You know what you’ll get from a Robbie Williams show: plenty
of hit songs – including a Take That
number as a nod to his previous life as a boy band performer – dropped in
around generous helpings of RW swagger. On both counts, hit songs and swagger,
the show is not lacking, and, oh yeah, he has a voice to rival most others. Honestly,
right from the outset, it’s hard not to be completely impressed.
Not many performers have the audacity to start their show
with arguably their biggest and most popular song. Robbie Williams does, taking
the stage to the anthemic ‘Let Me Entertain You’, which I figured would be the
last song played. It’s a bold opening, and a pulsating one. The opener is one
of those songs that sounds pretty damn good on CD or on your iPod, but is
catapulted into the stratosphere when you’re in an arena with twenty thousand
people, a huge band and, of course, Williams’ innate ability to work the stage
and give the crowd – a mixed bag of age groups, it has to be said – exactly what
they want.
By about the third line of ‘Let Me Entertain You’, Williams
has every single one of us eating out of his hand as he struts from one side of
the stage to the other, doing his best to see as many people as possible in the
audience. Is the guy a major flog? By all accounts, yes he is, but you can’t
help but be impressed. I’d go so far as to say that he’s just about without
peer when it comes to live pop performers. Longevity counts for a lot, and
Robbie Williams has been doing his thing for more than a decade, and remains at
the top of the pile. I saw him about eight years ago, after being captivated by
his performance at Live Aid a decade ago, and he hasn’t lost a step. His band
is just as impressive as their front man.
All the big songs are there – ‘Angels’, ‘Millennium’,
‘Better Man’ (a surprising duet with his father, Peter), ‘Millennium’, a Kylie
Minogue-less ‘Kids’ and more, everything you would expect to hear when you buy
a ticket – and then there’s the encore, and an audacious cover: Queen’s
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
At first I was worried. I mean, it takes a pretty serious
performer to own that song. Then I remember that it’s Robbie Williams on stage,
and I relax. As expected, he belts the thing out of the park, clearly reckoning
himself as a sort of modern-day Freddie Mercury, and, hell, he certainly has
the on-stage gravitas. I start to wonder what the rebooted Queen might look
like with Robbie out front rather than Adam Lambert, a talented guy, unquestionably,
but not in the Robbie Williams realm – but few are!
The twenty-song set list flies by – Robbie is one of those
performers where no one checks their watch, because there’s not a flat moment
in the show – and Williams leaves the stage to enthusiastic applause. Hopefully
to return very soon, because he’s a fantastic live performer.
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