1. Stevie Wonder

THE O2 ARENA

30 SEPTEMBER 2008

It’s a dark day for funk and soul when the godfather himself seems to have mislaid the plot. Midway through his set, he’s throwing in long, painful cheerleading for U.S. political causes like we’re on the campaign trail in the Midwest. We get it, Stevie, you are team Obama, loud and clear but someone might want to tell him he’s playing to a pissed-up crowd in London, not a Democratic Party rally in Ohio.

As if that weren’t enough, he insists on stretching perfectly decent five-minute funk gems into sprawling ten minute free-jazz therapy sessions, with all the energy of a farty, deflating balloon. Mawkish ballads and aimless sax solos that seem to be searching for a reason to be there. Just when you’re about to start eyeing the emergency exits, the last third of the set saves the day with enough raw, blistering funk to keep us from gnawing on our appendages for sustenance.

The undeniable high points? “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” and “Superstition”, tracks that remain bulletproof even when Stevie’s clearly phoning it in a bit. Still, the mood keeps getting undercut by his shout-outs to the audience, repeating lines like “Are you in my church, London?” that becomes so irritating, the congregation’s ready to fake an exorcism, just to escape.

Let’s also talk about the vocoder. Someone must pry that gadget away from him. The weird, robotic voice changer tube was stuck almost permanently in his mouth like a salesman’s vape. What started as a retro curiosity became audience abuse very quickly.

The setlist was also a mess: every time we start grooving to an upbeat track, it’s yanked away for a sudden, weepy ballad that has everyone crash-landing into their seats mid-dance, awkwardly looking around like they’ve just been caught out. By the end, we’ve been blessed, benched, and bewildered; a strange communion indeed, but at least the funk was real… when he finally got to it.