20,000 women are wooed by a cherub with a beard
The O2 Arena, now the world’s best-attended concert hall, opened in 2007 with 21 shows from Prince. Since then only five musical acts have played there that many times. One is Young Voices, who don’t really count as their cast changes every year. The others are One Direction, Take That, Drake and Michael Bublé.
‘Welcome to number 26,’ Bublé says, ‘in this beautiful, intimate arena.’ This tells us quite a lot about him. He’s competitive enough to keep the score (nine more O2 gigs and he will knock Take That off the top of the table). Yet he also has the wit to describe a 20,000-seat hall as intimate.
His competitive spirit has turned him into the world’s most popular crooner. But, being a Canadian, he still has both feet on the ground and one eyebrow in the air.
‘This is not a show,’ he announces. ‘It’s a celebration of life!’ He’s referring to life after the pandemic, though he may also be thinking of life after liver cancer, which his son Noah contracted at the age of only three.
Noah is now nine and thankfully in good health. His dad is 47 and indecently boyish: he looks like a cherub even when he has a beard.
His fans are 90 per cent female, as expected, but all ages from eight to eightysomething. He puts on a proper arena show with a bank of screens, a battery of horns and a blizzard of confetti.
Many a man in a tux has crooned about the Moon, but only Bublé brings it along, to revolve on the big screen behind him.
His powerful voice finds easy listening almost too easy, so he has branched out, dishing up a bit of Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye, Barry White and the Bee Gees. He is clearly aiming to be all things to all women.
He can’t match Marvin’s silky softness, and his attempts at contemporary pop fall flat. But when Bublé is good, on Sway or Smile or Cry Me A River, he is very good. Debonair one minute, homely the next, he’s the Andy Williams of the 21st Century.
Boygenius are a supergroup, but don’t let that put you off. They comprise three acclaimed singersongwriters, all American women aged 27 or 28 – Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker. This may be the first rock band ever to have begun life as a book group.
Not that their debut album is a literary affair. It’s direct and engaging, using crisp folk rock to express everything from withering dismay to adoring friendship.
Bridgers, Dacus and Baker open with some invigorating harmonies on Without You Without Them. Then they pick up their guitars and mix crunchy chuggers like $20 (‘In another life, we were arsonists’) with melting ballads such as the delicious We’re In Love.
There is one disappointment, a throwaway number called Leonard Cohen: if you’re going to name a song after a colossus, you need to nail it. But the rest of The Record is essential listening.
ALL THINGS TO ALL WOMEN:
Crooner Michael Bublé performing at the O2 Arena in London