Sam Smith brings a glitzy Eurovision of hell to the O2 Arena — review

Lurid tabloid headlines are swirling like sulphur around the world’s most famous non-binary pop star. “Sam Smith is slammed for ‘satanic’ and ‘age inappropriate’ Gloria tour,” the Daily Mail cries. “Sam Smith shocks critics again with ‘vulgar and satanic’ show,” deplores the Daily Mirror.

Smelling salts at hand, the FT’s pop critic steeled himself to push past Bible-waving protesters outside the O2 Arena. But the ultra-branded London venue was the same as ever when I arrived for the first of Smith’s two gigs there. The only god, or anti-god, being worshipped was the usual suspect, Mammon. So what the devil was all the fuss about?

The answer came at the finale, when we were greeted — or assailed, as the Daily Mail might have it — by an absurdly kitsch trip to the underworld. But more of that later. First there were the ballads to negotiate. These offered the prospect not of hellfire but dull old purgatory.

Smith began with the best-known of them, “Stay with Me”, a 2014 hit that power-steers its way through gospel-pop like a midmarket saloon car. It dates from the singer’s arrival as the light tenor equivalent of Adele, delivering tasteful heartbreak in a decoratively soulful voice to Middle England, a constituency from which Smith had themself emerged as the child of a City trader growing up in Hertfordshire.

The song was performed by a four-piece band and three backing vocalists. Thousands sang along heartily and raised glowing phones to film the action. Their response gave heft to the song’s gospel character. The staging was also striking. A vast recumbent model of a golden nude figure spanned each wing, a representation of Aphrodite. The band occupied various parts of the goddess of love’s reclining body. They too were dressed in gold, as were the backing singers. Smith wore a black tie, some sort of high-fashion feathery corset and gold trousers. A troupe of dancers performed swooshy interpretative moves initially, and then an altogether lewder set of gyrations as the show shifted gear.

Slower numbers were grouped in the first half of the setlist, sung impressively by Smith, a less insistently mannered vocalist on stage than in the studio. A tender cover of the soul singer Des’ree’s piano ballad “I’m Kissing You” was performed in headgear spelling the name of Brianna Ghey, the transgender teenager who was stabbed to death in Cheshire, north-west England, in February. Crashing drums fell across the latter part of the song like thunder.

The mood switched with “Gimme” from the singer’s latest album Gloria. Dance beats and clubby lighting took hold as they transformed from torch singer to disco denizen. Their earlier call for the O2 Arena to be transformed into “a gay bar” was realised by vogueing moves from the dancers, a semi-striptease routine set to Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” and Smith’s subsequent appearance in an outré outfit comprising thigh-high platform boots, minuscule posing pouch and what appeared from the vantage point of seating block 111 to be nipple clamps.

The culminating vision of hell, or actually a Eurovision of it, came with Smith’s addictively trashy hit “Unholy”, performed with a horned hat and sparkly red pitchfork as flames engulfed the Aphrodite stage set. Gloria the album clumsily attempts to liven up the singer’s reputation as sedate balladeer with racier fare depicting them as an out-and-proud LGBTQ icon. The Gloria tour does the same, but more effectively. Tabloid outrage is a mark of its success.

★★★★☆

samsmithworld.com