Introduction To Summertime Ball

The Capital FM Summertime Ball is a mini-festival for the ADD generation. 16 big-name take actions are controlled out in rapid series to do between one and four of their major hits, with stage times thoroughly sticked to. In between, DJs from the radio station cry banalities at the spectators. It's an approach that has profit and drawbackw: on the one hand, it is a extraordinarily fat-free affair; on the other, the vaguely disjointed air means the event never quite feels as though it gets going.
The acts are violently disparate, it seems that selected so there is something for every person. Enrique Iglesias croons to a hyperventilating teenager plucked from the audience; Akon effort to beat the crowd into a party frenzy; Lionel Richie appears at just the right moment to ease the deeply tested patience of the parents in the viewers. (His set turns out to be one of the most rapturously received and genuinely exciting parts of the evening.)
Of course, providing something for everyone unavoidably means there will be dissatisfactions. The Saturdays are frighteningly orange, and as solid to care about live as on record; what, one speculates, is the point of this misguided attempt to recreate Rachel Stevens's career, with even less charisma? Later, James Morrison comes off like a test-tube Chris Martin, screwing up his face as if it is an adequate replacement for real emotion. A newly reformed Blue emerge from beneath the stage, hooded like Stonehenge druids; a spirited All Rise is a welcome blast from the past, but their slight air of desperation makes it difficult to hold out much hope for a successful comeback.
For every dud, though, there is a triumph. Ciara's dance moves are spellbinding. Leona Lewis essays a regal and exultant homecoming; for all that her career seems to exist in a Simon Cowell-induced bubble, her voice remains a wonderfully stately instrument, and Bleeding Love a modern standard. Kelly Clarkson's pared-down Because of You provides a moment of rawness in an evening otherwise geared towards light entertainment.
But the most pleasant surprise comes from JLS, the X Factor runners-up who are proving that a viable career could await them. The hysterical reaction from the teenage girls who constitute the majority of the crowd suggests that the boy-band format may be due a comeback - and as JLS harmonise perfectly on a cover of Umbrella and backflip across the stage, they seem poised to fill this niche.