DEAN LEWIS: LIVE AND UNPLUGGED
Australian artist Dean Lewis performed a live stream live from Sydney on April 30 to play fan favorites and some new songs. The show was called “Live and Unplugged” because he played with an acoustic guitar and his touring band, but they stripped the music down to accentuate the vocals. The introduction to the show was a video montage in black and white discussing what he has been doing in the last year, writing songs for an upcoming record, and how this was the first show he’s played in a year and a half. Even with the weirdness of the venue being empty you could hear the raw emotion in the re-imagined versions of the songs.
He opened with the single “Waves” which was started just by Dean Lewis himself and an acoustic guitar, but his band who was playing with him chimed in and I definitely imagine a venue singing along. Dean talked about how he had been touring for three years straight before the pandemic shut the tour down like it did the rest of the world. The next song was a song he was playing for the first time live called “Used to Love” written with Martin Garrix. Despite there not being a crowd to talk to and get into the set, Lewis told some stories about songs to set them up and what the vibe was going to be.
The third song was a track that, according to Lewis, was written on an extra day in the studio when he initially was writing a different song. The song “7 Minutes” sounds like it was about a girl he let get away because he was not invested enough in the relationship, with lyrics like “If I come around, would you even care? Is it too late to turn around, I'm already halfway out of town.” Though I didn't know any of the words to the songs, I was very invested because the storytelling was so captivating and his stage presence drew you in, even through a laptop screen.
About halfway through the set, Lewis mentioned he wrote a song called “Lose My Mind” about the Nicholas Sparks inspired movie, The Notebook, after watching it, and the scene he described that inspired the song can be directly picture through the lyricism and the picture he paints. “It’s about that scene in the rain…”
Immediately after that was a fan favorite, “Half of a Man”, which was my favorite of the night because the stripped down version furthered the emotion and the impact of the song. The song is about how you don’t think you can love someone else if you don’t love yourself. He directly questions it through the chorus, “How am I supposed to love you when I don’t love who I am? And how can i give you all of me when I’m only half of a man.” This song was incredibly powerful and it is definitely something we’ve all considered. How can we give someone love when we don’t always love what is in the mirror?
A lot of the songs minus the new ones and the single were off his latest record, A Place We Knew, and if the new songs are any indication of the upcoming release, it is going to be a good record.
He ended the 12 song set with the new single, “Falling Up” which sounded awesome acoustic and I imagine a Dean Lewis show would be full of emotion, especially with a full band. I would absolutely go see him in concert whenever touring is safe and he can play shows.