There’s a lovely moment during The Way We Were.
Knight has enough treasure in her own catalogue, and her touching delivery of the Jim Weatherly-penned Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye), about a couple “living a lie”, brings the house down. Signature hit Midnight Train to Georgia, unaffected by rail disputes, has a sprightly new arrangement.Īn audience singalong of Hey Jude marks Paul McCartney’s birthday, although the show could perhaps lose the similar treatment of Queen’s We Are the Champions. M-People surely cribbed from 1978’s Come Back and Finish What You Started, while 1989’s Licence to Kill is a stellar Bond theme. Gladys Knight and the Pips also recorded I Heard It Through the Grapevine before her friend Marvin Gaye, while You’re the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me and Baby Don’t Change Your Mind epitomise slinky, pre-disco 70s soul. The 1969 Motown single The Nitty Gritty segues into the Jackson 5’s Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground) – it was Knight, after all, who urged the label to sign them. “She’s incredible,” mutters the lady to my left, while numerous others film whole songs on their phones. “You may not know me personally but you’re all my friends,” she tells us. Few performers have such a warm rapport with their audience.
