When you listen to certain songs for the first time, they just feel perfect, but there are a few artists who never fail to take these kinds of songs and push them to new heights through live performances. Here’s a few songs that were pushed beyond perfection in live performances by spectacular artists.
Oscar Winning Tears. – RAYE, Royal Albert Hall
In the historic Royal Albert Hall, RAYE took the phenomenal “Oscar Winning Tears.” and turned it into something truly transcendent. With the help of a live choir and orchestra, what was a breakup anthem turned into a genuinely beautiful culmination of harmonies and showed a new level of raw emotion. Her voice, already so strong, alongside the choir and orchestra brought every little part of the song subtle details that turned the song into a completely new kind of anthem.
Body – Sinéad Harnett, Fonda Theatre
Harnett’s music generally has a very strong R&B theme to it, but her live performances of her 2018 single “Body” took on a completely new energy at the Fonda Theatre. With runs and ad-libs that made it feel like the studio version was almost a completely different song. Featuring a live band, the song turned into this energetic flow of runs and melodies that the crowd could just flow to.
THE GREATEST – Billie Eilish, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Through her live performance of THE GREATEST from her album HIT ME HARD AND SOFT, Billie’s Eilish truly embraced the saying less is more; she took her song and stripped it of studio production to perform it with a simple arrangement. She let the lyrics carry the song through the performance and, in doing so, created a truly beautiful, passionate delivery of the song.
Training Season – Dua Lipa, Royal Albert Hall
At the Royal Albert Hall, taking the help of a choir and orchestra, Dua Lipa turned her pop hit off of her album Radical Optimism into a beautifully classical, almost jazz performance piece. Using vocal improv and a fantastic arrangement, she took her very well-known stage presence and displayed it incredibly at the Royal Albert Hall.
Supernatural – Ariana Grande, Live Performance
Ariana Grande’s live performance of Supernatural showed us why she is considered such a phenomenal vocalist; through the performance, she used vocal inflection to add a kind of rawness to the track that didn’t reflect as strongly on the studio version when compared. Towards the end, she adds layers to the song that make it such a great listening experience.
King of Everything – Madison Beer, Genius Open Mic
At the Genius Open Mic, Beer performed a stripped-down version of her song King of Everything live. This stripped-down version included the song’s distinct piano rhythm, but in the live version she uses her vocal range to add to the song a more nuanced level of rawness through deepening her voice and opening the song up to unfamiliar but skilled vocal runs.
Performances like these only go to show that studio versions may capture moments in time from the artist; they truly show the evolution of their talent through live performances because they focus less about perfection and more about showcasing their skill.