John Legend at Live At The Marquee, Cork

For a nine-time Grammy winning artist, seeing the Marquee barely half full must have been sobering for John Legend.

Legend, (John Roger Stephens to his Mam), hasn’t played in Ireland since his Vicar St gig of ’04, the year he blew up worldwide his Kanye-produced debut ‘Get Lifted’, and his stunning piano ballad Ordinary People. Why the wait? He was probably still searching for that next ‘big’ track, which came in the form of All Of Me, thus solidifying his place in chart history.

Legend’s live sets pretty much follow the same pattern his career has – an explosive beginning, a lull in the middle before closing with a bang.  Made To Love‘s distinctive intro is instantly recognisable as the opening track. Legend rises up to the stage, confident, his buttery vocals working their charm on the crowd.

Follow-up Hard Times, from his collaboration album with The Roots, is a welcome surprise. The brass lead in is suitably dramatic and the emphatic stage lighting makes it so it seems you could be watching the show anywhere in the world. However, Legend proceeds to only perform one verse and chorus – an annoying trend which continues throughout.

He tells the crowd he is currently working on his new album, and performs unheard material Dance, a James Brown-inspired ditty, and Please Don’t Go, a saccharine song set to follow the style of All Of Me. Each song ends as quickly as it starts – he hasn’t taken a breath before he jumps into the mouth of the next verse.

Crowd reaction dissolves the notion that people are only here for the most over-used wedding song of the last two years. Used 2 Love U starts strong, but sees Legend falter on the second chorus, and the instrumentation and vocals get tangled up in one another as it ends.

A reworked Alright brings the funk back, the ultimate bachelor anthem that encapsulates masculine bravado. “I used to write songs about cheating … ” he admits, before launching into Number One. Starting off, his vocals are pristine, but as the song progresses, there is a loss of clarity. The mic placed at the piano appears to carry his voice better, but his desire to put on a show and work the stage sees him sacrifice the vocal quality of performance.

Tracks from his most recent album lag severely, including the title track Love In The Future and Save The Night, despite the latter’s assaulting intro with claps and striking piano chords. Maybe playing Kim Kardashian’s wedding took its toll on him as an artist.

There is finally a glimmer of hope presented in Ordinary People, a powerhouse performance that proves to be the pillar of the set. He follows this with an unexpected, and rambunctious shot at Green Light, which leads into a cover of  Curtis Mayfield’s Move On Up. The transition is seamless, showing how seasoned he is a performer. Other covers come in the form of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, and Sam Smith’s Lay Me Down. Both are charming efforts, but vocally under-whelming.

To all the couples present, he says, “I’ve set you up very nicely for the rest of the night – don’t fuck it up”, injecting some much needed personality into the set.

And with that, something shifts in Legend. So High sees the instrumentation tighten up and become much more precise, and is accompanied by a stunning light show and gospel-esque vocals. He launches into All Of Me,  perhaps he was holding back throughout for his most popular song. Legend finishes with Glory, his Oscar-winning collaboration with Common from the film, Selma. He is triumphant and larger-than-than life on stage.

It’s hard to pinpoint what went wrong for John Legend that results in such an inconsistent set. Perhaps it was the varying sound quality. Maybe the venue swallowed him up, as did the seemingly ever-thinning crowd. Was it the structure of the wildly erratic set? Legend says at one point, “hopefully this won’t be my last time in Cork.” Unfortunately, it would be surprising if that wasn’t the case.