By Neil Durham
WORTH A LOOK?: ***
WHEN?: Saturday 4 June 2022
We’ll be at Glastonbury Festival in 3 weeks’ time and we wouldn’t be surprised if Macy Gray pitches up on the strength of this 4pm main stage slot during which she absolutely achieves the goal of getting this 25,000-strong capacity party started.
- Read on for reasons including Kim Wilde, Tia Kofi X Little Boots and Five Star
She’s not a fan of the church and when she covers Radiohead’s Creep and gets the audience to sing back the expletive-filled hook to her you can’t help but realise what a strong and rich soulful voice she still has.
We very much enjoy recent single Every Night which was unsuccessful in the recent America Song Contest 2022 and when she gets to breakthrough hit I Try, the call-and-response with the audience again singing along is quite moving.
We’ve never been to Mighty Hoopla before but enjoy the queer aesthetic and with the emphasis on 90s nostalgia, thought Kim Wilde on the House of Love stage at 8.15pm was a particular highpoint.
We last saw her at KOKO in 2018 and because she was so good live there while also unexpectedly especially rocky we join her again later this year for a much postponed Palladium gig Tickets
The emphasis in her 8-song set is very much on the hits but we love how she absolutely bosses a cover of Dead Or Alive’s You Spin Me Round (Like A Record).
Over in the Pleasure Palace Little Boots’ 5-week-old child has ear defenders on and is backstage as she is introduced by drag queen Tia Kofi urging the audience to give the news a ‘dramatic ooh’.
We do and they duet on I Specialise In Love, a recent song of the week for us, and a cover of Boots’ Remedy which Kofi used to sing before RuPaul’s Drag Race UK beckoned.
Back in the House Of Love at 5.45pm and Denise (pictured below) is the only original member of Five Star but delights with a set including hits Can’t Wait Another Minute, Rain Or Shine, The Slightest Touch and System Addict.
She’s still a great vocalist and if there’s any way she could get the rest of the family Pearson back together we could see she’d be even more popular.
We only catch Jessie Ware’s mainstage set briefly – sometimes the chaotic nature of festivals mean some things don’t entirely go to plan – and leave midway through the main stage headliners, the original Sugababes, because they just seem a little cold and flat after all the joy and live prowess that has gone before them.
The Mighty Hoopla experience wasn’t as joyful as we would have liked, there were long queues for both the food stalls, which ran out early, and the toilets.
But at least the forecast rain stayed away and the many highlights mentioned above mean we would certainly consider returning.
monstagigz 
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