Live Review: Hayley Kiyoko - O2 Islington Academy, London 26/10/2018
If Hayley Kiyoko isn’t already considered a queer icon, she damn well should be soon. For those of you who are not familiar with her music, she has been branded as the “lesbian Jesus” - a title chanted during her concert. The actor turned musician hails from Los Angeles and certainly brought a storm with her for her first UK tour. Headlining Islington’s O2 Academy, Kiyoko said, onstage, that to get to the UK, “it took thirteen years of grinding” and we’re glad it finally paid off.
From the acting scene to the music scene, her career took off when she began to be honest about her sexuality and now she has been catapulted to a considerable stardom amongst lesbian women and the LGBTQIA+ community. I was ecstatic to be seeing an artist so influential to my teenage years and I was filled with the energy from the crowd. Pride, love and a huge sense of ambition was felt throughout the room of young people going through their own lives and struggles and Hayley appeared as a soothing and inspiring artist.
As the artist that many lesbian women wished for when growing up, she has a glowing aura of coolness, confidence and charisma as she brings her positive energy to the stage and to the crowd. A sequinned Harley Davidson sweatshirt and camouflage pants would seem dressed down for some artists, but for Hayley, it seems just fitting. The cutesy and loveable character she seems in interviews and music videos is exactly how she comes across in her stage performance (I feel like she is the positive energy I need in my life everyday.)
She opened her set with ‘Under The Blue’, and, to my surprise, played two of her biggest tracks soon after, ‘What I Need’ and ‘Girls Like Girls’ - a track thrown on her This Side of Paradise EP at the last minute. Everything about Hayley Kiyoko’s performance screams “twentygayteen” from the pride flag lighting system to the kick-ass female drummer to the bras and pride flags being thrown onstage. I have seen some incredible queer artists this year and I am so grateful that I can now add Hayley Kiyoko to such a list. 2018 has had its up and huge downs for the LGBTQIA+ community and this kind of empowering performance brings together the community outside of the public space in which many of us are persecuted.
Opening up about her high school experience of preferring the dream world brought the gig to a personal level and also added a depth to one of her first singles, ‘This Side of Paradise’, that I was unaware of. Kiyoko’s vocals were not the only element of her performance that was outstanding - she also knows how to dance the hell out of her tracks. Putting her mic down for a dance sequence following ‘HNLY’, fans were treated to the Kiyoko that they have loved and appreciated on a screen for years.
Not only a singer, Hayley is also a multi-instrumentalist, actor and director. Her presence as a music artist extends further than who her music reaches. Kiyoko also wants to create narratives that depict hope in lesbian relationships after growing up watching tragic LGBTQIA+ film and television tropes. The concert did seem to incite hope in the audience and when leaving the show, I was reminded of something Hayley once said in an interview, “life is short and it feels great to be yourself”.
Hayley announced soon after the concert that she will be returning to the UK and Europe in early 2019 - catch her in 02 Forum Kentish Town on the 6th of February.
Words by Max Herridge