Live: Orla Gartland in Dublin, 2025
Irish pop-rock queen Orla Gartland fulfilled her dream and played at a sold-out Olympia for the first time. Of course, I couldn’t miss it!
I discovered Orla during the pandemic after she toured for her debut album Woman on the Internet. I fell in love with her immediately and knew I had to see her live as soon as I could. That came true this month when Orla played a sold-out Olympia (shoutout to my buddy Alan for sharing his pre-sale with me!).
This concert was special in many ways. It was the first time Orla had played at the Olympia Theatre and such a big venue in Ireland. I had a pre-sale thanks to a friend, where Ticketmaster forker it up (instead of standing tickets they were selling them as seats). As an apology they gave us early entry and a free poster. So I ended up being as close as I was to the Fletcher during the second concert last May.
While waiting in front of the club, I started talking to an Irish man and his daughter. He said he had a cover band and they were going to play in the Czech Republic twice in the summer haha So we talked about music and concerts and they ended up having seating tickets, so we parted ways when they started letting people into the club.
Before I move inside and start talking about how great Orla is and how awesome it was, I just want to stop and talk about something. I thought for a moment whether I should give it energy, but I want to point out what we as women have to endure sometimes these days (I also want to point out that I am in no way speaking for Orla, this is my personal opinion). Orla is a young, queer independent artist, she supports Palestine. In the early entry, in the queue that paid for it and did not get this VIP package for free like me and other people, there was also a middle-aged man. He was wearing an Israeli soccer jersey and a red cap with the word Trump written in white. Orla’s latest album Everybody Needs a Hero has a blue-red palette and she encouraged visitors to come in costumes, but this was definitely not what she had in mind. The guy was searched by a security guard, the only one. Fortunately, they found nothing. He then stood in the early entry section and didn’t even sing, dance, or move to the beat. When we all went down during the song Zombie to jump up during the chorus, he didn’t even move. I DON’T UNDERSTAND. But the entire audience ignored him. From what I read online, only one person asked him why he was wearing those clothes, but nothing happened between them. After the concert, the guy of course complained on the venue’s Facebook… Orla responded to this later on Twitter, when someone tagged her in a Tweet saying that when she saw him, she decided to ignore him. He’s such a loser. And Orla deserves better. Sorry not sorry.
And one more negative experience – there were two two-meter guys in the entire standing section and of course they both stood in front of me. One then moved, but the other one stayed standing there and by the end of the concert I could barely see anything. Great. (I would actually just ban them, especially if they are going with friends/girlfriends and know literally one song.)
Let’s move further into positive waters.
Orla had two support acts – the first was called Niamh Regan and she played guitar. The second was called Hohnen Ford and she played keyboards. Both were really good. Oh and the preplaylist (aka the songs they play when no one is on stage) included 3 Chappell songs (Casual, HOT TO GO! and Pink Pony Club), which is poetic considering Chappell played this venue a few months ago (more here). And Orla also has her cover of Red Wine Supernova in the setlist!
But before the venue let people in without early entry, Orla played her new song Now What?, which was released this week, over the speakers. Orla herself then started the concert at 9:15 with the sounds of I need a Hero by Bonnie Tyler and in addition to songs from both albums and some older songs, she also played the aforementioned Now What?, so we got the studio and live version on the same evening yay
Orla was great – energetic, she made faces and joked as much as she could during the performance. She played acoustic, but mainly electric guitar and at one point she took over the drumsticks and started playing drums too! When she finished Now What?, she happily told us that we were cured and didn’t need any therapy because we survived the new song haha Then before the encore she joked “Well, that’s a lie that is told in the music industry. Now we’re going to play the last song. But if you want more, you have to scream my name really loud.” And of course we screamed.
Then there was the audience game. That classic, where the audience sings what the musician wants them to. In our case, during the song Backseat Driver, where she divided the venue in half and one sang La la la la and the other I-I wouldn’t trust me either. As I mentioned, during Zombie we were jumping and during the evening’s closing song, Little Chaos, Orla stagedived and landed about two people away from me! But there was also a fan project when Orla returned for the encore. We made an Irish flag with our mobile phones (the people on the left had orange, we in the middle had white and those on the right had green). The singer and her band were moved.
I’m so glad I had the chance to go. Orla is a powerhouse live and it was great to hear my favorite songs live. Orla is an independent artist, which means she’s not signed to any major label like Sony Music, Warner or Universal. So she runs everything herself and that makes her professional achievements all the more amazing. Olympia has a capacity of 1,600 people and was sold out. During Covid, her song Why am I like this? appeared in Heartstopper, a Netflix series. Another song, Heavy, was then used in the trailer for Normal People by BBC (series, adaptation of the book). Both albums placed in the TOP10 of the Irish album charts. For an independent artist, this is simply a biography as it should be (there’s more to it of course, this is just a quick excerpt).
If you like rock songs cut with pop, then Orla could definitely appeal to you. As usual, I’m attaching a few videos from the concert:
