Michael Ball - Live at the Royal Albert Hall
Michael Ball: Live at the Royal Albert Hallis a tour de force from a performer who manages to combine stardom on the British musical stage with great success as a pop performer. By the end of the 1980s he was already a youthful veteran of some of the decade's biggest musicals, includingLes MisérablesandThe Phantom of the Opera. But his performance in Andrew Lloyd Webber'sAspects of Love, which spawned the hit single "Love Changes Everything," turned him into a major star--a status he has maintained with bestselling albums, sellout concert tours, and television series. As this 1999 concert reveals, he is at his best singing show songs that give him a character to get his teeth into: "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables," for example. And he is a first-rate pop singer whose gallant 1992 bid for Eurovision glory is recalled with the uptempo "One Step out of Time." He favors dramatic ballads and sometimes takes them way over the top: there's more than a touch of Dusty Springfield in his histrionic gestures. But it's all delivered with an engaging charm that clearly delights the predominantly female audience.--Piers Ford