The night of Saturday 27 June and the early hours afterwards saw the most populous city in Scotland play host to the Eurodance legend from Sweden, Basshunter, as the four walls of the Slay nightclub were filled with classic anthems from the past.
Warming up
The beats pounded harder than a sledgehammer on stone, the lights flashed brightly across the darkened room of the club and fans screamed louder than anything on Earth. And, yet, this was just the warmup. A four-hour performance by DJ Zitkus, which felt like barely any time at all as the music consumed the concert goers, getting them lost in the rhythm. All senses were caught off guard as you could literally feel the vibrations of the music, so powerful they vibrated through your entire body, rattling your skeleton and shaking your organs.
A legend in the flesh
But if fatigue had begun to catch up at the end of the first supporting act, excitement and exhilaration would fire off once more, sending a wake-up call of adrenaline through the body as the man himself was sighted, a legend only heard on tracks and seen only in music videos, walking to the centre of stage, in the flesh.
He came, he saw, and the crowd went wild. As Basshunter got on stage, he greeted the audience with passion, extreme enthusiasm and electric energy. Classic songs were sung with Basshunter asking if there were any “angels in the crowd” before performing his hit Angel In The Night from his album Now You’re Gone and mentioning that some of the audience would go home to those we love and wake up to them in the morning before performing his hit from the album Bass Generation: Every Morning.
Not only did Basshunter perform amazing tracks that the audience could get completely caught up and lost in, he himself immersed himself in the crowd and the country. From singing Scotland’s unofficial 2026 Fifa World Cup anthem “No Scotland, No Party” to performing a rendition of Flower of Scotland in his techno, Eurodance format and receiving Glasgow’s famous concert chant “Here we, here we, here f*cking go”, Basshunter truly threw himself into Scotland.
The anniversary
2026 saw the anniversary 20-year anniversary of Boten Anna, a legendary song that he released in 2006. He performed a little bit of the song before switching to his legendary hit: Now You’re Gone, which was first released in December 2007.
Boten Anna is a song sung in Basshunter’s native Swedish language while Now You’re Gone is a song that is sung to the same melody but with completely different lyrics and in English. Basshunter tried to translate Boten Anna into English but struggled to make it work as well as the original so used the tune to create a new song. Thus, an all-time classic track was born.
Meeting your heroes
The old saying goes “never meet your heroes”, as interacting with someone you admire greatly and deeply will always lead to disappointment. As someone in the front row of the concert that night, I, personally, was far from disappointed.
Not only did Basshunter perform for the crowd, but he greeted and got lost in the crowd as well. From waving to the crowd from the door before coming on, to taking people’s phones and taking selfies with them, Basshunter gave many diehard fans, some who had travelled from extreme ends of the country, what they’d been hoping for a very long time. There was, however, one major stand out moment in all of that. Standing at the front of the crowd was a man who was very quiet and reserved, he didn’t jump up and down like the others, nor did he scream and shout. Did he smile, who knows? But Basshunter saw him, crouched down and offered him a fist bump, which was accepted. That right there shows his character, a man seeing someone hiding himself away as though he wasn’t happy and reaching out to him. Never meet your heroes? This is one hero that ought to be met!
Four amazing hours of DJ Zitkus, a stellar performance from Basshunter and a fabulous finish by DJ Merki. Even a surprise guest appearance by someone who Basshunter introduced the crowd as the Virgin Mary. The evening shook the very ground of Slay Glasgow and pumped electric joy into many. All I Ever Wanted was to meet my musical idol and to him I say: Now You’re Gone, there’s an empty place in my heart…
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