Aqua Australia tour: Fans slam ‘painful’ final show in Melbourne and claim iconic 90s group sounded like a ‘drunk karaoke’

Fans of iconic ’90s band Aqua were left disappointed after the group’s show in Melbourne on Wednesday night.

The Danish-Norwegian took to the Margaret Court Arena stage for his final performance of his Australian tour.

One concertgoer described the concert as “painful.”

In a video shared on TikTok, singer Lene sounded shaky and nervous as she attempted to sing the first verse of her song Cartoon Heroes.

“This is painful,” user @xoxomissflo wrote about the clip, but noted that the intro “looked promising.”

“The opening really showed what we were in for tonight… it wasn’t the vibe,” they wrote in their caption.

Several fans took to the comments to share their thoughts and experiences seeing the band live, a few years ago and more recently.

‘Cartoon Heroes wasn’t the best, but they got better as the night went on. That or I got more drunk. I really enjoyed them,’ wrote one.

“OMG this sounds like drunk karaoke,” another added.

“What a shame,” one commented, while someone said, “The crowd is pacifying.”

Another said: “They seem so bored with themselves in every video I’ve seen.”

Meanwhile, others expressed their full support for the artists who have been performing for 30 years.

‘Personally, I think they were amazing. I was at the show and had an amazing time!’ someone said.

It comes after Lene sparked concern when she walked off stage at the group’s gig in Perth last week, before returning crying in her pajamas an hour later.

Attendees described the show as “awkward” and “horrendous” after a series of bizarre incidents left the crowd confused.

Mix94.5 producer Shelby Brady recounted the performance on Pete & Kymba for Breakfast on Friday morning, telling the hosts that the show was “instantly bad,” but got worse when singer Lena Nystrom left the stage and He came back crying in his pajamas.

The Euro-pop band is best known for their 1997 hit single Barbie Girl and kicked off their Australian tour in Perth at Metro City on Thursday night.

Brady said the show got off on the wrong foot before the band even took the stage, and the crowd saw an embarrassing mistake on a stage screen.

“I knew they were off to a bad start when the screen behind them said ‘Hello Adelaide,'” he said.

While he described the first song, Cartoon Heroes, as a “vibe,” the show continued to get worse when Lene disappeared from the stage, saying the exit was the result of a “sound issue.”

“You could see the main woman take off her head throughout the song, but it didn’t seem like a big deal,” he said.

“She’s leaving and she’s the lead singer, so they have to continue without her.”

Shelby said the remaining singers were “floundering” before leaving the stage for an hour, leaving hundreds of concertgoers confused.

“It’s so uncomfortable that no one knows what’s going on,” he said.

‘They closed the bar so you couldn’t get drinks, there was nowhere to sit.

‘People left because there was no communication. It was just an empty stage with no one there.”

But the show took a turn for the worse when the lead singer returned to the show visibly upset and in her pajamas.

‘They return at 10 at night. “The lead singer was wearing leather before, she’s dressed in that and now she’s in real pajamas,” Brady said.

“She was crying…breathing heavily the entire time and she was like that for the entire hour of the performance.”

Host Kymba Cahill was sympathetic to the singer and suggested she may have been having an “episode” and trying to get over the performance.

‘Do you think it might have started as a sound issue? But to me that sounds like he’s having an episode,” Cahill said.

‘If you take off your tight leather suit and are off stage for an hour and come back crying and in your pajamas, that indicates something has gone wrong. She is not well.’

The stage blunder comes as the group was forced to reduce the size of their shows in Australia due to disappointing demand.