Asia News: Coldplay Returns; Andy Lau Health Concerns; Kanye Does China

Coldplay Returns With ‘Music of the Spheres’

Coldplay galvanized Asia by announcing a string of shows for its “Music of the Spheres” tour in cities it bypassed during its earlier swing through the continent.

The British band will play Mumbai’s DY Patil Sports Stadium Jan. 18-19, with an added show Jan. 21; Hong Kong’s new Kai Tak Stadium on April 9, 11-12; and Seoul’s Goyang Stadium on April 16, 18-19 and 22. The last time the band played in India was in 2016 for a festival appearance. The last Hong Kong shows were in 2009, and the last Korean concerts were in 2017.

The executive director of the Federation of Hong Kong Hotel Owners told RTHK that the federation is expecting a huge surge in demand for hotel rooms when Coldplay comes to town.

However, local authorities are also anxious about crowd control problems. The opening of the 50,000-capacity Kai Tak Stadium just before the concerts means that the city will not yet have had a chance to see how the surrounding areas react to such an influx of people.
In addition, lawmakers wonder how the city’s transportation system will handle the extra traffic during the concerts, especially for those people coming into the city from the Chinese mainland.

Ticket sales for the new shows have already run into problems that were not unexpected.
The ticketing site BookMyShow reportedly crashed seconds before tickets went on sale for the first two Mumbai shows, with some 700,000 users trying to access the site. Consequently, the band added a third show when it realized the scale of demand.

HONG KONG

Falls Spur Concern For Andy Lau Health

Fans of Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau have voiced concern about the singer’s general condition after a near disastrous fall occurred during one of his concerts in Shenzhen, China, in early September. It was the third on-stage accident that Lau had experienced on his present tour.

During the show, Lau, who is 62, was moving across the dimly lit stage while singing and tripped over a trapdoor in the floor, which had opened unexpectedly. Video of the show has been circulating online showing that Lau nearly fell into the opening in the stage, but righted himself at the last second and went sprawling on his hands and knees as an audible gasp erupted from the audience.

The star quickly regained his composure and assured fans that he was OK and would be more careful. Nevertheless, Lau left the stage for a short time to have a bandage applied to his finger, which was injured in the fall.

Last July, during a concert in Shanghai, Lau attempted to slide on his knees to the edge of an elevated platform and nearly fell off. In the same month, at a show in Beijing, he nearly stepped off another platform that was three meters off the ground but caught himself by grabbing on to a railing.

The Star reports that concert insiders have said that the problem has to do with design flaws of the stage set that Lau is using rather than any physical infirmities suffered by the artist, though fans online point out that Lau had been out of the live music game for a decade prior to the current tour and is obviously not as young as he used to be.

CHINA

Ye Adds Second ‘Listening Party’

After the success of his first show in Haikou, China, earlier in the month, which reportedly brought in $53 million to the local economy, Kanye West, also known as Ye, added a second “listening party” at the same venue, the Haikou Wuyuan River Sports Park, on Sept. 28.

West reportedly will perform alone at the concert and without his partner for the Asian tour, Ty Dolla $ign, thus leading fans to wonder if West will perform a wider range of solo work from his career.

That said, he reportedly performed 92 “tracks” at the first show on Sept. 15, though many were fragments and recordings from his latest album with Ty Dolla $ign. s