The Irish band showed clear love for their fans, but both the songs and cheap video clips felt unforgivably dreadful
A band needs an awful lot of charisma to pull off a summer-weekend stadium show, and on Friday, in north London, Boyzone’s distinct lack of it felt as huge and untraversable as the Mariana Trench. Billed as a one-off reunion show, the first since 2019, and a tribute to their late bandmate Stephen Gateley, the stakes were already high at the Emirates Stadium. But a less thrilling outcome would be hard to imagine.
No rational adult ever expected musical surprises at a Boyzone gig, but the performance was breathtaking in its awfulness. The production was dominated by a screen pumping out the sort of doughy AI slop – clips of “tribal” people, whales breaching, jungles and igloos, dewy forests and butterflies on tower blocks – you’d be disappointed to see on a wall-mounted TV in a dentist’s waiting room. This was an unforgivably cheap move for a band with stadium intentions.
Then there was Boyzone itself. “We’re going to take you on a journey,” promised Ronan Keating, sporting a cape Liberace would have deemed “a bit much”. That “journey” took us from bemused disappointment to anguished disbelief. Who thought this was good enough to put on? The endless Chat GPT-generated guff they spouted about their 33 years in “the biz” was the only thing that paused the tedium of the music. Baby Can I Hold You sort of connected, and Words was briefly passable, but Keith Duffy honked like a goose throughout.
It says something about the aching emptiness of it all that the highlight was when the rumoured-to-be-ill Mikey Graham suddenly appeared on a stool halfway through the show. He parroted largely the same cardboard-flavoured pabulum, but at least he appeared to be human. The others returned with I Love The Way You Love Me, drizzling the thinning crowd with mechanically recovered syrup. Someone mentioned Top of the Pops – big cheer – and we got a drawn-out speech on the workings of the legendary show’s booking mechanism, before a creaking Father and Son plonked itself on our laps like an unloved relative’s wet dog.
People were starting to gather by the exits even before Shane Lynch barked “Do you know the Lord’s Prayer?” and a feeling of creeping mania began to take hold. Boyzone are (probably) lovely guys and the grief for their lost “brother” – and the appreciation for their fans – felt genuine. But both deserved far better than this undercooked drivel.
Boyzone plays the Emirates Stadium again tonight; tickets
