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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > October > 02 > Entry
Live review: John Legend
This correspondent, for one, was curious to see how John Legend’s boudoir-friendly R&B/neo-soul translated to the cowboy-hatted al fresco environment of ACL. Seems I wasn’t the only one.
‘I know you don’t get a lot of R&B acts here,’ Legend said toward the end of his hour long set. ‘But I feel very much at home tonight.’
Certainly he made himself at home. Legend began his set standing on a box in the middle of the runway between the stage and sound board, serenading the rapturous crowd with a heartfelt version of Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song.’
Bounding back up to the stage, he cranked up the big hit-making machine — horn section, girl singers, subterranean rhythm section and all. And the hits, culled from his three chart-topping albums, kept coming. ‘When I Used to Love U’ yielded in quick succession to the hip-hop inflected ‘All Right,’ which segued to the creamy, seductive ‘Satisfaction’ and the glossy pop/soul confection ‘Save Room.
No matter the tempo, the number of dreamy, doe-eyed female fans following every swivel and inflection showed no signs of going anywhere for anything short of an air raid.
Legend took advantage of the open-air setting to breathe some fresh air into his ‘PDA (We Just Don’t Care),’ beefing it up with live samples of the Blackbyrds’ ‘Rock Creek Park’ and Roberta Flack’s ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love.’
Not every digression was successful. His overbearing take on the Beatles’ ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ seemed like a gimmick, and the swoony ‘Good Morning,’ with its annoying peeps of synthesizer, felt like a Hallmark card writ large.
Well, never mind. Legend was engaging and outgoing, resisting the tendency of letting the big production reduce him to just another gear in the clockwork action.
After a confessional and intimate turn on ‘Everybody Knows’ (with it’s great line, “I wish you the best…I guess.”) and ‘Ordinary People,’ Legend finished big, stripping down to a black tank top and romping through his devilishly infectious hit ‘Green Light. It was a genuinely exhilarating conclusion to a show that demonstrated conclusively that a velvet-voiced R&B hitmaker from (go figure ) Ohio could indeed get over deep in the heart of Texas.
Ricardo B. Brazziell photo
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: ACL 2009: Friday, ACL Festival 2009
Comments
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By ACL-trist
October 2, 2009 10:12 PM | Link to this
I hope you like it wet, wet wet.
By A new fan
October 4, 2009 9:47 PM | Link to this
You got it wrong on the Beatles cover, it was surprising and got the crowds attention. A great set!