If the delivery rooms of the Lower Mainland’s hospitals are full to capacity in exactly nine months’ time, you know who to blame. The damage was done last night when nine-time Grammy winner John Legend dropped into the Orpheum Theatre to deliver a concert that celebrated the wonder of relationships in all their mystical splendour. His mission? Getting Vancouver in the mood for love.
It goes without saying that John Legend has sex on his mind, but it’s his unyielding focus as a romanceaholic that ensured that more than a few couples turned up late for work this morning.
Demonstrating that the evening was going to be directed towards emotional exploration rather than booty shaking from the very start, Legend and his six-piece band kicked off the action with the refined “Made To Love” and the ultra-confident “Tonight,” the latter’s key lyric, “I don’t want to brag, but I’ll be the best you’ve ever had.”
“I need everyone to stand on their feet,” insisted Legend before “Used To Love U.” The crowd dutifully obeyed, before instantly returning to their seats for its successor, too-polite-to-be-X-rated lovemaking epic “The Beginning.”
Everyone was back on their feet again (after a second request) for “Let’s Get Lifted,” Legend’s left hand pointing skyward at the song’s conclusion as the show’s choreography dictated. As a singer and musician John Legend has few peers. But at the same time he’s not a natural front man of a band. The bigger the arrangement, the less his interaction with his musicians and the crowd flowed. “We love you John!” came a voice from the back of the hall, followed by a pregnant pause on stage that never yielded a reply.
Legend’s brilliance shone brightest when he was letting his music do his talking. “Tomorrow” upped the energy, highlighted by passionate piano playing and ending with the singer’s first blast of vocal gymnastics.
It was the band’s exit, soon after, that provided the evening’s highlight. Armed with just a piano and a microphone, Legend demonstrated his talent with raw renditions of “Where Did My Baby Go,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” and “Ordinary People,” his breakthrough megahit concluding with the singer wandering into the crowd to conduct his Vancouver choir as they sang its chorus back at him.
“Everybody Knows” and a lively rendition of the Luther Vandross classic “Never Too Much” were further highlights after the band’s return, both standing out in a stream of slow jams that never threatened to prise the Orpheum from its seats.
It wasn’t until the encore that the show again rose into the stratosphere, as Legend returned alone (aside from his supermodel wife on the projection screen behind him) for the impossibly romantic “All Of Me,” the crowd, again encouraged from the stage, breaking its reverential silence to sing.
John Legend’s innate sensitivity and reluctance to relinquish control to his music, on last night’s evidence anyway, delivers a distinctly restrained party. As a dealer in aural aphrodisiacs however, the spiritual heir to Barry White’s bedroom soul throne made an impression long after he left the stage.
