After a year hiatus (last taking place in 2023), Fridayz Live is back! This time, bigger and better, taking over Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium. The Melbourne concert was the final stop of the 2025 Fridayz Live festival tour, and honestly, they saved the best for last.
This year, Fridayz Live was the most immersive it’s ever been, with tons of patrons dressed to the nines in their best Pitbull get up, complete with their iconic bald caps. Some Pitbull cosplayers even had giant Fireball Whiskey blow-up bottles! Laughing at the sight, we were handed free bald caps by fellow attendees, and slowly made our way to collect our tickets at the box office, braving the scattered showers of rain before successfully entering the Melbourne stadium venue and being relieved the roof was closed.
This year marks the first time Australia has held Fridayz Live since the passing of our former MC Fatman Scoop who died August last year. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure if Fridayz Live would return, and I did wonder if the festival would function without an MC, granted that the MC replacement would have big shoes to fill. While there was an MC this year, they were forgettable. I don’t even know what her name was, as she said it hurriedly only once at the beginning of the festival and that was it.
Despite this, Fridayz Live made sure that Fatman Scoop’s relationship with the music festival and his legacy would not be forgotten. Fun resident DJ, YO! MAFIA made sure to play some of Fatman Scoop’s tracks, plus halfway through the event, Lil Jon did his own tribute to the legendary hip-hop artist, surprising Melbourne patrons by appearing at the centre of the venue to hype up the crowd to Scoop’s most popular song ‘Be Faithful’, and I thought that this was very sweet!
First to officially kick things off was underrated American pop songstress Jordin Sparks. It seemed a bit odd that she was up first, but boy, did she deliver! With stunning vocals and an even brighter smile, not only did Sparks display her vocal range and strength with her original tunes ‘One Step at a Time’, ‘Tattoo’, ‘No Air’ and my personal favourite ‘Battlefield’, but she also performed a lovely cover and tribute to Whitney Houston, singing the eternally catchy and inspiring ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)’.
British rapper Tinie Tempah was up next, and he easily had the Melbourne dancing without a care, even jumping to his more house-rave style numbers. Crowd favourites of his set included ‘Written in the Stars’ and ‘Girls Like’, but the best part about Tempah’s set was his statement that Melbourne might be the best city in Australia. Spoiler: *It is*.
Female rap icon Eve followed, surprising the Melbourne audience with her platinum blonde locks and fiercely commanding stage presence. Eve has always been known to have great hair and great music, and she did not disappoint with her music including tracks ‘Who’s That Girl?’, ‘Rich Girl’ and ‘Let Me Blow Your Mind’, while having everyone grooving to her beats.
Lil Jon thoroughly impressed, showcasing songs not only from his own discography, but songs that he wrote and produced including ‘Yeah!’ with Usher, and ‘Shots’ with LMFAO. However, Lil Jon shone when he (previously mentioned but performed later in the evening) performed Fatman Scoop’s ‘Be Faithful’, his own hit tune ‘Turn Down for What’ and even appeared on stage during Pitbull’s set to perform together ‘JUMPIN’, with Pitbull expressing his eternal gratitude for collaborating with the rapper and producer. At the end of his set, Lil Jon even took his baby on stage to look at the audience, which was super adorable.
Wiz Khalifa was up next and had patrons nodding along to his music including ‘Black and Yellow’, the Snoop Dogg collaborated hit ‘Young, Wild & Free’, ‘See You Again’ that features Charlie Puth from the Furious 7 soundtrack, and there was even a tribute to Dr. Dre with a cover of ‘The Next Episode’.
It felt like the entire venue held there breath and appropriately so, as Armando Christian Pérez, otherwise known as Pitbull or Mr. Worldwide, even had a countdown clock before the hit maker took to the Melbourne stage to perform a full set of his most popular tracks including but not limited to ‘Don’t Stop the Party’, collaborative track with Jennifer Lopez (sampling Ritchie Valen’s ‘La Bamba’) ‘On the Floor’, ‘DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love’ with Usher, collaborative Daddy Yankee track ‘Gasolina’, the aforementioned track ‘JUMPIN’ with Lil Jon live on stage, and of course, ‘Timber’ that features Kesha, ‘Fireball’ which manifested blow up Fireball Whiskey bottles in the audience, and the Ne-Yo blessed banger ‘Give Me Everything’ – the latter had everyone (if they weren’t already) in the entire stadium, yes, even up on the second and third level, up on their feet and dancing.
Throughout Pitbull’s set, he spoke with massive love, gratitude and humility for his fans and for his career. He expressed affectionate appreciation to all those who dressed like him with their bald caps and taught the Melbourne audience that, “The most radical thing in life is not money, it’s time”.
You would think that Pitbull would believe his greatest achievement would be his hits, but instead, to everyone’s surprise, Pitbull shared that his greatest achievement was that through his music, he co-founded SLAM (Sports Leadership and Management Academy), a network (currently two establishments in Nevada and Florida) of tuition-free public charter schools. Beaming with joy, Pitbull stating with much humility that these schools would not exist without his fans due their love and support of his music. If I didn’t love Pitbull before, I certainly did after his epic set.
Last but not at all least, the American vocal goddess, Mariah Carey took to the Melbourne stage for the finale, and I was in disbelief. For many, this would be their first time seeing the iconic singer-songwriter live (including myself). Prior to this festival tour, Mariah Carey hadn’t toured Australia for over decade. She has been on my concert bucket list for even longer, and honestly, I would be lying if I stated my intention to attend Fridayz Live was for anyone else. Mariah was my original pop songstress when I was a kid, she is iconic, and it was a dream come true seeing her perform live in Melbourne.
Mariah performed new tunes ‘Type Dangerous’ and ‘Sugar Sweet’ from her 16th studio album Here for It All. She made sure to make her fans happy, playing her classics including ‘Dreamlover’, ‘Fantasy’, a mash-up of ‘Honey’ and ‘Heartbreaker’, and the forever catchy ‘Always Be My Baby’. Her viral hits were present too including ‘Touch My Body’, ‘Obsessed’, ‘It’s Like That’, and ‘We Belong Together’. Effortlessly, Mariah showcased her insane vocal range, just in case you forgot why she rules (yes, she can still sing and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise), with ‘Emotions’, ‘My All’ and my personal favourite that made me cry ‘Hero’ (no seriously, I was both singing along and sobbing).
However, the pinnacle of Fridayz Live was when Mariah Carey performed her annual moneymaker and arguably the best Christmas song of all time – ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’. Who cares if it’s only October?!? It was an honour that The Christmas Queen herself defrosted early just for us, with a lovely touch of white confetti that was released around the venue, looking like snow that showered over elated Melbourne music fans.
Fridayz Live 2025 wasn’t just a concert or festival, it was an experience. Fridayz Live shared that it would be back in 2026, and while I am damn excited for the special touring music festival to return already, this year with its flashmob-like Pitbull army, and seeing a line-up of artists I had never seen before, 2025 will be hard to top. Even when leaving the venue and the carpark, everyone had their voices and car volume up, singing *that* Christmas hit all the way home.
Proudly presented by MG Live, Fridayz Live 2025 took place in Melbourne at Marvel Stadium on Saturday October 25th. After visiting Brisbane, Sydney and Perth, Melbourne was the final and biggest stop of the festival tour.
For more information and future ticketing, visit:
https://fridayz.live
https://mg.live/fridayzlive
https://www.instagram.com/fridayz_live
Photography by Jordan Munns.
