LIVE REVIEW: The Human League, Sophie Ellis Bextor, T’Pau, OVO Hydro, 12/12/2024
Any music fan will know the iconic song Don’t You Want Me but not everyone will know that it is a Human League song taken from the Dare album way back in 1981, back in the days when this writer was a mere primary school child! Needless to say that particular song gained the band a number one single in both the UK and USA quickly followed by a Brit Award for breakthrough band in 1982. Ok, there are only three members from those days still in the band – Philip Oakey, Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley – but they still put on one hell of a show at the OVO Hydro.
It was yet another one of those early starts, with three bands taking to the stage kicking off with T’Pau, a band that had a few big hits in the 1980s and 1990s and led by the very talented vocalist Carol Decker, she was joined by original guitarist Ronnie Rogers and four touring musicians. It was an all-seated affair at the OVO Hydro tonight and that maybe impacted the crowd interaction with the bands, the arena was still barely empty as T’Pau took to the stage at 6.45pm. We made sure to get down early as we had never had the opportunity to see the band that were formed in Shropshire in 1986. Four of the tracks played came from the Bridge Of Spies album that was released thirty-seven years ago in 1987 including the title song as well as their biggest hit China In Your Hand, Decker is trying her best to get the crowd interacting and some do but it’s still early doors. However that’s another band ticked off our long list to see!
Sophie Ellis-Bextor needs very little introduction as she has amassed well over a billion streams with her music, Murder On The Dancefloor being a prime example of this. It is a track that is known to almost anyone with a passing interest in music and as usual this one ends the set on a high with just about everyone singing along, the song was also repopularised in the recent movie Saltburn. There is now a nice energy in the OVO Hydro with the arena filling up quickly now. The set began with Crying At The Discoteque, a cover of Alcazar, Sophie is like an energy ball strutting around using the full stage with high kicks being a common sight and is going for the Christmas theme wearing a tree-like green dress. Towards the middle of the set there was time to showcase some of the collaborations that she did over the past twenty years or so including Lady (Hear Me Tonight) and Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) both massive tracks and taking us back to another time. Bextor earned lots of new fans during the pandemic with her popular kitchen discos that were live streamed each week and fans from all around the world tuning in (and maybe dancing along). Another highlight of the set is a ‘Scotland special’ in Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, the Baccara song made popular again by the Scotland football team singing it in the dressing room after a win over Serbia a few years ago, the crowd are loving this one and responded by singing the chorus collectively. Talking of football there was also a ‘Battle of Britain’ fixture taking place in Glasgow tonight so the city was buzzing with excitement.
We were lucky enough to see The Human League at the Rewind Festival in Perth a few years ago and were keen to see them again with tonight being the only Scottish date of the Generations 2024 Tour. Formed in Sheffield in 1977 at the start of the synth era this band have carved a name for themselves over the past forty-odd years and it’s a perfect start with Hard Times as Oakey, Catherall and Sulley take to the stage from above on a platform slowly moving to the ‘landing pad’ and a spaceship-like stage setup. Oakey will defy his sixty-nine years during the show as he enthusiastically covered the full stage as the set continues with Love Action and Mirror Man prompting the first singalong of the performance, there would be around eleven thousand fans in the arena so not too far from being sold out. We spotted more than a few older fans clad in leather from top to bottom but there were also a lot of younger generations in tonight perhaps being influenced by their parents (or grandparents) record collections.
It is hard to believe that the Hysteria album is forty years old this year and the choice of three songs from that particular record is top notch, namely Life On Your Own, The Lebanon and Louise, the middle of those three being as relevant now as it was back then with the current situation in the Middle East. The crowd are actually very subdued during that track but the energy soon returns with One Man In My Heart that would be one of the highlights of the twenty track set. Oakey commented that Empire State Human was a song they had to write for first album Reproduction in 1979, very quickly as they didn’t have enough songs for it, this was not long before they caught the eye of Richard Branson of Virgin Records who then helped to catapult them to fame. The main set ends with Tell Me When, (Keep Feeling) Fascination and the one everyone has been waiting for in Don’t You Want Me. The classic opens with just the music to the song for the first minute in the expectation that the crowd would sing the lyrics but they may have been a little slow in the uptake, we were definitely singing along though!
The encore consisted of two tracks where Philip Oakey collaborated with Giorgio Moroder, the Italian disco pioneer. Firstly Goodbye Bad Times and the last song of the night was a last chance for the fans to interact as we all sang the words to Together In Electric Dreams, a very iconic track to end the night and sending us all back into the cold night on the banks of the river Clyde. The only disappointment that we can take away from tonight is that The Human League did not play Human, a track right up there as one of our personal favourites, other than that it was a fantastic night of music taking us time travelling back to ‘the olden days’ or should that be ‘the golden days’? 9/10
Written by: Alan Brown
