Live Review: Keith Urban Brisbane 2022

Artist: Keith Urban With Special Guests – Birds of Tokyo
Date: December 2nd 2022
Venue: Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Reviewer: Hayley Treadwell
Photographer: Andrew Treadwell Photography

Heading to the Entertainment Centre in Brisbane on a Friday night to see one of our greatest ever musical exports, Keith Urban, I was pumped! This is another tour that got rescheduled several times due to Covid, so it is great to see it finally going ahead! And there is a certain feeling you get when the world renowned artist on the stage used to live just up the road!

But first, we were treated to the amazing music stylings of Birds of Tokyo. These guys should be out headlining on their own tour, they were incredible! Such a groovy band on stage, these boys have this laid back yet playful demeanour which radiates into the crowd. Hearing Birds of Tokyo frontman Ian Kenny live is something else. His vocals draw you in and hold your attention. His delivery is beautiful. And when they played their last song, Lanterns, and asked the crowd to light up the arena, I was moved to tears. Such a beautiful moment to accompany such a beautiful song.

Our wait for Keith wasn’t long and when he appeared on stage the crowd went wild for this local boy! Thumping straight into ‘Tumbleweed’ Keith and his band were instantly ripping up the stage! The crowd was dancing and signing along and the vibe in the Entertainment Centre was electric! Into ‘Days Go By’, and Keith mixes it up with a bit of ‘Rush’ by Big Audio Dynamite. Fantastic!

We heard ‘Wild Hearts’, ‘Where the Blacktop Ends’ and a mashup of Keith’s ‘Kiss a Girl’ and Ed Sheeran’s ‘Bad Habits’. Seriously, this guy can sing anything! ‘Brown Eyes Baby’ and ‘Nightfalls’ were up next before one of Keith’s most popular hits ‘Long Hot Summer’. We were treated to guitar solos, amazing imagery on the big screens and a whole heap of fun! A moment I loved was when Keith introduced his band and his Bass player gave us a short cover of John Legend’s ‘All of Me’ and then, just when you thought, wow that was great, Keith’s guitar/keys player broke out into a mash up of ‘Sweet Dreams; and ‘Seven Nation Army’ and really lifted the roof off! What a performance!

Then one more from Keith and the gorgeous P!nk who was up on the screen to perform their beautiful duet ‘One Too Many’, before Keith took a dash through the arena to a B stage behind the sound board, giving those at the back a front row seat! Talking to us about his first ukulele, Keith jumped into John Denver’s ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy’ which really amped up the crowd! Then he delivered ‘Better Life’ and ‘You’ll Think of Me’ before signing his guitar and handing it to an unsuspecting fan in the crowd! What a sweetheart! As if we didn’t already love him enough!!

Making his way back to the main stage, Keith greeted fans and made peoples dreams come true, just by saying hello! I love this stuff, It really warm the heart to see the way music brings people such happiness and has this way of uniting us all, even if just for a night! And Keith touched on this through the night when he got the lights to go out and asked the crowd to work together to light up the stage with their phones. Showing us the power we have together.

And on that note, together Keith had us all signing ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ as he lamented how it is we all love this song so much.

We partied along to ‘Somebody Like You’ and swayed to ‘Blue Ain’t your Colour’, then another on screen duet, this time with Carrie Underwood performing ‘Fighter’ and then Keith announced, let’s bring this home Brisbane and kicked into ‘Wasted Time’ as the confetti cannons wet off and rained a rainbow of colours over the audience! As Keith left the stage we roared for just one more and that’s what we got as he ran back on the stage gave us one last performance with ‘Stupid Boy’.

The performance, the light show, the visuals, the guitars! Everything tonight was next level entertainment and I’m sure Brisbane cant wait to do it all again tonight!

Until the next gig

Hayley

Setlist

Tumbleweed

Days Go By / Rush (Big Audio Dynamite cover)

Wild Hearts

Where the Blacktop Ends

Kiss A Girl / Bad Habits (Ed Sheeran cover)

Brown Eyes Baby

Nightfalls

Long hot Summer

Somewhere in My Car