Aviva Studios, Manchester
The flawlessly classy US singer, actor – and so much more – unleashes costumes, speeches and body-positive party tunes in a virtuoso set spanning two decades of shapeshifting
Not all superheroes wear capes. This one does, though. Janelle Monáe arrives on stage two nights into a three-show residency at Factory International’s well-appointed new(ish) home resplendent in a giant robe made entirely from fabric flowers, paired with blooming boots and headdress. It’s the same outfit she wore at Glastonbury, and the one she has been wearing as support act to Coldplay in European stadiums. The wow factor is, though, undimmed – a tropicalist take on pagan that presages a series of eye-catching costume changes. Monáe asks us to lift up our cups, and we toast “the dreams we chase”: an apposite invocation for election eve.
She, and we, are on our “Champagne Shit” tonight. It’s the title of a party-forward track semi-inspired by political Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti’s Expensive Shit. Monáe’s most recent album, The Age of Pleasure, is just over a year old, and it bumps and grinds the message home that life is for living, that pleasure is both a personal “birthright” and a political necessity, and that “the most abundant and sustainable resource is our love”.