Tina Arena, Dylan Wright @ Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide 30/5/2025
What an outstanding evening of music from an Aussie music legend and potentially a future legend!
Dylan Wright kicked off the evening with an incredibly moving and soulful cover of The Proclaimers classic I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles). Dylan told us that he was a house painter and literally watching paint dry when he received the call to audition for Australian Idol. Expecting to be home in a week he ended up being there for two months and ultimately winning Australian Idol 2024 – and it is easy to see why! He presented us with a delightful mix of covers including End of the Road (Boyz II Men), Walking in Memphis (Marc Cohn) and his finale Better Be Home Soon (Crowded House) which earned him a standing ovation. We were more impressed with his originals though, with really moving lyrics and melodies in Little Lost, Old Oak Tree, All That I Need and Mess Of A Man. What a start and definitely a future star in the making
Tina’s Don’t Ask Again concert was to celebrate thirty years since the release of her legendary album Don’t Ask. To get the crowd into the mood (not that they needed it), the lights dimmed, and Bob Marley & The Wailers’ One Love boomed out which had everyone singing and clapping. Next second, the band was on stage then a massive cheer for the star of the show who went straight into the classic Heaven Help My Heart closely followed by Wasn’t It Good.
After telling the audience that this was the final concert of her Australian tour, Tina went back in time to when she was in the USA in the early days and her feelings of homesickness, which resulted in Message. She then received a few calls of “yeah, right” when she took a drink of what she said was tea. We had a brief reference to the much publicised incident from her Melbourne concert where she said “ladies, there comes a time in our lives when we need to learn that our capacity for alcohol reduces and too much turns us into a beast! That’s why I drink tea”.
Throughout the set she performed all tracks from the Don’t Ask album, with Message being followed by Show Me Heaven, Love Is The Answer and Greatest Gift. She then requested some audience participation from the ladies – and gave permission for us fellas to join in too – to That’s The Way A Woman Feels, appropriately followed by asking us to “Be A Man for me”.
In the opening set, Dylan said he was honoured to tour with Tina, growing up as a five year-old listening to this classic album. He felt as if he was part of a big happy family. Watching the way Tina works the stage and interacts with every member of her outstanding band and the audience, we certainly had that sense of belonging to a family too. She brought Dylan back on stage to perform an amazing cover of Stevie Nicks’ Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around. Tina also lauded Dylan’s talent and potential as he also heads off for his first overseas tour.
We had a brief interlude from Don’t Ask with a haunting and dramatic rendition of Symphony of Life from her 2001 Just Me album, which really showcased the quality of her band, and In Command from In Deep (1998). Tina talked about a song that resonated with her as a teenager in the 80s and she never imagined later collaborating with the writer, Mick Jones, on her second album and adapting the song for Tina. Her version of Foreigner’s I Want To Know What Love Is was, quite simply, spine-tingling WOW!
Thankfully, Tina is one of the few artists who doesn’t do an encore – she just keeps going with the classics. Of course, that meant finishing with Burn (off In Deep) and Sorrento Moon, with significant audience participation. After introducing us to the members of her outstanding band and thanking the rest of her “extended family” – the crew and us – she just had to finish with the classic Chains. As the performers bowed to a standing ovation from the sell-out crowd, George Michael’s Faith was playing – and so ended a brilliant concert. I have seen Tina several times in concert, but this was definitely her stand-out performance.
Live Review by John Glennie