John Legend, Glasgow review: 'supremely gifted'

Is the Hydro half-empty or half-full for the opening night of John Legend’s tour? For this supremely gifted musician, it has to be the latter. Legend wasted no time urging the audience to their feet, determined to heat up the room and honour the title of the Get Lifted album, whose 20th anniversary he was marking.

Legend presented as an old school soul man in a white satin suit but he has hip-hop connections plus jazz flair and a fluent band who could go with any flow across the seamless two-hour set, whether navigating a ton of dry ice to deliver the Afro funk brass and bass wobble of Alright, adding a reggae rhythm to the low-slung, funky I Can Change or a Latin infusion to She Don’t Have to Know.

“I wrote a few songs about infidelity”, he confessed, casting the audience as his illicit affair. He committed to resurrecting the lost art of the slow dance with a willing partner from the crowd but also took his performance back to church - practically a family business - beseeching on his knees.

Delving further back into his roots, he outlined his early collaborations and breaks with the likes of Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and Kanye West (“we miss the old Kanye,” he sighed) and also bust out an unexpected soul blues maelstrom cover of The Beatles’ I Want You (She’s So Heavy), with rumbling bass, rock drums and guitar solo.

But most fans had signed up for the heartfelt ballads, played solo at the piano. Breakthrough hit Ordinary People remains a timeless work, while All of Me is such a heart-on-sleeve standard that Legend even played it at his own wedding. There were more uplifting moments in the set, not least the liberating soul pop of Green Light, but it was these intimate encounters which sealed Legend’s self-declared date night credentials.

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