Get Loud
• Papi
• On The Floor (with a spanish intro)
• Encore: Dance Again

This is my view of the stage. To give you an idea, I was roughly in the middle of the entire length of the entire venue (audience wise). I was actually quite surprised that the stage was quite small and there were no additional screens on the side of the stage. Also, there was a screen on the main stage itself but it was used mostly to display a video backdrop for the concert.

So I actually wonder what the people at the back can see since I already can’t see much myself. In fact, I’m not even sure what kind of view the people who bought the VIP tickets have since it was all the way at the back.

Also, it was raining earlier in the day so needless to say, the ground was muddy and most people were just crowding on the paved road in the venue. There was actually one part of the ground that was waterlogged and when I was leaving, on and off there was a whiff of the fertilizer smell (ie, shit) as I trudged slowly out with the crowd.

I’m not sure what is happened but it actually took me 30 minutes to get out of The Meadow. Also, to manage the crowd, they were diverting people around and I ended up taking the longer route to Bayfront MRT station. All in all, it took me almost an hour to get from The Meadow to Bayfront MRT station. Quite unbelievable really.

Long story short, The Meadow at Gardens by the Bay is a totally terrible venue for a concert (especially when it rains/has rained).

Now that I’ve got those grievances off my chest, I can talk proper about Jennifer Lopez’s performance. At 43, I give it to her for singing live while dancing. She is a great entertainer and performer and that is pretty much what I can say since I couldn’t barely see her properly from where I was most of the time.

In fact, when she sang “On The Floor”, she quite literally was crawling/crouching/doing something on the floor and we all can’t see shit. We only saw her again when she stood back up. (In production speak, it means that the stage wasn’t build high enough.) Most of the time, from where I was, I could only see Jennifer Lopez from her mid-thigh and upwards… unless she was standing on the top of the steps on stage.

It leads me to think if they have they paid Jennifer Lopez/spent so much on her riders that they ran out of budget to put up the additional screens and build a higher stage…?

Anyway, before the concert, we had went to look at the setlist and we realised that they took out some songs from the setlist outside Asia. So given that there was technically less songs in the set to fulfill the stipulated 90 minutes of the concert, most of you would have noticed that Jennifer Lopez spent quite some time standing there smiling and waving and attempting to make useless small talk while she tried to catch her breath. It is actually a performer technique to extend/waste time. 🙂 She wasn’t very good at making small talk hence it was very obvious (to me) that she was just trying to waste a few minutes and stretch her set.

Still, I did enjoy the performance somewhat (despite being sick) but there were SO MUCH that could have been done better for a better concert experience.

As usual, here are the photos I managed to take at the concert: