Live Review: Bruno Mars, Miguel

The ever-smooth Miguel put on a solid show as the precursor to the Bruno Mars spectacular. It was hard to fault his vocals or his dance moves (including the splits), but he may have to build a bigger fanbase before expecting crowds to sing tunes back to him.

With an off-stage announcement and a big boom the curtain dropped and Bruno Mars and his band busted out Moonshine with more vigour and energy than it has on record, then went straight into Natalie without pause. Each member of Mars' band sells it, they all own their spot and the entertainment value is huge. Synchronised dance moves scattered throughout the set never failed to produce a reaction, the whole onstage unit is a well oiled machine. Nobody drew too much attention away from Bruno, but none of them were boring.

And then there's Bruno. 165 centimetres of pure charisma and talent, off the back of his Super Bowl performance, which turned out to be the most watched Super Bowl performance in American television history, Mars has never enjoyed more hype. Without the Red Hot Chili Peppers to lip sync beside him Mars relied on some old school Motown showmanship. Show Me is much more of a reggae affair than anything else in his repertoire so to bring it up a little Mars sprinkled in verses from R. Kelly's Ignition, Pitbull's Secret Admirer, and Flex by Mad Cobra, to name a few. He also put a verse from Aloe Blacc's I Need A Dollar into Billionaire and a little bit of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun into Young Girls. These short additions were well thought-out and flowed beautifully with the tracks and the set.

A gorgeous piano solo that sounded a little like Muse's Butterflies And Hurricane preceded Grenade and Just The Way You Are. Then the encore, a vicious drum solo by Bruno himself that cleverly turned into Locked Out Of Heaven. The set was, in a word, dominant, and Bruno Mars currently stands as one of the best performers in the world.