Blue showed that they're ageing like a fine wine as they delivered a slick and stylish performance in Newcastle on Tuesday night, to round off their Heart and Soul tour.
It's hard to believe, but more than 20 years have passed since Antony, Duncan, Lee and Simon first made a serious dent in the charts with their anthemic debut single All Rise. And, while we've all moved on from the playing Snake on our our Nokia 3210 days of the early 00s, there is still a lot of love out there for Blue and the songs that fans lapped up two decades ago still sound as fresh as ever.
It was a slight disservice to the lads that there wasn't a larger crowd at the Utilita Arena to see Blue in action, with a visibly smaller audience than you'd probably expect for a group that have number 1 singles and albums under their belt. After some fantastic tinkling over the ivories from massively talented pianist Okiem ramped up the drama and anticipation in the room, Blue went for one of their chart toppers to open proceedings. Starting your setlist off with a ballad could be viewed as something of a risky move, but when that ballad happens to be Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, there is no such issue.
