The concert of Imagine Dragons at the Sziget Festival became memorable due to not only the music but also the bust of the frontman, Dan Reynolds. The sentence in the title was uttered by a fan in a state of near ecstasy shortly after the concert. And she was right. Our report about the second day of the Sziget Festival.

Around five or six in the afternoon, Sziget showed a different face than in the previous years, especially before the pandemic. The usual crowd was not on the main routes, and we didn’t have to worry about being squeezed by fanatical fans in front of the stages either. It was possible only in the FreeDome tent to experience a more significant party in this time zone at the party of the British Youngr, which brought back the atmosphere of the old Sziget days when looking around the huge, red circus tent. Looking out from the tent, however, the real Sziget experience was still missing. This unusual condition began to ease sometime around eight o’clock, and the main performer of the evening, the American Imagine Dragons, could hardly fit into the huge square in front of the main stage.

Before the American band, the main stage was occupied by the Hungarian Carson Coma from 6:30 p.m The band stood tall and, surprisingly, I thought I could detect interest and attention on the faces of many foreign visitors after listening to the Hungarian band. It is not a small challenge for the band and it is quite a brave undertaking on the part of the directors to put a Hungarian-speaking performer on the main stage two before the main performer at a festival attended predominantly by foreigners, although this has been a tradition at Sziget for many years. The advantage of performing “at home” obviously goes to the Hungarian music community, and Carson Coma deserved this opportunity based on their performance at Sziget Festival.

Instead of the British Yungblud, who replaced them, I chose the stand-up comedy performances of Magic Mirror for a little style update. A full house welcomed us, where the German Michael Jäger entertained the audience – in perfect English. It’s kind of impressive when someone speaks a foreign language so well that they can make fun of it, especially in front of an audience. He was followed by one of the British stand-up greats, Ben Norris, who in a brilliant interaction, in the American ‘roasting’ style, pointed out a couple from the audience, on whom he sharpened his tongue. It is interesting that the comedian is the cousin of the well-known British actor Martin Freeman. The performance of Imagine Dragons completely rocked the audience of Sziget. The team conducted the concert with amazing professionalism, which consisted of three larger blocks separated by video projections. Anyway, the video installation didn’t really make sense, all kinds of images from stars to chamomile fields were spinning in an impressionistic art film. It was aesthetic, but I couldn’t find the connection between the images and the musical world of Imagine Dragons. Someone close to me wisely answered the question “What is it…?”. “It will be Discovery Channel” was the given answer.

The blocks were put together in such a way that a world-famous hit was included in each part. In the first block, songs such as Thunder or Follow you were performed. But for this romantic song, Dan has already undressed – to everyone’s delight. The singer is in impeccable shape, and he did not regret sharing this sight with his fans. By the way, Dan is known to pay a lot of attention to his appearance and has reached his top form in recent years with the help of a star trainer, Brad Feinberg. Later, Bad Liar, Demons and Whatever it takes were also performed. Dan Reynolds’ dominant performance personality completely filled the stage and his stage presence totally heated up the atmosphere on Friday at Sziget, and it wasn’t just because of his toned muscles…

– Virág Vida –

Photos: KNI

Main picture: MTI – Zoltán Balogh

Service Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.

Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.