This was the last night of Ellie’s European Tour and she went out in style with a twenty three song extravaganza which highlighted why she is a national treasure and such a successful world star.
From here she heads off to tour the States until late June before heading off to New Zealand and Australia in September and October, only breaking for the Festival season in July. Apparently, then she will take a break from music and given the high intensity of her stage show this will probably be for a well earned rest; she really barely stops moving for the entirety of her show and completely disproves the claims of lesser singers, that dancing and singing are mutually exclusive.
I last saw Ellie when she supported Taylor Swift at Hyde Park where she delivered a wonderful performance to over 60,000 concert goers, so my expectations were high. Ellie more than delivered with a performance that made full use of the large stage, as well as showcasing her vocal range, effortlessly delivering dance tracks and vulnerable love acoustic love songs equally well. The capacity crowd at the O2 loved every minute.
She very much concentrated on her new material in this set, after all it is the Delirium World Tour, with a full fifteen songs coming from the new album. Nods to her past releases included the two Calvin Harris collaborations, ‘Outside’, and ‘I Need Your Love’, delivered with explosions of steam and enthusiastic jumping from the crowd; ‘Goodness Gracious’, ‘Explosions’, ‘How Long Will I Love You’, ‘Figure 8’, crowd-pleaser, ‘Burn’, and ‘Anything Could Happen’, from ‘Halcyon Days’, followed by a heartfelt delivery of Elton John’s, ‘Your Song’, which she released back in 2010.
The set was spectacular featuring some superb lighting and a backdrop of wonderful pictures and videos of Ellie, she is after all a beautiful woman so why not take advantage of that, and large screens on each side of the stage made sure that everyone could see . Her songs of love were sung back to her all night by an audience hanging on her every move and it seemed everyone was intent on taking video of everything. This is something that seems to have become a constant at modern gigs and it is something Ellie has commented on before during live sets, as she did at the O2, asking people to put away their phones and just enjoy what they were witnessing live and not through increasingly large screens (Apple have a lot to answer for): ” If people ask how good it was tell them to come and see” she said as she sang a lovely finale of Fifty Shades’, ‘Love Me Like You Do’, to a sea of adoring faces and not one of phone lights.
Ellie has a beautiful voice and it is probably in the stripped back acoustic moments of the night that this is best shown but that is not to take away from her high energy delivery of faster numbers for which she makes use of several costume changes, energetic male dancers and both electric and acoustic guitars to show what a diverse talent she is. The show lasted for nearly two hours and around me, close to the stage, there was only praise for a woman that really deserves to be an enormous star. As mentioned before, is rumoured she will take a break from music after touring this album: with performances like this one let’s hope she doesn’t keep us waiting too long.
