‘Sulit na sulit’ Boys Like Girls Spring Tour 2024 at Araneta Coliseum
Last Saturday, April 20, American rock band Boys Like Girls kicked off their 2024 Spring tour — and they did so at the Araneta Coliseum, right in the heart of Metro Manila.
The show began with a hits-filled set from the opening act, We The Kings, who returned to Manila after more than a decade. The band commenced their set with Skyway Avenue, followed by She Takes Me High and Secret Valentines. They moved on to When We Were Young, followed by I Feel Alive, Just Keep Breathing, and a cover of Coldplay’s Fix You, which Boys Like Girls released as a digital single on Spotify under Hopeless Records in 2022.
After a series of rocking numbers, the band dialed it down for an acoustic version of Sad Song, one of the band’s most well-known songs. It describes a relationship that’s intimate and damaging at the same time. That description fits their acoustic rendition of the song at the Araneta Coliseum last Saturday. It was gentle, sure, but lead singer Travis Clark’s emotive delivery and the song’s heartrending lyrics definitely made some members of the audience cry that night. The band came roaring back in full force with Say You Like Me, a cover of The Killers’ Mr. Brightside, Alien, and one of We The Kings’ signature songs, Check Yes, Juliet.
Time stood still for a bit while the headliner Boys Like Girls prepared to take the stage after We The Kings’ set. When they did, they tore the roof off the Araneta Coliseum with Sunday at Foxwoods from their 2023 album of the same name, and Love Drunk, the lead single from their second studio album, also named “Love Drunk.”
They segued into Five Minutes to Midnight, Blood and Sugar, She’s Got a Boyfriend Now, and Dance Hall Drug (which Boys Like Girls performed in its entirety). Lively renditions of their most-streamed songs — Heels Over Head and Up Against the Wall from their 2006 self-titled album, and The First Time —followed.
If you were a teenager or in your twenties in the 2000s, then you probably know the words to Boys Like Girls’ Thunder by heart — and you likely were among those in the Araneta Coliseum crowd who sang along to that song at the top of their lungs when they performed it as part of a medley. That was followed by another cover of the Bruce Springsteen classic Born in the U.S.A., and a spirited take on Boys Like Girls’ own Heart Heart Heartbreak.
A high point of the show came when Boys Like Girls surprised the crowd with a cover of I Can’t Stop Me by Twice. That song was recorded by the South Korean girl group for their second Korean-language studio album, “Eyes Wide Open.” It was released on Oct. 26, 2020 as the album’s lead single. Boys Like Girls was a featured artist on a new version of the song that was released three years later on the girl group’s “The Remixes” EP. PULP has become known for bridging the worlds of K-pop and rock, and Boys Like Girls’ performance of I Can’t Stop Me highlighted that.
The show ended with a sweet rendition of Two is Better Than One. As one fan wrote on X (formerly Twitter) after the show, “Sobrang daming kanta! Sulit na sulit. Kaya ako naubo after ng concert dahil sa lalamunan ko, LOL! Thank you, PULP and Boys Like Girls!”
To that fan, we at PULP Live World say, you — and the thousands of others who rocked out with Boys Like Girls and We The Kings last Saturday — are very much welcome. We’re glad that you felt the show was not only a “Great Escape” (see what we did there?) but a sulit one to boot! — Julian Mauricio.
