Guy Sebastian - 100 Years Around The Sun

Guy Sebastian did not just take Sydney 100 times around the sun, he somehow made 6,500 people feel like they were sitting in his lounge room.

There was a dark autumnal mood hanging over Sydney, but the last of that late-summer warmth still clung to the air as the crowd poured into TikTok Entertainment Centre. By the time Sam Fischer stepped out, the auditorium was already close to full, buzzing with that lovely pre-show mix of chatter, expectation and people trying to work out whether they had time for one more drink before the lights went down. It felt like a room ready for big songs, but also for something more personal. You could sense early on that this was not going to be one of those polite, sit-back-and-watch shows. Sydney had come ready to sing.

Sam Fischer opened with a playful nod to the song that made so many people know his name, a prelude of This City drifting through the room before he properly arrived and launched into Lovelife. Dressed simply in a white top and black jeans, blonde hair catching the light, he had the easy warmth of someone genuinely thrilled to be home. Behind him, the red backdrop carried a cheeky little joke: “the guy who sings this city.” It was self-aware, funny, and exactly the right tone. Sydney loves a bit of humility, especially when it comes wrapped in a voice like that.

He did not have to work hard to win the room, but he worked anyway. By the second song, he was teaching the audience a singalong part, although “teaching” might be generous because they were more than ready. “He’s got such a beautiful voice,” someone behind me said, almost surprised by how quickly the room had gone quiet for him. That voice was the centrepiece, but the set became something warmer and more generous as it went on. He spoke about writing a new album over the last year before introducing A Heart Doesn’t Hurt Itself, then later paused to acknowledge what the tour with Guy had meant to him. Guy, he said, had taken him under his wing. “I wish he’d move me into his house,” he joked, and the room loved him for it.

The moment that lifted Sam’s set from very good to genuinely special came with Carry It Well. He described the song as deeply special to the four of them on stage, and you could hear why. Erin, Sam’s wife, took the lead on the second verse, Sam returned for the third, and then all three vocalists moved to the front centre of the stage, their voices folding into each other in three-part harmony that felt almost spiritual. It was understated, but it stopped the room. Before the end, he spoke gently to anyone who had come along while carrying something heavy, telling them they were brave, safe, welcome, and that the whole team was lucky to have them there. It could have felt like stage patter in the wrong hands. It did not. It landed. When he later raised a glass to the audience and took a bow with the band, Sydney gave him the kind of applause usually reserved for someone who had done more than warm up the room. Sam Fischer had quietly cracked it open.

Then the stage changed mood.

Guy Sebastian’s world for this tour was built around time, memory and movement. A glowing tiered staircase sat in cool blue, clean and cinematic, giving the band room to sit back while the centre of the stage commanded attention. Behind it, a giant vinyl record spun in motion, sliced by a vivid red beam that reflected across it like light over liquid. The vertical spike above was not quite a needle. It read more like the hand of a clock, mirrored beneath, giving the whole image a sense of time passing as much as music playing. Simple. Sharp. Beautiful.

And then there was Guy.

He arrived in a burgundy suit with white trim, mustard shirt and white shoes, looking like a man who had somehow dressed for a soul revue, a Las Vegas residency and a family wedding all at once, and pulled it off. The band around him looked equally sharp, all class and restraint, letting the colour and movement belong to the man at the front. Get It Done got things moving, 100 Times Around the Sun gave the night its compass, and by the time Who’s That Girl hit, the room was properly up.

Carmen Smith took the spotlight and absolutely tore into it. Amazing is not too strong a word. She gave the song one of those lift-the-roof vocal moments that made people turn to each other with raised eyebrows, while Guy took a breath, reset, and then came back with some slick dance moves that reminded everyone he still has the entertainer gene switched firmly on.

Not that he was pretending it was effortless. After the song he looked out, catching his breath, and called for help from whoever was in charge of the aircon. “It’s not quite like 23 years ago when I won Idol,” he laughed. “I am getting older.” The crowd roared because the truth is, he may be older, but he was also singing, dancing, joking and commanding the room with the kind of ease that only comes from decades of work.

The first real emotional turn came when he spoke about The Sebastian Foundation and its support of Open Parachute, a school program helping young people with mental health. He explained that $15 can support a child for an entire year, and that the program has now reached 340,000 children. Some of the ticket fees from the show would go towards the foundation. It was not a long speech, but it framed what followed beautifully. Guy has always had pop instincts, but tonight he seemed most interested in connection. The show was about being together, about loved ones, about showing up for each other in the good times and the hard ones.

That thought led him to the gloss black grand piano, its white edging almost echoing his suit. He sat down and introduced Standing With You as a song he struggles to get through without becoming emotional. It began with just Guy and the piano, stripped right back, the arena suddenly hushed in that rare way large rooms can be when everyone collectively decides not to breathe too loudly. Then came percussion, backing vocals, strings from the keys, and the song began to rise. Slowly. Carefully. And when four additional singers joined the three already on stage, the whole thing became something close to gospel. Not in a flashy way. In a human way. A choir of voices building behind a song about not leaving people alone in the dark.

It was one of the night’s first goosebump moments.

The choir stayed as Guy strapped on a Gretsch guitar and moved into No Reason To Stay, the soulfulness of the band settling into the room like warm smoke. Then, after yet another “I love you Guy” from the crowd, he smiled and gave it back. “There’s a lot of love in here tonight,” he said, before introducing The Keys, written for Jules, who was somewhere out in the room. He spoke about starting with the title and knowing he wanted to land on the line “Only you could build a man like me, and that’s why you hold the keys.” It was a lovely insight into the craft of writing a love song, but also into the kind of gratitude that can sit underneath one.

At the piano, with the choir answering his understated calls in full, beautiful harmony, The Keys became less like a performance and more like a private thank-you note read aloud to thousands of people. He pointed out that some of the vocalists were from the Mount Druitt Choir, and the applause that followed was huge. Deservedly so. They were not decorative. They were vital.

From there, All Yours Again carried the new-album warmth further. Guy spoke about writing it in Bali over drum loops, then smiled at how much better it felt tonight with Andy on drums. Midway through, the band dropped away and left just Guy and the choir for a chorus, and again the night found that sweet spot between polish and vulnerability. It takes confidence to let a big arena song become small for a moment. It takes even more to trust the audience to lean in with you.

Then Sam Fischer returned.

Guy introduced Antidote by telling the story of first hearing Sam a few years ago and thinking he had one of the best voices he had ever heard. Eventually they wrote together, building the song around the idea that we all need something to hold onto when life gets hard. For them, that antidote was music. For anyone sitting there feeling broken or lonely, Guy hoped the song might offer some hope. When Sam walked back out, the room lifted before they even sang a note.

Their voices together were stunning. Complementary, soulful and full of mutual respect, the performance moved from tenderness into something almost playful, the two of them pushing into falsetto and runs as if testing just how far the feeling could stretch. But it never became a contest. It was two singers who clearly understood what music had saved in each other. The bridge, with those lines about being frozen, weak, and still not having to wonder where home is, hit like a hand on the shoulder.

And then came Battle Scars.

I have heard that song many times, but not like this. Never like this. It began with piano and Guy singing softly, almost reimagining the original’s harder edges as confession rather than confrontation. The backing vocals entered gradually, restrained and beautiful, lifting the first chorus just enough to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. As the arrangement grew, the rhythm section did not crash in so much as punctuate it, like an orchestra underscoring the emotional turn in a film. It was powerful without being overblown, cinematic without losing the wound at the centre of the song. By the end, when it pulled back again to choir, Guy and piano, the whole room felt suspended.

“That version was ridiculous,” someone near me muttered, and they were right. Ridiculous in the best possible way. If there is a live recording of this arrangement, it needs to escape into the world immediately. Some songs age. Some songs reveal they had another life inside them all along.

The show then snapped beautifully back into movement. Under dim blue light, the band began teasing the intro to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, only to glide cleanly into Gold as the stage burst into bright gold and Guy, now jacket-free in a blue short-sleeved shirt, grinned like he knew exactly what he had just done. Afterlife kept the energy up, upbeat and pop-leaning but still anchored by that unmistakable soul in his voice.

For the next section, the show became looser and more intimate. Guy sat at the piano with Carmen Smith, Gary Pinto and Vince Harder close by, while Andy left the kit and moved to a huge concert bass drum behind the piano, beaters in hand. That visual alone was striking, the kind of thing you remember after the details blur. A medley of songs from across his ten albums moved through the room, including Sparks, before Believer brought Joel down to sit on the stage with acoustic guitar, Scotty at the grand piano, and the backing vocalists wrapping the whole thing in depth. It felt almost campfire-like, if your campfire happened to have arena lighting and a band capable of turning on a dime.

Then Guy did something gloriously risky.

He told the audience he was coming out for a walk, and that it could “go absolutely pear shaped.” The rule was simple: people had to name a song that meant something to them, but it could not be one of his. He would Google it if needed, and if he knew it, he would sing it. In most shows, that would be a cute idea with a high chance of disaster. Here, it became one of the most joyful sections of the night.

A request came for Risk It All by Bruno Mars, and he eased into it as if it had been waiting in the wings. Someone else threw him Faith by George Michael, and suddenly the room had that familiar bounce. Ironic by Alanis Morissette got a grin of recognition, Beat It by Michael Jackson gave the band a chance to flex, and Purple Rain by Prince brought that lovely hush that only arrives when a crowd realises it is being given something completely unplanned and somehow still beautiful. Guy nailed them, and the band followed with the kind of frighteningly good musicianship that makes chaos look rehearsed.

“That band is not mucking around,” a bloke nearby said, laughing, and honestly, that summed it up.

Then came a surprise that started as a story.

Guy returned to the stage and softened a little, the way parents do when they are about to talk about one of their kids and are already half gone before they begin. He told the crowd that his son Archie had recently been in a musical with Rockdale Musical Society, and that some of Archie’s mates from the show were there in the room. He remembered being in the backyard playing basketball with him and asking, almost casually, how he would feel about singing something in one of his shows.

Archie’s answer was firm.

No chance.

Naturally, Guy forced him to do it anyway. He joked about having already brought him out at a previous show and how emotional it had made him, but also explained that Archie could not simply join every date because, annoyingly enough, his son still had school to go to. There was something beautifully ordinary about that detail. Arena lights, massive tour, thousands of people, and still, somewhere behind it all, homework and school mornings.

Only then did he reveal what was about to happen.

Archie Sebastian walked on confidently, greeted the room with a “Hello Sydney,” and then sang the first verse of Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing immaculately while his dad watched, absolutely bursting. It was one of those moments where the arena stopped being an arena. It became a backyard, a family room, a father watching his son step into himself. When Guy joined for the second verse, the lyric “I have nothing if I don’t have you” landed with almost unfair emotional force. They were not just singing it to the audience. They were singing it to each other.

By the end, the entire auditorium was on its feet.

Not a dry eye in the house might be a cliché, but sometimes clichés survive because they are true.

Another quick wardrobe change brought Guy back in black pants and boots with a fitted burgundy short-sleeve shirt, subtle circular patterning and gold stud detailing catching the lights. Maybe arrived on a big acoustic guitar intro with cymbal swells, and Guy took a moment to acknowledge its recent APRA wins for Most Performed Australian Work and Most Performed Pop Work, thanking co-writer and producer Robby De Sa, who was in the crowd. It was a lovely full-circle moment, the machinery of songwriting briefly visible before the song became everyone’s again.

From there, the medley was pure celebration. Don’t Worry Be Happy, Like It Like That, Like a Drum and Come Home With Me gave the room a final run of hits and memory triggers, the audience singing, clapping and grinning through the sort of section that reminds you just how many of Guy’s songs have slipped into Australian life over the years. After a huge “thank you Sydney,” he left the stage, but no one believed him for a second. The dark arena filled with applause and demands for more.

The encore shifted the mood again with Before I Go, giving the night one last emotional inhale before the release of Choir. “This is my very last song,” he told Sydney. “Please sing this with me.” They did. Of course they did. By then, the room had been warmed, cracked open, surprised, moved, and sent dancing back to itself. Choir was less a closer than a communal exhale, a final reminder that the night had never really been about one voice. It had been about all of them.

As the lights came up, people were still buzzing, almost arguing over their favourite parts because there were too many to choose from. Sam’s harmonies. Carmen taking flight. Standing With You. Antidote. That breathtaking Battle Scars. The request walkabout. Archie. The choir. The clock hand over the spinning vinyl. The whole night carried the feeling of time passing, but also of time being held still for just a little while. In a show built around going 100 times around the sun, Guy Sebastian somehow made the biggest moments feel small enough to hold in your hands. Sydney will not get a night like that again for ages, although, as Guy would probably point out with a grin, maybe only about 20 hours, given he still has two more shows to go.

Some concerts stay in your ears. This one found somewhere deeper to live

Gallery https://musicfestivalsaustralia.com/event-photos/guy-sebastian-100-years-around-the-sun

Thank you to Guy Sebastian, TEG Live, Sony Music Flourish PR and the Tik Tok Entertainment Centre for having us along.

Review and Photos by Andy Kershaw for Music Kingdom Australia