Robbie Williams, Manchester evaluation – pure pleasure from begin to finish | Music | Entertainment | EUROtoday

Robbie Williams works exhausting for his viewers. At 60… sorry, 51… that glint within the eye he had as a younger lad in Take That stays firmly in place. As a performer, he’s addictive. You can’t take your eyes off him. Indeed from his flamboyant outfits (“There’s always been one rumour which has followed me around…” he joked at one level final night time), to spectacular staging and a throng of boob-bejweeled dancers, the entire present was a visible feast. “I asked how much it was to give you all a light up wristband… but at £5 each you can switch your phone lights on,” he laughed. But wristbands apart, the present had all of it, from loo-roll-esque confetti, pyrotechnics, a B stage behind the world. At one level Robbie was even chaotically lowered to the bottom on bungee ropes.

The two-hour-long present started together with his new track, Britpop, earlier than making means for a career-spanning set of hits. There was Come Undone, Strong, Kids, She’s The One… One by one they got here like a poptastic field of goodies. Rudebox was sadly amiss. Let me entertain you, Robbie sang. And entertain us he did. It was pure theatre from the beginning, with extra patter than I’ve seen in a very long time at a present. A specific spotlight got here through interactions together with his AI older and youthful selves. Because if there’s one factor Robbie’s followers love much more than his music – it’s him.

“You better be good, because I’m phenomenal,” he teased the 23,000-strong Co-op Live crowd on the primary of two sell-out nights in Manchester for the singer, who opened as much as followers about his struggles with psychological well being. “This was about five mental breakdowns ago,” he stated, introducing Old Before I Die, admitting too that there was somebody down on the entrance he’d slept with within the 90s.

And earlier than the uplifting Love My Life, Rob talked concerning the transformative impact being a guardian had had on him. “My life began when I met my wife, or as some of you say in the internet chatrooms… ‘that bitch’,” he stated. “But my family – my four kids, their tiny hands and their big hearts – gave me a reason to live, to get out of bed, even when my head told me not to.” He’s spoken extensively about his psychological well being over time, however each time he does it’s deeply highly effective.

Later, throughout a fairly little acoustic session on the B stage, shock visitor Lucy Spraggan got here out to sing Lulu’s half in Relight My Fire. My sister, dancing subsequent to me, was beside herself. “Tonight this song is mine,” Robbie joked of the Take That banger, sung by Gary Barlow.

As the present got here to an in depth with an encore of the anthemic Feel and Angels, Robbie seemed triumphant. And he had each proper to. The King of Entertainment gave his folks what they needed: the hits, and many them. Every track from the rigorously curated setlist was a crowdpleaser. Two hours in Rob’s firm was a serotonin-boosting, raucous, dose of pure unadulterated pleasure. Can we do all of it once more, please?