Ke$ha Lip-Syncs (Surprise!)

Location: Madrid, Spain

Thursday June 10, 2010

Studying abroad in Spain actually requires a little bit of work. And we actually have things like homework, midterms, and finals. Shocking, isn’t it? All the Spanish grammar classes had midterms that morning.

Afterwards, Sophie and I headed out to Teatro Nuevo Apolo to buy group tickets for Ballet Flamenco de Madrid’s Carmen for next Tuesday. My host family got excited when they heard I was thinking of going, because the choreography and company comes from Celia’s conservatory. She had actually taken classes from the principle dancer before. After the creation of a casual Facebook event by Sophie a week ago, twenty-one people ended up signing up and paying the 12€ for a cheap-ass nosebleed seat. Sophie recruited me to help her collect money and get buy tickets. We had expected seats that required high-definition opera binoculars, but when we told the box office guy we wanted 21 tickets, he asked for us to wait while he consulted someone. He came back to tell us that they offer tickets in the orchestra section for big groups. Sweet. Ass. Deal. We ended up getting 5^th row tickets for the price of the third-floor balcony.

Isabella had wanted to organize a group to go sight-seeing/museum-visiting/city-wandering after lunch. We had a Facebook message going (the most-used form of communication here… man, I miss panlists!). About an hour before our appointed meeting time in Sol, Valentina posted that her group just found about a free Ke$ha concert sponsored by Vodafone (a mobile company here). Apparently Spain just recently launched MySpace España, so Vodafone is trying out new advertisement tactics. For free entrance, each person had to add Vodafone Secret Shows as a friend, list her as one’s top friends, and print the profile out as evidence. I immediately jumped at the opportunity even though I’m not a big Ke$ha fan or anything. After resuscitating my old MySpace, I followed the instructions. On my way to Jade’s apartment, I sang “Tik Tok” the whole time, reliving the hipster moment of YeaRBook: RB Fall Show 2009’s group dance (1:20-2:15). Oh, how I love ironics! Haha.

Can I just say how much I love concerts? And how much I love free stuff? And the two together…? A girl can just die happy… even if we had to wait for an hour and a half for a short thirty-minute concert. Haha. What do you expect when it’s a promotional concert, right? Plus, she has only one album out. For some reason, there were a lot of British people in line for the concert. There were also a lot of Spaniards, of course. She’s supposedly #1 in Spain right now! Who knew? I felt a bit under-dressed for the concert. It was definitely time to break out the high school concert-going heavy eyeliner and punky/emo/scene clothes, which I left the back in the States… in high school… Oh, my scene days. Haha. Kids with lots of face piercings were pregaming with boxes of sangria and beers. Others were dressed up in animal costumes or drawing cat faces on each other in honour of the title of Ke$ha’s one-and-only album.

During our wait, a camera man came over to film us: Ke$ha’s “crazy fans.” It was bit awkward, because none of us in the group of seven girls knew her songs other than the big singles. The camera guy had us chant “KE$HA! KE$HA! KE$HA! KE$HA!” at the camera when the street was still very quiet. So awkward. Haha. I hope she enjoys that clip of Americans going to see her show in Spain.

When the doors open, we were handed red glow thick glow sticks, and we crowded into this dark medium-sized venue as close to the stage as possible. I stood on the left of Lauren in front of our group. There were a group of high school girls (who ended up screaming all the lyrics during the concert) on Lauren’s right. They kept shoving her repeatedly and violating her butt. Hahaha. A group of gay boys stood in front of me. Two of them slowly made out for a straight thirty minutes as we waited for our concert to start. PDA is quite prevalent there.

The short concert finally started at around 8 pm. Her band came out first, then Ke$ha did in her leopard-print skin-tight jumpsuit and with her signature sparkly eye shadow and her long, blonde, crimped hair in her face. The concert was super short, because she only sang He’s a DJ, Party at a Rich Dude’s House, Blah Blah Blah, Your Love is My Drug with her “Oh my god, I’m so shit-faced right now” act on the whole time: stumbling around, “dancing,” hair in her face. She of course finished with Tik Tok. And the crowd went batshitcrazy as we were showered with an explosion of glittery confetti during the song. At first I was surprised that she actually sounded good live, all auto-tuned and everything. She also had a lot of energy and was jumping around on the stage quite a bit (without choreography though, just drunk-dancing). But then I realized that she was probably lip-syncing, because at one point of Tik Tok, I saw her point her microphone to some guy in the front row, but her voice kept going over the speakers. Well, that’s not obvious at all… It’s just surprisingly, because she had bashed Britney for lip-syncing a few months ago… I think many of the Spaniards didn’t understand clearly when she spoke English. At one point, Ke$ha shouted that she wanted to makeout with someone, and it was cricket… cricket… But when she said, “¿Quieres bailar?” and “¡Gracias, Spain!” The crowd went crazy.

We went to La Latina to grab dinner/meet up with Isabella and Sophie (the latter didn’t actually end up happening). We had a rather interesting meal at El Restaurante La Latina. I ate a lot of mildly-flavoured olives. I actually don’t like them much, but I figure it’s time to grow up and get accustomed them, especially when they’re served so often here in Europe. They’re essential in Mediterranean food, after all. I’ve got to admit, I’m starting to hate them less.

Lauren, Amy, and I headed back to the apartment with Jade to watch a few episodes of Modern Family, a show that Jade is absolutely in love with. And now I might be, too. The show has hilarious humour and really awkward situations. It reminds me of Arrested Development. Although, let’s admit it. Nothing can be as good as Arrested Development.

Photo credits: Amy Norrod