Diana Ross at Brighton Pride review: the diva shares a new number written for the occasion
Five stars for a headline set of Motown gold, three costume changes and a feathered gown gracefully deployed against a Sussex breeze
By Dale Fox
Preceding your own entrance with 10 minutes of footage of yourself is something very few performers could get away. But Diana Ross isn’t any old performer. The Boss herself closed out Brighton Pride’s main stage with an (almost 90-minute set) covering everything we wanted to hear and more.
Arriving on stage as a vision in a white sequin gown and a feather cape of considerable circumference, the diva aptly opened with ‘I’m Coming Out’, sending the audience into an immediate frenzy.
The wind was up across the park all evening, which for most acts would present a problem, though Ross treated it as a part of the set, holding her feathered gown out into the gusts and letting it billow behind her, catching the chiffon at the exact moment the song wanted lifting. This woman knows camp and does it well.
Attitude will admit to a private worry beforehand, given that Ross is 82, the slot ran ninety minutes and Brighton had already been going for two days, but those worries soon faded. “If I can move my body like this … then so can you. Move it or lose it!” she teased the crowd.
‘More Today Than Yesterday’ ran into ‘Baby Love’, ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, ‘Come See About Me’ and ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’ at a brisk clip, with Ross handing the vocal to the crowd whenever it suited her and taking it back on the beat.
The screens behind her ran archive footage, at points showing a young Ross performing the song in progress. Inviting an audience to measure you against your own peak takes some nerve. She noted from the stage that she is 82, and spent the rest of the evening giving the number no support whatsoever.
Her strongest passage arrived without music. Having spoken about love, in keeping with the weekend’s Power of Love theme, she led the park through a call and response about gratitude for the blessings in life, feeding it out a line at a time and waiting for it to come back. It ran into ‘Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)’, by which point strangers were holding hands across the field and people near the barrier were in tears.
The camp classics are where she is most persuasive, and ‘The Boss’, ‘Chain Reaction’ and a gleeful ‘Upside Down’ were the peak of the night. A medley of ‘Love Hangover’, ‘Take Me Higher’ and ‘Ease on Down the Road’ bought her a change into red, and ‘If the World Just Danced’, ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love’ and ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ followed. The newer songs were the one point where the singing thinned, which is what a crowd does before it has learned the words. An extended ‘I Will Survive’ with solos across her 15-piece band brought the volume back, the feathers going up on cue in the wind.
Somewhere in the closing run came ‘Be You’, which Ross introduced as a song she had written for the occasion. To a simple melody with a disco beat under it, words like “joy” and “freedom” repeated, this writer just had one note penned down “Sesame Steet“. It was a cute number but certainly not one that would be seeing the inside of a top 100 singles chart.
‘Thank You’ saw the weekend out, before our diva disappeared into the night (unfortunately not by helicopter, a ˈla Superbowl).
“If you need me, call me,” she told the crowd as she left. Ms Ross, we do – and we will.