Lady Gaga, who organised the eight-hour livestream, opened and closed the show with covers of ‘Smile’ and ‘The Prayer’
One World: Together at Home livestream ★★★★
One World: Together at Home closed with the bombast of Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli’s Oscar-nominated cod-operatic 1998 number “The Prayer”, but this was far from the highlight.
In the Zoom-style gallery view that many of us have become used to, the duo were joined by Lady Gaga, who curated this event on behalf of the Global Citizen anti-poverty campaign and the World Health Organisation. “The Prayer” was intended as a climactic peak but there were many more engaging moments during the previous eight hours.
The actual concert was a two-hour affair, presented by wisecracking US show hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert, but the six-hour “pre-concert” occasionally turned up gems.
New York duo Sofi Tukker played snappy dance pop, South Africa’s Sho Madjozi was an ebullient one-woman party, and Hozier gave a revelatory take on “Take Me to Church”, but perhaps Jessie J was the most fun, revelling in a cocky London girl persona and delivering “Flashlight” and “Bang Bang” in a convincing gospel-soul foghorn.
The event was global, with a lot of Covid-19 crisis footage, and spoken-word contributions ranging from Beyoncé to Matthew McConaughey to the president of the UN General Assembly, but music was its core – and Lady Gaga opened the main event with a strident version of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile”.
Of the veterans, Sir Paul McCartney performed a passable organ-fuelled “Lady Madonna”, intercut with images of health workers, Sir Elton John gave a ballsy, strangle-voiced take on “I’m Still Standing” at a grand piano in his garden, and Stevie Wonder ripped into the late Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” with gusto, but it was The Rolling Stones, in four locations, who succeeded best, with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. Mick and Ron did all the heavy lifting while Charlie Watts drummed the arm of an easy chair and velvet-jacketed Keef enjoyed a candlelit drink, plucking at an acoustic and rubbing his nose.
Aside from Keith Urban somehow performing with two other versions of himself – notably bizarre – the moments that hummed with a sense of occasion came from Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and Taylor Swift. Armstrong strummed his melancholic 2005 hit “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, interspersed with photographs of eerie, empty city streets, while Swift, at a grand piano in black, straightforwardly tackled her emotive “Soon You’ll Get Better”.
The line “This won’t go back to normal, if it ever was” was written for these times.
