New Delhi : Justin Bieber came, sang but didn't quite conquer, it turns out. Reviews of the singer's concert in Mumbai last night are fairly brutal and fans, many of whom are pre-teen, are furious that much of the performance was lip-synced. Just four of his 21 song set-list were sung live. There are also reports of mismanagement - there weren't nearly enough toilets and water was overpriced, says some news outlets; actress Bipasha Basu came and left because organisers allegedly failed to give her a VIP car pass. Some of this is true - NDTV's correspondent at the venue paid Rs. 100 for his first bottle of water, Rs. 150 for the second; a glass of Coca Cola cost Rs. 100. The crowd at the venue, Navi Mumbai's D Y Patil Stadium, was 45,000 - the stadium can hold about 56,000 - and toilets might have been crowded but possibly not insufficient.
The lip-syncing was another matter entirely. Filmmaker Anurag Basu, who took his daughter to watch the concert, told news agency PTI, "I would have been happy if he would have sung all songs live. He only sang four songs live. An artist of his calibre should sing live. He was not prepared." Mr Basu was one among a clutch of celebrities who had showed up to the concert - among them Sridevi, Alia Bhatt, Malaika Arora and others. Justin, 23, played to a 45,000-strong crowd at Navi Mumbai's D Y Patil Stadium amid high security and dizzying levels of excitement.
The excitement was due to the fact that the Canadian singer's Indian audience have been petitioning him to play here for many years. Now that he has, it appears that the concert was not entirely paisa vasool - the cheapest tickets were priced at a little over Rs. 5,000 and fans who paid big money and waited all day to hear him (Justin Bieber went on at 8 pm, 'Beliebers' had queued up starting 9 am) aren't pleased at all. "It's quite clear that he is not singing these songs," an irate man from Pune who had paid Rs. 36,000 for his pass told PTI. Another fan said, "I attended Coldplay's concert and I think that was much better than this. Justin's performance was low on energy and the worst part was he was lip-syncing to many of his songs." An angry mother of a 10-year-old 'Belieber' told PTI, "I wish I had not paid a bomb for this awful concert."
