I recently went to the Justin Timberlake concert with great expectations, I also went to The Killers concert not really expecting much at all. They're definitely a good band, "Somebody Told Me", "Mr Brightside" and "When You Were Young" are great songs but I don't have any of their albums and wouldn't have called myself an avid fan. In contrast to this I have both of Justin Timberlake's albums, probably know 90% of his songs off by heart and the ring tone on my phone is still "Sexy Back". Maybe I've given too much information!!

Justin's concert was in Acer Arena in Sydney which is a relatively big venue (not as big as Telstra stadium where U2 had their concert earlier in the year but still quite big). The Killers also performed in Sydney - their concert was at the Darling Harbour Entertainment centre. This is quite small in comparsion to Acer Arena and is where P!nk also performed a few months ago.

Some bands and artists like to build the crowd up to the big hits. Justin started his concert with Future Sex Love Sounds. This was understandable considering it is the name of the album and tour but it is not exactly one of his best songs (in my opinion). The result was a pretty inactive audience and the set up for the stage in the middle was lavish but not really that practical. There was no big screen, instead they had a sort of transparent curtain and attempted to project the camera work on that. Let's just say in didn't work and served more of a hinderance than help.

So what did The Killers do..? No big screens and no real fancy stuff but the result was much better. They went straight into "When You Were Young" and had the whole crowd on their feet from the the 1st second. They totally nailed it and had the crowd jumping up and down (including myself) singing along with them. They continued with their big hits and "When We Were Young" was their 4th song in. It was brilliant!

Both Justin and The Killers were good at interacting with the audience, but while Justin used the old and overused technique of saying "You are the best crowd I've had" and "Can you hear me Sydney?", The Killers appeared more natural in just in saying it was great to get over to Sydney. Who really believes it when they hear the old your the best crowd nonsense?! Chances are the artist / band will say the same thing to the next crowd they have. In fairness to Justin sometimes it appeared like he was trying to get blood from a stone. He is an awesome dancer and I guess people just wanted to watch his moves whereas the crowd for the Killers wanted to jump up and down and scream along to the songs. At one point they put the mic out to the crowd to continue the song and got a brilliant response. You know it's going well when you get that!!

Justin was excellent on the piano and guitar but I think he played too many mellow songs and his encore went well but not brilliant. The Killers on the other hand came back out 3 times!!! "You're making it too hard to leave!" shouted Brandon Flowers and after playing a lesser known song he said "We can't finish it like that can we?" and went straight into the chorus of "When We Were Young" again. Awesome!! U2 had used a similar technique to finish at Telstra stadium - nothing wrong with learning from the best. It was the perfect way to end a brilliant concert. In contrast I don't remember what Justin finished with...