UK group Coldplay are currently undertaking their Moon Music world tour, and last night they touched down in Toronto, Canada for the first of four shows.
Tickets to the shows – their first in the city in eight years – have been a hot commodity, fetching massive prices on resale sites after more than 200,000 tickets flew out the door late last year.
The venue is Toronto’s newest, a temporary 50k capacity outdoor stadium an hour out of the city called Rogers Stadium. This Summer will see a number of shows here, including Oasis and System of a Down.
Coldplay are the second group to grace its stage, and it’s fair to say that feedback from the first left a lot of room for improvement.
Complaints following the venue’s debut last week with a performance from the K-Pop Stray Kids ranged from extensive standing queues of more than two hours to get out of the venue, to a lack of free water stations and shade. People also commented on the makeshift quality of the stands, which housed the most expensive tickets in the venue. At Coldplay, many standard ticket prices here (yes, not resale or “platinum”) were sold on Ticketmaster for upwards of $800 (inclusive of some $150 in fees). And they sit a great distance from the stage, something which Coldplay’s lead singer Chris Martin addressed early in the set.
Venue organisers were quick to address the water situation, announcing on social media 48 hours before last night’s show they had increased the number of water stations around the venue. They also confirmed guests could bring in one empty plastic bottle for water. But was that enough? How did the experience fair for the second show at the venue? And what was the Coldplay set like? Here’s a full recap of the night.
First, let’s talk about the venue. While the bad press to date has focused on the issues people had getting out from the first show, for us it was getting there that proved the biggest challenge. We ordered an Uber to the venue, but extensive road closures caused ample confusion, and we ended up being dropped off more than half an hour walk from the stadium, after being delayed in bottleneck traffic. Thankfully we gave ourselves an extra hour of transit time – because we barely made the show. Lesson learned: don’t get an Uber to the venue, at least until they’ve figured some of this stuff out.
The walk into the old airport site was vast – the stadium shining like a beacon in the distance, as one of the support acts played.
Some portable toilets were scattered along the way – though by the time we got to them, none had any toilet paper and some were already in a dire state. The occasional security guard we spoke to offered little clarity on where to go. “Which gate do we enter from if we’re GA?” I asked a solitary worker three quarters up the trail. “Any of them!”, he said.
By the time we had walked some 2km alongside those who had transited to Downsview Park Station (or, like us, had their Uber driver drop them far from the entry), we finally made it to said gates. The first entry gate we came across was for AMEX card holders only. So “any of them!” is very much not the case, and after all the hassle to get to that point, it honestly felt quite cruel. The next was for Rogers customers, though they seemed to be letting anyone use it by the time we arrived.
Here, we had to line up for two sets of metal detectors, and then be greeted by staff who openly admitted they didn’t understand the system that was in place – as there was no one to scan our ticket after the secondary metal detector. As we also learned here, they don’t allow lighters into the venue – though it didn’t say anywhere in the prohibited items list they put online.
Once security finally allowed us to scan our tickets, we were handed a LED wristband (which you return at the end of the show), our paper wristband for the GA area and a pair of Moon Music glasses (which you can take home with you).
But we weren’t in the stadium yet, rather an activation area where you’ll find food, toilets, drinks, and even a Ferris Wheel. Thankfully, the toilets inside the venue had toilet paper, and there were indeed ample Brita water stations. Though if you do bring your own water bottle, they force you to remove the cap, so do keep that in mind.
With the show about to start, and having missed the support acts, there were no lines to speak of, and we made our way into the entry below.
Inside the venue, pre-recorded music by Jon Hopkins was setting an ambient mood. We stood to the back of the GA area, near the exits, so we could move quickly once the show finished. This proved a great decision in itself. But it also meant we had ample space and were close to the food and drink options that sat at the back of the floor. Costs are about what you’d expect – before tip, we paid $18 for a canned cocktail and $10 for a popcorn.
Opening with “Higher Power” and some fireworks after a Welcome To Country and a 20 minute delay while they fixed a lighting issue (something which Martin came on stage himself to let the audience know about), they ran through “Adventure of a Lifetime”, before “Paradise” and “The Scientist” brought the night’s first singalongs.
During the latter, Martin added a moment of musical improvisation, promising to the crowd in song, “I can promise you, Toronto, it’s the best show we’ve ever done”, before speaking earnestly to the crowd.
He acknowledged it was a “weird stadium in the middle of nowhere”, that was difficult to get to, and thanked everyone for their patience in getting there, and for waiting eight years between visits as it was. “Plus an extra ten minutes”, for the lighting issues. And then they had the crowd help them finish “The Scientist”.
The lighting for the show was indeed impressive – what they can do with those LED wristbands now is remarkable. The glasses they provide at entry add hearts to the lights and fireworks, which they save for a moment later in the show – though you’ll find it difficult not to enjoy them at your own discretion.
Highlights from the rest of the show included bringing two young fans on stage after they requested “Trouble” off the band’s debut. Chris played it solo on the piano – only the third time it’s made the setlist this year. Their support acts Elyanna and Ayra Starr joined for “WE PRAY” and “GOOD FEELiNGS”, respectively.
Being at the back of the stadium also meant we were close to a secondary stage, where they came out to perform a personal favourite, “Sparks”, and a track known as “The Jumbotron Song” where Chris sings for some random fans in the crowd by way of the jumbotron.
The full setlist looked like this:
Higher Power
Adventure of a Lifetime
Paradise
The Scientist
Viva la Vida
Hymn for the Weekend
Trouble
Charlie Brown
Yellow
ALL MY LOVE
People of the Pride
Clocks
WE PRAY
(with Elyanna)
Infinity Sign
Something Just Like This
My Universe
A Sky Full of Stars
—
Sparks
The Jumbotron Song
—
Fix You
GOOD FEELiNGS
(with Ayra Starr)
feelslikeimfallinginlove
A Wave
Following the earlier delay, the show would wrap up at 11:10pm, showing one of the potential benefits of the venue being on the site of an old airport in the “middle of nowhere”. That maybe they don’t have as strict a curfew as other venues in the city?
The show otherwise ran fairly smoothly, only stopping “A Sky Full of Stars” seemingly due to a tech glitch, which Martin used as an opportunity to ask the crowd to put their phones away.
But the other, major, thing to note is that the venue’s sound leaves a lot to be desired. I was lucky enough to have ear plugs, which helped drown out some of the echo and speaker issues. But it was also needed for the sheer volume of it all, which seemed to be trying to compensate for the poor sound quality in general. So a second tip: bring ear plugs!
Thankfully, as we stood at the back of the stadium, and left during their final bow, we did make it out pretty quickly, and didn’t have any issues getting out. It proved a much quicker walk out to public transit (to Sheppard West Station), than it did coming in on the Uber. And as great as the show was, we were honestly relieved to be out of there.
All in all, Rogers Stadium is a venue few Torontonians are going to be excited to attend. For a temporary venue that cost millions of dollars, so much of this space, and its location, has been designed without visible consideration for the comfort of a crowd that has paid way too much to be there. And while I’m sure some things will improve over time, ultimately Rogers Stadium is an exercise in capitalist cruelty as much as it is a live music space. Toronto deserves better. And I hope it gets it.
Coldplay continue their Toronto shows tonight (July 8), before wrapping up on the 11th and 12th. The tour then goes to Boston. For full tour details head to their official website.
The author attended at their own expense. Photos by the author unless otherwise credited.
