Between Curtains and Confessions: Tom Odell Live at SAP Arena
The SAP Arena on November 22 wasn’t the kind of place where I expected to walk in and immediately feel my whole emotional bandwidth shift, but that’s exactly what it did, starting with us rushing in after completely missing Etta James (still hurts) and catching David Kushner just in time, which honestly felt like some higher power giving us one last “okay fine, you can have this.” He ended with "Daylight", obviously, and it was one of those moments where the entire arena suddenly sounded like it had been practicing in the parking lot beforehand; everyone was fully committed and singing along.
Then came that classic concert half-hour, where nothing happens except people mentally preparing themselves for a mental breakdown. And when the lights dimmed, Tom Odell walked onstage and started singing “Strange House” into the room from in front of a still-closed curtain. The curtain had the line “cause our dreams they have meaning I suppose” projected on it, and it was so understated and pretty that it caught everyone off guard, the kind of moment where you suddenly realize you’re way too emotionally available for a random Friday in Mannheim.
The rest of the concert leaned fully into that energy. One of the moments that resonated with the entire arena at once was when he read a letter from someone in the crowd, asking him to play "Best Day of My Life." The letter explained how the song had helped her find beauty in life again after spending so long wishing it would end. It was raw in a way that everyone stopped moving, because deep inside, I think everyone in that arena could relate to the contents of the letter in one way or another.
When he started the song, the screens lit up with a montage of Tom biking through Mannheim, through tiny streets, passing familiar corners, waving at fans who had already been queuing for hours and the video followed him straight into the arena, backstage, right up to the moment where two security guards held the curtains on screen and then, in real life, opened them at the exact same second. It was one of those transitions that felt strangely intimate, like the outside world and the inside one suddenly overlapped. The whole night moved like that, not in extremes, but in these smooth waves where one feeling slowly bled into another. “The End” was the one that hit me the hardest, partially because it’s been my favorite for ages, but also because when you hear it live, the whole thing settles in a way that makes your throat tighten, and your breath go a little uneven.
And I think part of why the whole evening felt so charged for me is that I’d actually seen Tom earlier this year when he opened for Billie Eilish, except we were stuck in traffic and missed two-thirds of his set, and I was genuinely so upset about it that I promised myself I’d see him again properly. So being there this time, getting the full show from the first note to the confetti, felt like accidentally closing a loop I didn’t realize was still open. He wrapped with "Wonderful Life", which made poetic sense because, obviously, it’s the Wonderful Life Tour, and then came the encore of "Another Love", and the entire arena immediately turned into a giant therapy session under a cloud of confetti.
If you haven’t seen Tom Odell live yet, this really is me saying: go. Some concerts don’t feel like they are just concerts; they feel like something you only get once, and this night honestly came pretty close to that.
(Dare I say best show of 2025 so far? Yeah. Yeah, I might.)
You can still get tickets here!
REVIEW BY
Ilayda
For as long as I can remember, the question of belonging has lingered in the back of my mind. As a diaspora child, I carry the weight of leaving and the longing to find home in every place I go. So, I like to write about things that move me - music that lingers, films that haunt, words that stay long after the page is turned. I love to chase the moments that make me feel something.
