ShareGary Barlow performing his Songbook Tour 2025 at The Royal Concert Hall Nottingham on Friday 6th June 2025.
Images and Review by Kevin Cooper
From the moment that Gary Barlow stepped on to the stage at the Royal Concert Hall on Friday night for the first number of his Songbook tour, he held the sold out crowd in the palm of his hand.
Celebrating the music he has created over the past thirty years both with Take That and as a solo star, everything that he did was greeted with wild enthusiasm and screams galore from the predominantly female audience. Opening with one of his own songs Open Road which was quickly followed by Take That’s Greatest Day, as confetti rained down on the ecstatic crowd.
The crowd lapped up every song be it 90’s pop joy with Sure, Everything Changes and Pray complete with his dad dancing moves, or newer crowd pleasers like These Days and The Flood. Barlow then introduced his ‘marmite’ part of the set as he invited the crowd to sit and enjoy what he is superb at, namely writing simple pop ballads.
A Million Love Songs was beautiful and had the crowd singing along as did the gorgeous Patience. He delivered a lovely moment of reflection as he performed his latest and really quite moving song, If There’s Not A Song About It, dueting with one of his backing singers Jemma Donovan. He followed this up with his debut solo chart topper from back in 1996, Forever Love, which provided a really special moment as he tinkled out the mournful opening notes.
He wound the show up with a host of Take That’s biggest anthems such as Shine, Relight My Fire, and Back For Good. Ending with a magical mobile phone lit sing along to Rule The World before the confetti bomb finale in time honoured Take That fashion to Never Forget.
Having taken the crowd on a trip down memory lane, it was impossible not to love pop’s most embarrassing dad who had delivered a set that was all pure, saccharine joy.
