Elton John hadn’t played a U.K. show in more than three years. Monday night, he ended that streak in about the most intimate way imaginable: one piano, one hour, and 600 fans packed into the brand-new Apple Music Hall at Battersea Power Station in London. The setlist read like a greatest hits album,“Rocket Man,”“Your Song,”“Tiny Dancer,”delivered solo with no band behind him. His last U.K. performance was headlining Glastonbury in June 2023, the show that wrapped the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour.
If you weren’t one of the 600, you weren’t totally out of luck. The whole set streamed globally on Apple Music, and the venue projected it onto its exterior so Londoners passing by could catch a piece of the action. Famous faces in the room included Graham Norton, Peggy Gou, Nick Grimshaw, and Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, who described the venue as a place to experience amazing music in an amazing space and share it with the world.
And this room is built for exactly that. Apple Music Hall features a 48-speaker spatial audio system and a 38-foot-wide stage, and it’s already got a stacked lineup on deck: Baby Keem, Troye Sivan, Arlo Parks, Burna Boy, and Charli xcx. So the question is simple. If you had a ticket to any one of those upcoming shows, who are you picking and why?
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Local Lawton
Local Lawton is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.