A shudder of bass ricochets around the Eventim Apollo in the seconds before Loreen arrives on stage, her silhouette cast over the crowd of 5,000 in front of a heavenly white light.
The Eurostar titan has earned a reputation for commanding a space. If it’s a tiny box on the competition’s main stage or one of the UK’s most prestigious venues, Loreen builds worlds of her own.
That’s certainly the case in west London on Wednesday night. The pop star is somewhat of a siren as she stirs the night into action on the alluring ‘Jupiter Drive’.
This is not a concert, it’s a show. The type of experience that warrants sitting down and gawping at the production as much as it does jumping up and down to the singer’s club hits. The transition from ‘Gravity’ into ‘Forever’ early on a true triumph of live music.
There are moments when Loreen seems almost too ethereal. The club-like ‘Gravity’ and sirens of ‘Hate the Way I Love You’ come with somewhat of a disconnect with the star’s world on stage somewhat hard to penetrate.
Nonetheless, those instances are rare and soon forgotten after ‘Statements’. A monster of a track that few artists could carry, it’s a flick to fall in love with live.
Just as Loreen can whip up a tempest on stage, she can turn the huge Eventim Apollo into a bedroom confession session too. That’s the case on ‘I’m In It With You’, although that intimacy is soon shattered by the firework climax of ‘Dreams’.
It’s a pretty enviable trio of hits Loreen has in her armoury to close the show with. ‘Euphoria’ comes with a teasing three-and-a-half-minute build-up but is worth every second of that wait.
An encore comes in the underrated 2023 hit ‘Is It Love’ and Eurovision 2023 winning track ‘Tattoo’. It’s surely unlikely that the song contest will see something so forward-thinking anytime soon and ‘Tattoo’ is standing the test of time. This is true showmanship.
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