Music Blogs

"We've got a show you're not gonna forget for the rest of your life", grins Justin Timberlake as his second annual benefit for Shriners Hospitals For Children gets underway. It's the sort of huckster hyperbole that Las Vegas is built on, but by the end of this bizarre evening, our host has lived up to his word.

Even the more ordinary moments feel special. Taylor Swift ("Don't worry - I've got security lined up all round the stage: nobody can interrupt", Timberlake chuckles) belies her erroneous country tag, thrashing about with the leonine ebullience of Robert Plant or Ian Gillan; Alicia Keys distils the conversational, confessional essence of her own epic stage show into a choice 15-minute chunk; Jay Sean, "all the way from London, England", proves he's about more than the chart-topping "Down", levering his way into American affections with a human beatbox routine that incorporates impersonations of the rest of the bill.

Even the between-act changeovers are slick, Timberlake every inch the easygoing raconteur his replacing Bob Hope as host of the concurrent Shriners-benefiting PGA Tour golf event might suggest. Meanwhile his ferocious, fabulous headline set emphasises the conventional songwriterly strengths underpinning those Neptunes/Timbaland future-funk collaborations (and even finds his muscular band dropping some Nirvana riffs into the mix).

Then there's the weird sh*t. "Goodies" may be one of the most daring moments in recent pop history, but Ciara isn't getting every creative decision right. She works hard enough, literally bending over backwards at one point and ending with a grimace of very evident pain: but the all-black "Rhythm Nation" get-up and knock-kneed "If" dance betray too heavy a debt to Janet Jackson to fully convince.

Snoop Dogg, on the other hand, is lazy to the point of understatement, leaving his stylishly eccentric attire (imagine the proprietor of an undertaker's catering primarily to pimps) to put in the effort for him. Implausibly, it works - as does Timbaland's DJ set at the after-show party in the South Seas-themed Mandalay Bay's pool area, where he drops the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" to get the crowd dancing amid the crashing (artificial) waves.

Towering above all this, though, is the mid-evening appearance by TLC. Seven years since Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes's death, it's unclear whether this heralds a comeback or will remain a bizarre one-off, but neither option would be any kind of surprise. Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Rozanda "Chili" Thomas - disconcertingly wearing headset microphones which give an impression that some vocals are on tape rather than live - perform with three dancers, while Lisa's raps are delivered by Left-Eye herself, the big screens showing in-synch clips of the band onstage in their prime.

The hits are delivered in chronological order, and while "No Scrubs", "Creep" and "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" remain superb, it's the emotive tug of "Waterfalls" - and Lisa's lines about seeing hope's rainbow through depression's drizzle - that gives their set, and the whole weirdly wonderful evening, its most bizarre and affecting highlight.

by Angus Batey