Roberta75
10-20-2023, 08:26 PM
Diana Ross, Royal Albert Hall: flawless pop jewels from an all-time great
4/5
The hits – and impossibly glamorous gowns – just kept coming as the 79-year-old diva swept through her astonishing career
By Andrew Perry [[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/a/ak-ao/andrew-perry/) 15 October 2023 • 12:51pm
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/music/2023/10/15/TELEMMGLPICT000352996240_16973703336840_trans_NvBQ zQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf_4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82 k.jpeg?imwidth=680
Diana Ross Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty
On the night that Madonna kicked off her Celebration tour at the O2 to reassert her sovereignty as the Queen of Pop, across town in Kensington the diva once garlanded as US industry bible Billboard’s “Female Entertainer of the Century” swanned into the Albert Hall for a performance of “once-in-a-lifetime” intimacy.
An unrivalled icon of Motown soul, Diana Ross, who turns 80 next March, made a massive comeback in summer last year with gigs that included a Sunday-afternoon “legend” appearance at Glastonbury, and now, in 2023, comes her Music Legacy theatre tour. Like all true giants of popular music, her top-tier status derives from that rare ability to connect with diverse demographics: here, Ms Ross first sashayed into view, eye-poppingly attired, to the irrepressible disco strains of I’m Coming Out. The song was originally tailored for her circa 1980 by Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards with a view to igniting the dancefloor at New York’s Studio 54, but it was soon adopted as an anthem by the gay community worldwide, and the Albert Hall duly erupted with glitter and joy, as punters of every age, race and sexuality got their liberated groove on.
Without delay, Ross led the charge into a breathtaking barrage of her 1960’s hits with The Supremes, which started with My World Is Empty Without You, its torch-song melodrama ably whipped up by her six-piece rhythm combo, a 10-strong orchestra, four backing singers and a leading lady in remarkably robust voice. They kept on coming: Baby Love, Stop! In the Name of Love [[with its universally applied hand-up for the chorus), Come See About Me, Reflections, You Can’t Hurry Love, during which Ross fluttered a fan, and finally Love Child, whereupon, after precisely 24 minutes onstage, Ross swept off again.
As an opening sequence, it was dazzling. These were all flawless pop jewels that had inspired The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and innumerable imitators – rarely equalled, never bettered. And, one pondered, while Madonna might have ruled the 80s, she hadn’t battled to the top in pop’s golden age, where the self-governing success of Motown’s black roster so world-changingly catalysed the Civil Rights movement.
And talk about the material girl: after a brief interval, Ms Ross returned in another abundance of fabric, this time in crimson; as the evening wore on, her ever-changing riot of taffeta, chiffon, lamé, fur, feathers and sequins, was reassuringly expensive in these cash-strapped times.
At great-grandma age, she worked hard, and exuded terrific warmth. “C’mon,” she teased, shimmying gamely to Upside Down’s slinky disco. “If I can move like this – and I’m 47!” There were disco bangers, two sultry Billie Holiday covers from the 1972 film Lady Sings The Blues [[in which Ross starred as Holiday), and, for this writer’s taste, perhaps one too many gooey motivational ballads.
When our heroine rematerialised in blue for a full-bore Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, however, really anything could be forgiven. Back again as a silver flash, the all-conquering Diana somehow made Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive her own. She bade her umpteenth farewell with last year’s “song of gratitude”, Thank You. By that point, the legacy – and, indeed, supremacy – were fully assured.
4/5
The hits – and impossibly glamorous gowns – just kept coming as the 79-year-old diva swept through her astonishing career
By Andrew Perry [[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/a/ak-ao/andrew-perry/) 15 October 2023 • 12:51pm
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/music/2023/10/15/TELEMMGLPICT000352996240_16973703336840_trans_NvBQ zQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf_4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82 k.jpeg?imwidth=680
Diana Ross Credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty
On the night that Madonna kicked off her Celebration tour at the O2 to reassert her sovereignty as the Queen of Pop, across town in Kensington the diva once garlanded as US industry bible Billboard’s “Female Entertainer of the Century” swanned into the Albert Hall for a performance of “once-in-a-lifetime” intimacy.
An unrivalled icon of Motown soul, Diana Ross, who turns 80 next March, made a massive comeback in summer last year with gigs that included a Sunday-afternoon “legend” appearance at Glastonbury, and now, in 2023, comes her Music Legacy theatre tour. Like all true giants of popular music, her top-tier status derives from that rare ability to connect with diverse demographics: here, Ms Ross first sashayed into view, eye-poppingly attired, to the irrepressible disco strains of I’m Coming Out. The song was originally tailored for her circa 1980 by Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards with a view to igniting the dancefloor at New York’s Studio 54, but it was soon adopted as an anthem by the gay community worldwide, and the Albert Hall duly erupted with glitter and joy, as punters of every age, race and sexuality got their liberated groove on.
Without delay, Ross led the charge into a breathtaking barrage of her 1960’s hits with The Supremes, which started with My World Is Empty Without You, its torch-song melodrama ably whipped up by her six-piece rhythm combo, a 10-strong orchestra, four backing singers and a leading lady in remarkably robust voice. They kept on coming: Baby Love, Stop! In the Name of Love [[with its universally applied hand-up for the chorus), Come See About Me, Reflections, You Can’t Hurry Love, during which Ross fluttered a fan, and finally Love Child, whereupon, after precisely 24 minutes onstage, Ross swept off again.
As an opening sequence, it was dazzling. These were all flawless pop jewels that had inspired The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and innumerable imitators – rarely equalled, never bettered. And, one pondered, while Madonna might have ruled the 80s, she hadn’t battled to the top in pop’s golden age, where the self-governing success of Motown’s black roster so world-changingly catalysed the Civil Rights movement.
And talk about the material girl: after a brief interval, Ms Ross returned in another abundance of fabric, this time in crimson; as the evening wore on, her ever-changing riot of taffeta, chiffon, lamé, fur, feathers and sequins, was reassuringly expensive in these cash-strapped times.
At great-grandma age, she worked hard, and exuded terrific warmth. “C’mon,” she teased, shimmying gamely to Upside Down’s slinky disco. “If I can move like this – and I’m 47!” There were disco bangers, two sultry Billie Holiday covers from the 1972 film Lady Sings The Blues [[in which Ross starred as Holiday), and, for this writer’s taste, perhaps one too many gooey motivational ballads.
When our heroine rematerialised in blue for a full-bore Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, however, really anything could be forgiven. Back again as a silver flash, the all-conquering Diana somehow made Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive her own. She bade her umpteenth farewell with last year’s “song of gratitude”, Thank You. By that point, the legacy – and, indeed, supremacy – were fully assured.