R5 Louder tour review

Less than a month ago I went to see the amazing R5 in concert, and they smashed it!

Ross and Rydel performing. Picture credits: Tom van Alphen

The concert was actually last minute planned for me – two days before. I wanted to go to the concert ever since I heard about it, but it was sold out. Somehow two days before the show, there suddenly were two tickets available, and not even the worst seats in the house either. So I quickly ordered the tickets. Because I ordered it at the very last minute, the tickets couldn’t be sent to me so I had to pick them up right before the concert – but in reality I was honestly scared that something went wrong with the order and I just ended up getting excited for nothing. The tickets were – thank god! – ready for me at the box-office.

The venue opened and we walked in and I went to the merchandise stand straight away. I bought their black Louder tour T-shirt with all of the European tourdates on the back, a white bracelet with ‘Louder’ written on it in red and their signature guitar pick necklace with ‘R5’ on it in pink.

Louder bracelet and R5 necklace

Then we walked into the room and it was smaller than I thought it would be, but I was further away from the stage than I expected – if that makes sense – but of course I didn’t mind that much cause I was already happy that I even had the tickets. After a while of sitting and waiting, Ryland – Lynch; Rocky, Riker, Rydel and Ross their little brother – went on the stage and did his DJset. It was really much fun and he just played top 40 songs like ‘Timber’ by Ke$ha and Pitbull, ‘I Choose U’ by Timeflies ‘Die Young’ by Ke$ha, and ‘Clarity’ by Zedd. He really pumped up the audience and it was a lot of fun to watch. After Ryland finished his set he went to the back to work the lights, like he always does at the shows. Not much later the tunes of ‘We Are Family’ started playing and everyone got really excited, because we all knew that after the song they would come onto the stage.

So not much later the four Lynch’s and Ratliff entered the stage and started off with one of my favourite R5-tracks ‘Forget About You’, which directly caused the audience to jump up and sing along at the top of their lungs. Not only did they sing every single track from their album ‘Louder’, they also sang a cover of the song ‘Counting Stars’ from One Republic and sang a song from the TVshow Austin & Ally – Ross plays the lead in that show. They also did a little acoustic set-up for one of their songs, ‘One Last Dance’ but they rocked out to the rest of the songs. One of my favourite songs they performed live was ‘Love Me Like That’, a song with Rydel in the lead. The intro sounds amazing live, especially with the drums. The song itself is just really dorky, quirky and girly, which I like a lot. The song ‘Ain’t No Way We’re Going Home’ is amazing live because it’s just really rockin’. I also liked ‘Pass Me By’ a lot, because Rocky played the acoustic guitar in it so it’s a bit more stripped back  compared to the other songs. They ended the evening with their biggest hit ‘Loud’ and literally everyone was screaming back the words and going crazy, which was absolutely great.

Riker (and Ratliff) performing. Picture credits: Tom van Alphen

The concert was really great and I think that R5 is one of the most underrated bands. Lots of people think they are a “Disney band” just because Ross plays the role of Austin Moon in Austin & Ally, but R5 is way more than that. There are lots of people who see R5 as “Ross Lynch’s band” or even “Austin Moon’s band”, but it really isn’t only about Ross it’s about Rocky, Riker, Rydel, Ellington AND Ross. I think if people give them a chance and would actually give them a proper listen, they might end up liking them a lot.