While they sing on the stage of the Cavea of the Auditorium Parco della Musicaper Roma Summer Festone wonders what the hell kind of space-time gap they came out of. Bluein a sort of pure distillate from the early 2000s that puts us in front of the ghosts of Christmas past, reminds us of how we were and what pop music was like, makes us reflect on what we have become and what has become of the boy band generation. Because there is little more of a boy band than Blue: at least groups like Backstreet Boys, for example, had something partially pioneering, they represented something new; but Duncan James, Lee Ryan, Simon Webbe and Antony Costa put their heads out for the first time in 2001, in a sort of middle age, they were at most the English answer to the American invasion, everything was already tested. So what?
And then it happens that one finds them exactly as one had left them, with a short set ‒ let’s say an hour and twenty minutes ‒ in which they insert all the hits, which all date back to the period up to 2005, because from there «we decided to take a break of six months, which became six years», but «that’s life», and since 2011 it has been a walk in the desert, first, and collecting kisses and screams from a delirious audience, now, composed above all of women who at the time were little more than children, had heard them on the radio and dreamed of them on the pages of the Meaning what but, too young, they had not been able to see them live; the millennial nostalgia is all here, in the eyes, first incredulous and then amused, of those who cannot believe that they have truly closed a circle, of find them in front of you.
It must be said that they sing them all, All Rise a U Make Me Wannafrom the pair Guilty e Long Time a If You Come Backin addition to the ballad of course Breathe Easywhich in 2004, in the wake of the enormous success it had in our country, was translated by Tiziano Ferro into To whoever tells me and sung in an Italian that you will remember from the four ‒ but let’s admit that the reckless operation did not prevent it from becoming a hit, and we will come back to it. There is no genre, if not the “boy band” one, a mix of dance-pop full of innocent winks ‒ my lady, you should see what rappers say in songs today ‒ that makes your hands wave and tear-jerking ballads for broken hearts like the same To whoever tells mewith that superpower of making any sound sugary, from, well, school play hip hop to r&b. There are also some new pieces, released in recent years, like Ultraviolet: they stand out because they have a straight bass drum (double blue tick) and last much less than the classics (another double blue tick), which are hackneyed products of their time with, sometimes, even four verses, in which each Blue has its own part; however, people want those, and rightly so.
Let’s be clear: for every One Direction that comes out with a Harry Styles, there are dozens of boy bands that have remained absolutely just that, with an outdated system of values and aesthetic standards; the point is that in the case of Blue, that’s their strength. They don’t take themselves seriously, you can even see a certain humor in what they do, but they never give the impression of being caged, like Buffalo Bill on tour in Europe extorting money from those who had only seen that world in postcards. They haven’t crippled themselves, they could be model family men in their look and aplomb, you don’t even see any excessive updates like, say, killer lapels. Even the set is extremely spartan, they sing standing up and hint at choreography, while keeping the movements to the essential like Cristiano Ronaldo at this year’s European Championships; behind there is only a sign, «Blue» (here you go), there are no musicians and not even a proto-DJ who could pretend to lay down the bases as happens at many trap concerts, while in the background four stools appear on which they will sit every now and then, for moments that in the setlist are marked as «acoustic» (read: piano ballads).
