Liam Payne pulled off a first at Global Village on Friday night: He became the first member of One Direction to perform solo in Dubai since the boy band went on hiatus in 2015. And he did it with pleasure.
If anyone had their doubts over whether Payne could pull in a crowd, they had to look no further than his thousands of fans, who filed in hours before Payne’s arrival to get a good spot at the front, and again, his thousands of fans, whose screams lasted hours after their first sighting of the slouchy pop star.
“Marhaba, Dubai,” Payne greeted, arriving on stage in a bulky white sweater. He kicked off the show with four back-up dancers and his earworm single, Bedroom Floor. “This is like nothing I’ve seen before,” he marvelled at the crowd.
With one of Payne’s solo singles already out of the way, he only had three left. He has yet to release a debut album. But from the looks of it, he wasn’t fretting. He launched straight into Get Low, his DJ Zedd collaboration, followed by For You, his latest single with Rita Ora, then delivered a well-curated mix of his favourite covers and nostalgic One Direction numbers.
Payne’s vocal range was wide and crisp. His affinity for playing around with live versions of studio tracks served him well. He didn’t falter during a brief pause ahead of his rendition of Charlie Puth’s Attention, either, but filled in the gap by interacting with the crowd, and read out one sign: “I don’t go to the gym, but you make me strong.”
Then, to a backdrop of black-and-white footage with his former 1D bandmates, Payne performed History, the band’s final single together.
“When I think about One Direction, sometimes you just miss the little things,” he added, launching into the band’s sing-along ballad of the same name. (“There’s nothing better than singing that song for you.”)
One Direction hour ended with a full-blooded interpretation of Drag Me Down, where Payne painlessly delivered the kind of energy that an up-tempo and aggressive track like that, originally written for four people, needs in order to succeed.
In between throwback tracks, he performed an unreleased song of his titled Tell Your Friends, a dance-pop number laced with a tinge of R’n’B. He padded his set with more of his favourite covers, too, including Pink’s What About Us and Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You.
Payne could have phoned it in with less than a handful of solo singles to his name. But instead he curated a fun and collaborative gig. The 24-year-old pop star, having toured with the world’s biggest boyband for a gruelling half-decade, knows better than anyone that a sincere smile, a few dance moves and ample interaction can go a long way in keeping the crowd engaged.
It helped that Payne wasn’t alone. Credit must be given to his back-up dancers and his band — bass, rhythm, keyboard and drums — who kept the energy soaring, even stealing the show in a couple of moments. In a set dotted with covers, the band helped put an improvisational twist on everything, making the show feel brand new.
In between songs, Payne showed off his newly acquired Arabic lingo: ‘shukran’ when the fans cheered, and ‘ma’asalama’ on his way out. He finished with an encore performance of his first solo single Strip that Down, a collaboration with rapper Quavo.
And though Payne pulled off a first by performing in the city on his own, perhaps the warm welcome he received will ensure that it won’t be his last.
