RAYE live in London: A stunning arena odyssey

“I’ve fully entered my dramatic era,” declares RAYE early on during her first of six sold-out nights at London’s O2 Arena.

There’s a statement which barely conveys the sheer variety of the singer’s latest tour. She enters in a long fake fur coat, giving half Bond villain and half femme fatale for ‘I Will Overcome’, all while a storm cloud looms overhead. But then the curtain drops and reveals her band, who go straight into the singer’s mega-hit ‘WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!’. It’s a bold choice to play such a trump card so early, but the rest of the show proves we needn’t worry.

Here’s an arena show which effortlessly segues between the bold and the intimate, and allows RAYE to establish herself as a performer who can, you sense, do whatever the hell she wants. At one point we’re transported to a little jazz club at one point where RAYE delivers a charming cover of ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ and allows the O2 Arena to feel a lot more cosy than you’d perhaps expect for the 20,000 people gathered within.

Elsewhere, you’d be certain to hear a pin drop when she delivers the stirring ‘Ice Cream Man’, a song about sexual assault, and extols the importance of not losing one’s identity when faced with the grim realities of such a situation. Similarly, her new song ‘Nightingale Lane’ – a rumination on how certain locations will remind you of lovers past – is surely bound to go down as a RAYE classic.

But there is sheer euphoria too. She appears genuinely touched to be playing a homecoming of this size. At one point late on too, there is a clever change to the letters that make up the singer’s name in lights at the back of the stage. RAYE, as we soon learn, has become Rave. Cue lasers on the club-primed house of ‘You Don’t Know Me’, while the Eurodance of ‘Prada’ allows the entire arena to feel like a superclub.

By the time things wrap up with the empowered pop of her breakout hit ‘Escapism’, it’s very much a case of every word being screamed back at her. Here’s one of Britain’s most versatile and beguiling pop stars commanding an entire arena while making it look effortless. It’s no wonder she’s sold out six of the damn things…