Beyoncé live in London: A rootin’ tootin’ stadium show for the ages
Rain be damned: The Cowboy Carter delivers a show for the ages.
By Nick Reilly
The visuals that deck the gargantuan screens at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium show the Cowboy Carter herself – Beyoncé – smoking cigars, walking alligators and facing off against foes in in the dusty heat of Texas. It couldn’t be more at odds with the drizzle that starts and then resolutely refuses to stop on the singer’s first of six nights in the capital, but she’ll be damned if it derails proceedings.
“Rain ain’t gonna stop the party,” she declares early on – before spending the next three hours seeming hellbent on living up to this mantra. Put simply, this is a show that proves why Beyoncé is one of the world’s greatest performers and one who refuses to let her fans feel short-changed for their, admittedly, very expensive tickets. There had been talk of sluggish sales, but everything seems to be alright on the night, with the north London stadium near capacity bar a small section of restricted view seats at the back.
It’s a spectacle for the ages, with one memorable moment seeing the singer mounting a gold mechanical bull and performing a magnetic dance routine atop it that demands the entire crowd’s attention. At another, she jumps onto an illuminated horseshoe and flies around the crowd to get up close and personal with the Beyhive during a cover of Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’.
Stadium gigs were made for overblown productions like these, but it doesn’t hurt Beyoncé is on the form of her life too. The high notes on ‘Daughter’ stunned the cavernous room into silence, while ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’ – the standout track from Cowboy Carter – was delivered with enough force that North London felt for the briefest of moments like it had been transported to her native Houston.
At times it packed a political and personal punch too. ‘America Has A Problem’ saw her decked out in a newspaper print outfit as she dissected both racism and offered a video that highlighted the rabid critics who have previously questioned her country credentials. Well here was a show to firmly shut them up. As for the personal, even the stoniest of hearts couldn’t resist the adorable moment when Beyoncé brought out her seven-year-old daughter Rumi for ‘Protector’.
And it’s the ultimate measure of the show that the singers’s big hits – ‘Crazy In Love’, ‘If I Were A Boy, ‘Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)’ – were reduced to a medley of sorts and you got the sense that no one was leaving here short changed. Talk of poor sales and overblown prices may have dogged the singer’s arrival in London, but on the basis of last night’s showing, this rootin’ tootin’ spectacular might just be the hottest ticket in town.