3 days ago
Lionel Richie, O2 Arena: a glorified karaoke show, and you'd be mad not to sing along
'I am not the show,' Lionel Richie declared to the O2 Arena. 'The show is the audience.' That might have sounded a tad rich coming from a Grammy-winning R&B hitmaker in a fancy jacket on a gloss-black stage, accompanied by an even glossier grand piano and regular bouts of dry ice. But in a way, he was right. A Lionel Richie show isn't just a chance to salute the legacy of a household name. It's also an enjoyably glorified karaoke night, and from the first song 'Hello' – the obvious opener, after the affable balladeer had risen majestically from beneath the thrust stage – the crowd were in fine singing fettle.
'When you come to my show, the last person you'll hear singing is me,' he later jested. Particularly so when that show is part of a greatest hits tour, as this was. An opening montage charted the career of the Alabamian tennis scholarship kid who joined a college R&B band eventually called the Commodores, made a few multi-platinum hits with them, then even more as a solo artist. His music has had half a century to marinate in people's lives, becoming part of culture's common parlance. It would almost be insulting not to sing along.
His own voice sometimes lost out not only to the audience but to his band, who beefed up the songs and moves, often flanking him like unconventional bodyguards. Despite the occasional fluffed line, though – unlike fellow 75-year-old Bruce Springsteen, Richie doesn't rely on an autocue – for almost two age-defying hours he breezed through his discography: immortal songs built on the sturdy foundations of Motown. There was the familiar solace of Easy and Say You, Say Me, the exquisite country undercurrents of Sail On, as well as a slightly less gratifying medley of Commodores' party funk tracks including Sweet Love and Lady.
Richie is an old-school showman who knows that audience interaction is as important as the music for making an arena feel intimate. He cracked jokes, grumbled about the weather, and broadcasted someone's video call to their mother on the big screen – all part of the shtick, but charming nonetheless.
'When you see me jumping and running, sliding, running up stairs, running down stairs, I want you all to know one thing: I'm in pain,' he quipped. A greatest hits show can seem as though it's operating on autopilot – especially when your hits include Dancing On The Ceiling, We Are The World (written, famously, with Michael Jackson), and All Night Long – but there was nothing impersonal about these songs, nor their singer: the night was a warm celebration of music that has meant so much to so many over the last fifty years.
