Viva Forever! isn’t the clunker it’s been labelled. It’s also not the thin gruel of the standard West End jukebox musical. The real problem is that it can never be Mamma Mia!, the globe-conquering, ABBA-derived franchise previously devised by its producer Judy Craymer.To be fair, Craymer isn’t strictly the originator of Viva Forever! That honour falls to Spice Girls’ kingpin Simon Fuller and the combo themselves. They approached Craymer who, in turn, brought in Absolutely Fabulous writer and actor Jennifer Saunders to weave a narrative and script around the “Wannabe” gals’ back catalogue.Much Read more ...

It's Academy Award season within the showbiz-centric world of The Bodyguard, but even the greatest of Oscar obsessives - count me among them - would be hard-pressed to toss many a trophy in the direction of the 1992 film or toward the largely stillborn stage musical that it has now spawned. Widely panned at the time of release (the film received more Golden Raspberry nods for the year's worst than it did golden statuettes), its pulpy narrative looks even more threadbare on the West End stage, notwithstanding the news value of the return to the musical theatre after a dozen years of Broadway Read more ...

The latter years of Michael Jackson were a sorry saga of debt, lawsuits and sordid allegations about his private life, with the artist seeming an increasingly desperate and isolated figure. Director Spike Lee aims to salvage Jackson's artistic reputation, and this sprawling two-hours-plus documentary keeps its lenses firmly focused on Jackson's musical and performing gifts.Lee's theme is the creation of Jackson's album Bad, released in August 1987 and the follow-up to Thriller. The latter was not an easy act to follow, and became the world's all-time bestselling album with (by some estimates Read more ...

The return of The Rolling Stones to the world stage is headline news, but the man who put them there in the first place has decided to reveal the tricks of being an impresario, the hustler that can make or break a band. In this poignant, exclusive extract from Stone Free, their former manager Andrew Loog Oldham contemplates Phil Spector, one of his inspirations with whom he was reunited in the wake of the death of Lana Clarkson, the woman Spector was convicted of murdering in 2009.Stone Free is Oldham’s third book, following Stoned and 2Stoned. Unlike its predecessors, it isn’t an oral Read more ...

Any gig is partly defined by its audience. Brighton audiences, particularly Brighton Dome audiences, are usually a lively bunch but tonight’s crowd, at least until beyond halfway through, are still as dummies in their seats, quiet as mice. Looking around is uncanny, like observing a theatre watching a Strindberg play or some such. True, they’re mostly in their fifties but that’s a poor excuse. The last time I saw the Dome this dead was when Ultravox played a couple of years back. Matters weren’t, perhaps, helped by the production company’s disgraceful insistence that the bar – which is Read more ...

Entirely in keeping with the heightened narrative surrounding pop stars and their perpetual crises, Christina Aguilera’s recent history has been spun into the kind of tragedy worthy of Piaf or Callas. Her last album, Bionic, singularly failed to shift anywhere near the kind of numbers pop divas need to keep a hand on the crown; she had the temerity to put on a few pounds and – worse – seem pretty relaxed about it; she got divorced; she got drunk. Ravens were seen leaving the Tower.These routine potholes in the yellow brick road are rigorously exploited and amplified on Lotus. Aguilera returns Read more ...

There is something so otherworldly about Shingai Shoniwa, the vocal powerhouse who fronts Noisettes, that it is unsurprising to see the band play on it. Shoniwa arrived onstage in a blaze of light, in a spinning gold-hooped skirt that seemed to mimic a flying saucer in the chaos, before launching into a storming rendition of the band’s “I Want You Back”. The illusion lasted as long as it took her to kick off her towering gold high heels and attempt a terrible Scottish accent at the end of the first song.Although built around a duo - Brit School graduates Shoniwa and Daniel Smith, the band’s Read more ...

Well that's a shame. Little Mix were likable, talented winners of The X Factor – four times Everygirl in clashing neon, funky, funny, vulnerable but self aware. They proved repeatedly on the show that they could sing and then some, and even though they were a thrown-together group harmonised like they were sisters. Their most memorable turn, doing En Vogue's “Don't Let Go”, perfectly caught the beginning of the current wave of nostalgia for the great 1990s R&B girl groups, and when they won it felt like they could be an actual characterful pop band in the way the Sugababes and Girls Aloud Read more ...

It’s nigh on impossible to separate One Direction’s music from their horrid, grinny, showbiz persona or their gigantic success representing Palpatine Cowell’s Syco empire. This is especially the case if you’re a 45 year old music journalist rather than a 13 year old girl whose hormonal development has exploded through staring at posters of smouldering Zayn Malik (the sultry one!). One Direction are no more aimed at me – and quite possibly you if you’re over 16 - than is a day spent watching CBBC.That said, there are obvious benchmark musical comparisons to be made, notably with their boy band Read more ...

A certain type of pop star takes time to lose their baggage. Once upon a time it was hard to enjoy The Monkees’ "Daydream Believer" or The Osmonds’ "Crazy Horses" because the bands were mired neck deep in record company shittiness and (as they didn’t call it then) corporate brand marketing. Thus it was with Robbie Williams a generation later. Some will never get over the fact he was “the cheeky one” from Take That, a crappy boy band who eventually came good with the critics. Nevertheless, Williams is likeable, he has showbiz genes tempered with unpredictability and a fascinating, unlikely Read more ...

Waves of modern dance history beat upon the shore this week with Rambert at Sadler’s Wells offering four works going back nearly 40 years, and Michael Clark’s newest Britdance creation at the Barbican. The hip people will be at the Barbican, of course, of which more further down. But if you think Clark is a shock jock, you must be as middle-aged as he is - just turned 50 he has, the man with the child in his eyes and nappy pin in his ear. Shocks, by their nature, don't last. Other things matter, like freshness, the capacity always to be new.At Rambert’s four-bill it’s the American veterans Read more ...

“Killer Queen” by Queen, “Rocket Man” by Elton John and “Laura” by the Scissor Sisters are all songs that reek of design. Their finest details have been engineered to their smallest component parts, yet the tone is light, almost throwaway. They’re crafted, calculated classics, but they revel raw in pop glee. This is the feeling Mika constantly strives for and which, despite his brilliance at constructing songs, continues to evade him. Not that the world minds too much: his records are globally successful on a huge scale, especially his first album, Life in Cartoon Motion. He has sold multi- Read more ...