I saw Luke Combs take the roof off the O2 and prove country music really is cool
It’s official! Country music is finally cool!
I was introduced to it through the Nashville TV series but now the years of hiding my guilty pleasure are over.
Country music is now the fastest growing genre in the UK and becoming the ‘music of the people’.
It seems we just can’t get enough of songs about hope, heartbreak and despair!
And that was no more apparent than during Luke Combs’ second return to the O2 in just 18 months on Tuesday night.
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His show was one of the hottest tickets in town and it’s easy to see why.
The North-Carolina born singer put on a 90 minute set that had everyone on their feet from the moment he strode on stage for opening number Lovin’ On You.
He strides stage left and sticks his tongue out to the adoring crowd who are already in fine voice.
The scene inside the 20,000 capacity O2 Arena was a sea of cowboy hats, checked shirts and Daisy Duke outfits (David Bergman)In October last year Luke was getting 400,000 streams a day - fast forward 12 months to the night of his gig and he’s hitting 1.4million a day along with breaking country chart records.
Not bad for a guy who has only been playing guitar for 11 years - something even Combs seems to struggle to comprehend.
“How are you all feeling?”, he asks fans.
“It’s great to be back at the O2. I’m 33, grew up in North Carolina and taught myself guitar at 21 and here I am 11 years later and sold out!”
It’s a no-frills gig. There are no pyrotechnics or crazy lighting effects - just Luke, his guitar and his band who are on point.
The scene inside the 20,000 capacity O2 Arena is a sea of cowboy hats, checked shirts and Daisy Duke outfits.
Every song sung aloud with huge smiles, joy and excitement. Strangers turning around and singing back to each other.
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The crowds on Luke Combs' World Tour have been in fine voice throughout his shows (David Bergman)Now I’ve been lucky enough to have seen many artists perform at the O2, but the atmosphere during Combs’ gig was unlike any other gig I've been to. I’ll try and explain why.
Yes, fans will always sing their favourite songs and have a great time but this had a different vibe to what I’ve experienced before at other pop and rock concerts.
It was similar to the feeling at the Nashville TV show concert across town earlier in the week.
It was a feeling of togetherness, a kind of family feel - a country family.
Throughout the set Luke explains the background to how some of his hits were written explaining that he’d never been on an aeroplane until he was 25 before performing Houston, We Got A Problem.
“The first place I went to was Texas and it blew me away how different it was,” he admits.
“I had just met a girl who I knew was going to change my life in a different way and something was missing. It was her.”
That ‘girl’ was Nicole Hocking who Luke went on to marry in 2020 and the couple have recently celebrated the arrival of their second son.
Their relationship story is told through several numbers Combs has penned over the years and performs tonight including Love You Anyway, Forever After All, Better Together and Beautiful Crazy - which sees couples pull each other closer.
Before starting the rousing Doin’ This he tells us that during the Covid pandemic he “missed playing music for anyone”.
“We sat down to write it and I couldn’t think of anything to write,” he says.
The crowds on Luke Combs' World Tour have been in fine voice throughout his shows (David Bergman)“I don’t know what I would be doing if I wasn’t doing this. I’d still be doing it. Playing in a college or in a bar trying to get to where I am tonight. It’s all about the music.”
Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car put him on a lot of people’s radar and brought in new fans who perhaps, otherwise, may not have discovered his talents. Lucky for them that he recorded his ‘favourite song’ five years after first hearing it.
Hit after hit just keeps coming. She Got The Best Of Me Combs wrote when he was 25 and “never thought anyone would hear it” and his first number one, Hurricane, which he thanks fans by saying “you changed so many lives just by loving music”.
When It Rains It Pours with the fantastic line ‘And I ain't gotta see my
Ex-future-mother-in-law anymore’ is followed by the foot-stomping Beer Never Broke My Heart which almost takes the roof off the O2.
Then it’s the powerful and frisky The Kind Of Love We Make that closes the show. For some fans tonight, it was their first rodeo. But judging by the reaction, it certainly won’t be their last!
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