It’s always a letdown when a festival headliner can’t hold a light to their opening acts. When Iggy Azalea hit the stage after Kiesza and Bastille for RedFestDXB on Friday night at Dubai Media City Amphitheatre, that was inarguably the case.
Let’s start with Kiesza, the third to last performer of the night, who stormed onto the stage straight from the ‘80s in her ripped up acid wash jeans and matching denim vest. It would have been too easy to reduce Kiesza to her breakout hit, Hideaway, but she quickly proved that she’s got what it takes to keep a crowd entertained for more than just three minutes.
The 26-year-old, flanked by two dancers, was awed by the crowd’s energy as she ran up and down the T-stage, showed off her Arabic-speaking skills and delivered track after track from her debut album, Sound of a Woman.
Her set highlight? Take U There, the penultimate song on the set list, which she wrote with Diplo and Skrillex. The rave-like performance left the crowd so revved up that even the set-closer — Hideaway, of course — seemed like an unceremonious come down.
Bastille kept the crowd on their feet with an atmospheric set. Shortly after hitting the stage, they treated fans to a rare live performance of No Angels, a haunting cover of TLC’s No Scrubs with guest performer Ella Eyre, who performed earlier in the night. That experience alone might have been worth the ticket price.
Despite the band’s moody melodies, frontman Dan Smith made it clear they didn’t take themselves too seriously. Introducing their song The Draw, he joked that it was their 4-minute attempt at being a grunge band. Their set closed with a trio of hits, starting with Flaws and Of the Night and ending with the band’s magnum opus, Pompeii, and a well-timed blast of confetti.
To wrap up the show, Azalea came on stage in all white just before 11pm, kicking off with Beg For It. What followed was an hour that lacked surprises, or any clear signs of showmanship.
The stage set-up was straightforward, a stairwell in the centre and a DJ booth to the left where DJ Wizz Kidd tried to hype up the crowd. Azalea was accompanied by four back-up dancers and two back-up singers, also clad in white.
Now, you can’t expect an artist to pull out every trick in the book for a festival performance — or for them to put on their full show, for that matter — but it would’ve been nice to see anything of note happen on stage.
Azalea, whose hands appeared to be shaking whenever she adjusted her in-ears, failed to engage the audience or build momentum with standard performances of her songs Bounce, Rolex, Don’t Need Y’all and Work. Her set seemed to more-or-less plateau right off the bat, piquing minutely during her Rita Ora collaboration, Black Widow. (She also performed her JLo collaboration, Booty, and the Ariana Grande hit, Problems, but kept those clipped to her parts.)
The Australian rapper, who addressed the crowd sparsely from her frequent perch on the stairs, reminded them at one point that she had come halfway around the world to be with them. As the show went on, however, it certainly didn’t feel like it.
