A brave and blissed-out attempt to rip up the arena-gig rulebook
Kacey Musgraves Wembley SSE Arena
It is usual, at arena gigs, for the crowd to sing along to their favourite songs. But it is rare that the music stops, only for those thousands of voices to become an a cappella chorus that soars to every corner of the cavernous space.
Kacey Musgraves, though, is that kind of musician: a country-crossover artist of megawatt stardom whose fame has been built through song craft and mass appreciation of it. And this was exactly what happened at Wembley Arena on Saturday with her 2013 hit Merry Go ’Round. It’s a song inspired by her tiny Texan hometown – but, as the 30-year-old said, “chances are it’s about your town, too”.
It’s this sort of relatability that has swelled Musgraves’s fan base so much. She sums up matters of the heart and home with a witty piquancy that thrums through her songs. In March, she released her third album, Golden Hour, which put that lyricism through a kaleidoscope. The numbers taken from it here – such as High Horse and Velvet Elvis – set her crystalline vocals against a disco backdrop of beats and synths that Musgraves is clearly leaning on heavily for this, her Oh, What a World tour.
In front of kitsch staging of three giant fans, and covered in rainbowstriped sequins, Musgraves evoked the Seventies without it becoming a gimmick. Through hazy white beams, her face gave off the timelessness of ciné film; she shuts her eyes when she sings, and lifts her strumming hand in the air. The whole event unfurled with this kind of blissed-out languor. The well-worn format of arena show set lists – banging opening, acoustic bit, chat, euphoric finale – was blurred and reduced to a rich and simple stock.
Musgraves’s new material was given a good show and her older songs – Die Fun, Mother – were given smart new arrangements. There were no backing dancers, outfit changes or highconcept video interludes. In short, despite that colourful nod to the Seventies, there were none of the trappings of the standard big pop concert.
Instead, Musgraves filled that big stage with a serious confidence that her music alone would suffice. It didn’t, quite. One couldn’t help but feel that a performance as intricate and careful as this demanded a more lovingly tailored space – at times, the delicacy of Musgraves’s homespun sentiment seemed to evaporate into the hard concrete of west London’s least lovely venue.
This was her first headline arena show, and she deserves admiration for refusing to follow the rule book for this sort of gig. But there is arguably room, too, for Musgraves to grow into a performer of scale, while maintaining the sense of intimacy that makes her so special.