#14 Musical Spectacles
A month's rent for an evening's entertainment 👩🎤
What makes a good live show in the post-Eras era? From major stadium tours and festivals to intimate gigs, more artists than ever are putting on spectacles seemingly designed for social media snippets – as satirised in Charli xcx’s mockumentary, The Moment. Some pop sensations have made a point of rejecting the pageantry (Billie Eilish, to her disadvantage), while legacy acts try to recapture the essence of a lived experience with phone bans (Bob Dylan, to his advantage), and others simply DGAF and go all-out with extravagant set design and costume changes (Tyler the Creator, to my surprise). The following is a by-no-means-exhaustive selection of performances from recent years that have stood out in my mind, for better or for worse.
The Person Playing Wordle in the Mosh Pit of the Porridge Radio Show
Exceptional commitment to the streak.
🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩 🟩
Rating: 5 green tiles out of 10
David Byrne at La Seine Musicale
Everybody on stage was wearing what looked like a box-fresh Guantanamo Bay-issue orange jumpsuit and a pair of shiny white sneakers. They were also wearing their instrument of choice, be it a guitar or a keyboard or one quarter of a drum kit. This allowed all of the performers to double up as dancers and move freely around the space, which was encircled by three enormous screens displaying various videos of fields, interiors, galaxies, creating a playful immersive effect. Those without instruments did choreographed routines that involved a lot of thrusting and jazz hands. And there, in the middle of it all, was David Byrne. He was singing a song about being a baby. I was laughing.
I had gone out of my way not to read any of the many, many five-star reviews of this show ahead of time. I had heard that it was a surprising production, and I couldn’t deny that I was surprised. I’d also heard that it had a theatrical element, and I couldn’t deny that either. In fact, it was so hammy it could have been on off-Broadway, or a local community arts centre. Or, given the costumes, part of an annual inmates’ showcase. It was so matchy-matchy, tits-n-teeth, dancing-with-a-saxophone that, at times, I feared the performers might break out into conversational rap. This ain’t no party; this was how I thought Hamilton might look.
After 50 years of being someone whose mere association with a project raises its cachet, I can’t imagine the last time anybody actually did have any questions for David Byrne. But, like a child king who has known nothing but sycophancy, perhaps a few nos would do him good. Because boy is he the king of whimsy.
The direction of the Who is the Sky? tour certainly was novel. It was dynamic and entertaining, though that was often to the detriment of the actual music. The highlights were of course the generous helping of Talking Heads tracks, but they lacked Tina Weymouth’s fizzing energy and grounding cool. I don’t even want to talk about how they staged Psycho Killer, but if you can imagine a high school production called ‘James Bond: The Musical’, that was pretty much the mood. In fact, the overall tone of the evening could be summed up as ‘David Byrne: The Musical’.
For all of the silliness, there were a lot of big, serious themes. At one point we were invited to guess facts about various members of the band, such as who is French and who has a degree in astrophysics (equal achievements, as far as the French are concerned). It had the effect of a primary school assembly designed to teach us that prejudice = bad. Another segment showed a montage of footage of the recent ICE raids in Minneapolis, during which I found myself yelling quite ferociously, ‘FUCK ICE!!!!’. The whole show felt like we were watching a play about a concert by a radical political artist, rather than actually watching a concert by a radical political artist. I guess on some subconscious level this impromptu howl was my attempt to break through that illusion. No one else joined in. Maybe the people around me thought I was a plant, just part of the theatre of it all.
👔👔👔👔👔👔
Rating: 6 big suits out of 10
Bob Dylan at the Grand Rex
My main association with Bob Dylan is via other people. An early Paris memory of new friends sunning on the grass, singing songs I didn’t know the words to. Lexi’s tattoo. Timothée Chalamet. I didn’t grow up with Dylan, but I’ve since learned the lyrics to some of those songs, and I’ve developed a deep fondness for him as a pop cultural figure. I’m obsessed with his lacklustre Christmas decorations. It tickled me to discover that he recently launched a Patreon to share some fanciful short stories. His meandering musings on Theme Time Radio Hour are one of the greatest gifts to broadcasting. Just saying his name in a Bob Dylan-ish way is a source of sheer delight: Bob Dylan. And, perhaps most importantly of all, Chris loves him, and I love Chris. So, when I saw that the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour was coming to town, I set an alarm and parted with a small fortune to secure two tickets to see, in Chris’ words, the eighth wonder of the world.
Smash cut to the two of us side-by-side in a pair of plush red velvet armchairs up on the first balcony of the historic Art Deco cinema, the Grand Rex. On the stage below, Bob Dylan’s hat bobbles above an upright piano as he plays. This is almost all we see of him for the whole concert. The set list stays fiercely loyal to the tour’s titular album, a gentle blend of poetic writing and loungey rock. He’s deep in his Van Morrison era. The lights are a golden glow, the temperature equally soft and warm. I begin to fall asleep. But what a luxury to be sung a lullaby by Bob Dylan.
🎩🎩🎩🎩🎩🎩🎩🎩
Rating: 8 bobbling hats out of 10
Rosalía at the Brits
If anybody, any single person, in the room of the 2026 Brit Awards ceremony did not consider Rosalía’s rendition of Berghain to be the greatest musical experience they have ever had the privilege to witness, then they did not deserve to be in the room of the 2026 Brit Awards ceremony. Yes, even if they were just waiting tables.
Every detail of the show was immaculate: the eerily serene, distractingly sexy ensemble. The prominent positioning of the full, live orchestra. The romantic yet decidedly modern styling – considered right down to the flash of hot-pink knicker revealed by Rosalía herself. Björk emerging from the throng looking like some flayed being from outer space performing a dystopic swan song in the court of the Baron Harkonnen. The drop. The trombone raised aloft to the remix, like a votive offering to the beat. The understated but no less pulsating choreography that defies you to sit still, illuminated by lighting that was at turns soft and dazzling. All that without even touching on the viscerality of the vocals and music: frenzied, ethereal, hypnotic. Or, as the Guardian’s Michael Cragg succinctly put it, ‘batshit’.
I have never been to the opera (unless you count a spontaneous boozy trip to see Les Mis on the West End). I have never liked techno. But somewhere in the midst of this curated chaos, even through the prism of my dusty laptop screen, I completely got it. This performance encapsulated the full bodily surrender that only music can achieve, whether with an aria or EDM.
People have been saying that AI could never create art as audacious as this; nor could any other artist. This was Rosalía claiming her rightful place in the pantheon with a show that separates the pop wannabes from capital-A Artists. Here’s hoping that it will re-set the standard for how live music can be spectacular while centring those who actually make it.
🎻🎼🪈🎺🎻🎼🪈🎺🎻🎼🪈
Rating: 11 orchestras out of 10
Recc Room
Kudos to the person keeping tabs on every concert that Morrissey has ever cancelled, including excuses. His most recent reason for not playing in Valencia? A bad night’s sleep.
Words by Beau Brace. Illustrations by Flora Hibberd. Cover photograph via Cleaveland.com