LAST month, Take That overturned a UK record set only the week before by Oasis, for shifting the largest amount of concert tickets in the shortest space of time, sealing a mammoth comeback success that has exceeded all expectations.
Those hundred
gazillion tickets (or however many it was) should be well worth the investment. Back in the early 1990s, Take That could put on a pop extravaganza to put all others in the shade; now they have surpassed themselves.
Inevitably, all their contemporaries are trying to follow suit – well, New Kids On The Block and Boyzone are anyway. Five tried, but to my eternal disappointment didn't even make it to the first hurdle thanks to the collective indifference of a cruel pop world.
Despite the overall lameness of comeback album Beautiful World, there is a delightful satisfaction in seeing Take That back on top of the pop podium. In contrast to the cynical Spice Girls reunion, which was clearly just a grab-the-money sponsorship opportunity, there was a sense of the imperative about the re-forming of Take That.
Gary Barlow was making a decent living behind the scenes as a songwriter, but Mark Owen was nursing a stillborn solo career, playing to small audiences in club venues, and Jason Orange and Howard Donald had succumbed to "I used to be a pop star, me" comedown syndrome. They really needed the validation that came with their stunning reunion tour of 2006, and they invested wholeheartedly and sincerely to make sure it happened.
Where the four of them couldn't get arrested individually, together they generated a desperate fan scrum, not just among the twentysomethings whose bedroom walls they adorned in the 1990s, but among a new generation of screeching teens. Robbie Williams probably doesn't feel so clever now.
Second time around, the former teen idols are shrewd enough to act their age. No longer a boy band, they are now a "man band" playing supermarket-friendly adult pop. Musically, there is not that great a difference between Take That and Coldplay, despite the differing gender balance of their fanbase. Gary Barlow is more old-fashioned than Chris Martin in his songwriting approach but, like Martin, he knows exactly what buttons to push for maximum mainstream appeal. He even pastiched the process with Winner's Song, the track he co-wrote for Peter Kay's reality TV spoof, Britain's Got The Pop Factor… It should be no surprise, in that case, to discover that so much of The Circus is just manipulative gloss.
Take the current single Greatest Day, peddling formulaic optimism ("stay close to me, watch the world come alive tonight") over a piano refrain, and a big orchestral push at the end to help us overcome those credit-crunch blues. But strip away the bombast and it's pretty perfunctory.
The Garden plays a similar game, but with epic pretensions and a pompous militaristic interlude to impart a tone of gravity. The vocals are shared by Barlow (who takes care of all the tricky bits) and little, adorable Mark Owen, who is no lead vocalist but is universally liked, has already carried one of their biggest comeback hits, Shine, and, in the absence of another strong singer in the group, has been permitted to step up his role. In response, he has tried to inject a bit of Paolo Nutini style into his thin vocal. You've got to love such a tryer.
In the main, Owen gets handed all the jolly, sub-Beatles ditties, such as Up All Night, which is effectively a jazz-hands rewrite of Shine, and the jaunty, air-headed mindless jollity of Hello ("glad you took the time to say hello"), which is not dissimilar to the Jim'll Fix It theme in parts.
Barlow, meanwhile, hogs most of the pseudo-meaningful, swelling ballads, the best of which by far is the title track, a simple, resonant piano ballad with a classic lyrical conceit of which Barry Manilow or Neil Sedaka would be proud: "Everybody loves a circus show, but I'm the only clown you'll ever know… 'I love you' was too many words to say," pines the chorus.
Elsewhere, the breathy What Is Love is the kind of old-fashioned croon usually ruined by Enrique Iglesias; Julie is a passable slice of disposable 1970s pop bluster with a sha-la-la-la hook, and both How Did It Come To This and Hold Up A Light tick those Coldplay/Keane/Snow Patrol boxes of miserable verse rescued by a more memorable chorus.
Here provides the requisite big finish with folksy verse, subtle harmonies, soaring chorus, cascading strings and a rocking guitar break shipped in for the climax. How can anyone not submit in the face of such a pop bludgeoning? And yet, for all his talent and guile, ringmaster Barlow has failed to come up with anything that can hold a candle to the gorgeous, Rule The World. Still, the stadium tour is sure to be fantastic.
The full article contains 838 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
