Fans party with Shinee

SINGAPORE - Fans of South Korean band Shinee started queuing up to watch their idols almost 12 hours before their performance on Tuesday at Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre.

Some of them had also bought a few hundred dollars of make-up products in order to secure tickets to the show, which was organised by Korean cosmetics brand Etude for its customers. Shinee members Onew, Jonghyun, Key and Taemin, in addition to girl group f(x)'s Sulli, were in Singapore for the Etude House Pink Play Party, which featured a mini-concert by Shinee in addition to make-up demonstrations and contests.

Human resource executive Tessa Chloe Goh, 50, and her friends joined the queue as early as 8.30am, even though the organisers had scheduled the official start time for the queue at 10am. "We really wanted to make sure that we could get as close to them as possible, and even then, there were already 50 people ahead of us," said Ms Goh, who was togged out in bright pink and a blonde wig for the event.

In the end, more than 1,000 fans were in the queue before the doors opened at 5pm for the concert scheduled at 7pm.

Clearly, the Shinee boys were the main draw of the night for the 3,500-strong crowd, even though Minho, the fifth member of the band, did not come to Singapore.

They performed their hits Dream Girl, Beautiful, Lucifer and Why So Serious? with gusto. Key, 21, was easily the most vocal member on Tuesday.

At a press conference in the afternoon, he valiantly attempted to answer the emcee's questions directly in English and apologised: "Sorry, my English very suck!"

He also continued to linger for a while on the stage at the end of the mini-concert, shouting out "We love Singapore" to the crowd, which promptly screamed with excitement.

Tickets to the event, which also featured Taiwanese beauty and make-up guru Kevin Chou from the popular beauty show Queen, were not available for sale and was obtained only through giveaway events and promotions.

Ms Samantha Sum, 23, spent $500 buying Etude cosmetic products in order to qualify for tickets under a promotional event.

The part-time waitress, who said she felt like she had "bought up the whole of Etude House", had also attended Shinee's two concert tours to Singapore in recent years as well as to last year's SMTown concert, which featured Shinee in the line-up.

She said: "I'll be on a tight budget for the next three months, but it was worth it as I got to see them and I can also share the make-up products with my friend."

yuensin@sph.com.sg

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