Legend blends music styles
Ryan Gosling’s character from “La La Land” would have despised John Legend’s Milwaukee show Thursday.
Fans of last year’s Oscar-winning musical will remember Legend played Keith, the popfriendly jazz fusion star. It may not have been the “La La Land” filmmakers’ intention, but Keith comes off as the villain, compared with Gosling’s Sebastian, whose artistic spirits are crushed when he compromises his traditionalist jazz integrity by joining Keith’s band.
But Sebastian, and “La La Land,” got it wrong. We shouldn’t forget the great music of the past, but we shouldn’t resist innovation either. That’s what Legend is offering these days, blending gospel-inspired soul and classic R&B with modern pop polish, and packing places like the Riverside Theater in the process.
Have there been compromises? Certainly, chief among them Legend’s manufactured showmanship.
An exquisite pianist, Legend only played the grand piano for a handful of songs Thursday. It was used almost as frequently as a prop — he sat on it to sing “Save Room,” and stood on it for the finale for “Green Light.”
Legend instead spent most of the hour-and-50-minute show strutting the stage with a wireless mic, punching the air and striking a pose in sync with a horn blast or drum beat. It’s fitting that he’s become more of a showman at this point of his career, his sultry dancing for “Penthouse Floor” and knee drop for the romantically tortured “What You Do to Me” deservedly drawing roars.
But Legend struggled to make some quieter gestures more natural. Even though he sang “Overload” from a stool, it was still over the top, between the choreographed backup singers and overtly slick horn section.
Legend’s melodramatic piano poses also teetered on schmaltz, as did the occasional musical passage. The cheesy ‘80s keyboard at the start of the show, sounding an awful lot like one of Keith’s songs in “La La Land,” would have made Sebastian scream.
But Sebastian couldn’t deny the strength of Legend’s honeyed voice, sublime across the night’s 25 songs (particularly for an a cappella rendition of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”), or the extent of Legend’s commitment, as sweat rained off his face during “Save the Night.”
And Sebastian may have admitted,
in the end, some benefits of going a populist route. The capacity crowd Thursday at least got a feel for jazz’s electric possibility, via a frayed sax solo for “Right by You (For Luna),” (a song penned for Legend’s 13-month-old daughter) along with exposure to Muscle Shoals-style soul, ‘70s funk and a bit of bossa nova.
They also were exposed to uplifting tributes to the civil rights movement, with historical photos and videos projected above the stage during a cover of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody” and Legend’s own Oscar-winning “Selma” theme “Glory.” For the latter, video of Black Lives Matter demonstrations and the Women’s March was spliced in with historical footage, suggesting the fight for justice, like the drive to make innovative music, marches on.