It was Friday 24 October in Dublin. The Olympia Theatre to be precise.

Jedward were in town but this was a differently billed event.

In her review Lauren Murphy of the Irish Times wrote that she found it a bit odd. Jedward gigs have young fans jumping up and down and screaming. Not, as the billing stated, sitting down for a performance.

She described that the event seemed a bit unplanned with staging and lighting untypical, and it turned out that even the best laid (or maybe unlaid) plans don’t work. The only people who may have ended up seating were the parents. Everybody else did what they usually do when the twins are on stage.

They performed tracks from the last few years and included their Eurovision Song Contest 2012 song Waterline.

Lauren described the event as group karaoke with a thousand screaming kids and songs that aren’t actually very good. An acoustic covers set doesn’t fare much better, with three aborted attempts at Coldplay’s ‘Sky full of stars’ and a shaky singalong of Canadian band’s Magic! hit ‘Marry that girl’.

Another review of the show which came from essentiallypop.com didn’t agree with the Irish Times article. Their Lisa Hafey wrote:

I was one of the privileged people in attendance at the “VIP Soundcheck Experience” which preceded the concert, and was very proud to listen to them talk about their influences, to hear John speak at length about how they write songs, and how they produced their album, going into detail about equalising the sound of each part of the song, and so forth.

The audience in attendance [had] an average age of 30 the audience ranges from the very young to the very old – but that’s the appeal of the Dublin twins – nobody feels out of place, everybody feels welcome.

Their self-written songs are all about this. The four that we’ve heard so far, “Free spirit”, “Ferocious”, “Perfect Wonderland” and “Silent raindrops”, are ALL empowering songs, encouraging the listener to realise life isn’t a bed of roses, but at the same time, nothing is insurmountable

No doubt we will hear much more from the boys as they prepare for the possibility of being part of Ireland’s National Selection in the spring of 2015.

Stay tuned to esctoday.com for more information on Jedward and Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2015