Music icon Lionel Richie has just announced details of a huge UK tour – including a show here in Manchester.
He has included a night at the Co-op Live arena as part of his Say Hello To The Hits tour, which will be a celebration of his decades-long career as one of the world’s greatest entertainers.
Lionel Richie is set to touch down in Manchester next summer, along with shows in Sheffield, Birmingham, Glasgow and London.
His biggest hits from over the years include Hello, Dancing On The Ceiling, Say You Say Me, We Are The World, Endless Love, and masses more.
The Grammy Award-winning, Oscar-winning, Golden Globe-winning legend is famed for his electrifying performances, smooth vocals and floor-filling soul and R&B tracks.
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75-year-old Lionel Richie drew in the biggest crowd at Glastonbury 2015 with his headline performance on the Pyramid Stage, and now he’s set to bring his world-class showmanship to Manchester.
He’s announced five arena shows across the UK next summer before he heads across to the rest of Europe.
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For the north, there’ll be a chance to see this never-before-seen production at the Utilita Arena in Sheffield on 8 June, and the Co-op Live arena on 12 June.
Tickets will go on general sale at 10am on Friday 25 October.
Wunderhorse at Manchester Academy was the single greatest gig of my life – here’s why
Danny Jones
I’m going start this review (if you can even call it that as opposed to just pure, unadulteratedfanboying) by noting that I have a pretty high bar when it comes to concerts making it into my top 10, let alone considering ‘the best ever’, but Wunderhorse at Manchester Academy was the one.
Game-changing, a magnum opus; the yardstick by which I will now compare every gig for the foreseeable future – this all might sound far too superlative and exaggerated but I’m sticking by it.
This year alone, we’ve had the privilege of going along to see Jungle, Liam Gallagher, The 1975, Blossoms’ biggest-ever show at Wythenshawe Park and even the Sex Pistols with Frank Carter as the frontman just to name an extraordinary few.
Every single one of them was unreal and made me eternally grateful for that incomparable feeling of ecstasy that seeing the music you love brought to life in front of you brings, but seeing the increasingly high-flying Wunderhorse do their thing in front of a Manchester crowd sent actual chills down my spine.
Wunderhorse at Manchester Academy was pulsating from start to finish. (Credit: The Manc Group)
If you’ve for whatever reason not cottoned on to what these lads are doing yet, I’m not going roll out the typical tired trope of “What are you playing at!?” or any of that, I’m just going to implore you to start your journey with this band now and see them live as soon as you can.
Besides maybe Fontaines D.C., who they have already toured with earlier this year – cannot believe we missed out on that one – they are perhaps one of the most exciting bands around right now and they have just given me a core memory I will never forget. I dare say plenty of others in the room would agree.
For me there’s no question about it: I’ve fallen in love with this ferocious four-piece so hard it’s made me feel like a teenager who’s just discovering their taste for the first time and despite still only being a few years in, I am fully convinced they are the best thing since sliced bread.
The show itself was everything you would hope for from a proper rock show, from the fans screaming every last word like their lives depended on it, to the entire crowd jumping up and down from start to finish and the pit nearly consuming everyone with crowd-surfers galore and utterly breathless energy.
A 10/10 performance from the audience is always guaranteed in Manchester but the band themselves also went above and beyond by delivering moments like this:
It might seem like a little thing to some of you, but vamping for a good minute or so on stage and thrashing out solos that aren’t part of the studio version of a song as if they’re jamming in a room like no one else is even there just doesn’t happen any more – at least not very often.
We’ve been watching clips of the Midas tour ever since it kicked off earlier this year and for me, personally, I feared that I had built up the expectation so much that it could never possibly have lived up to the vision I had in my head.
I had absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only were they flawless, with frontman Jacob Slater (who we recently interviewed) and lead guitarist Harry Fowler particularly intoxicating to watch up close and personal, but the roughly 2,600 fans inside the venue gave every last ounce of their effort.
There were the usual limbs, beers, cups and even items of clothing being flung in the air but, more specifically, I don’t think I’ve ever perspired so much at a gig. I was literally dripping and let me assure you, neither I nor anyone else could care less.
In fact, following a particularly sweaty mid-song hug with a stranger, we turned to each other and realised we were wearing the same bit of merch before proceeding to spend the entire gig losing our minds together and even swapping numbers after the show. You have to love special moments like that.
We started out here and ended up bouncing within spitting distance of Jacob’s viral barking. It was utterly delightful carnage.
It’s hard to say how or why a band strikes a chord with so many people, never mind so quickly having only put out their first single back in 2021, but they’re truly bound for greatness in my eyes.
This isn’t a love-drunk echo chamber either: another member of the team reviewed their gig at The Deaf Institute back in April 2023 and labelled them “a band so good you’ll never see them on a stage this small again.” We love it when we’re right.
We first saw them supporting the mighty Sam Fender in 2022, who is also clearly up there with this country’s greatest at the minute, and we were pretty blown away even back then as largely uninitiated listeners. Nothing has changed since other than the fact that both have gotten much, much bigger.
Wunderhorse have clearly set a ridiculous standard for their live shows and simply refuse to drop their performance levels by even an inch and I can wholeheartedly say with my chest that last night will go down as the single greatest gig of my life.
But they’ve been making those kinds of memories for weeks on end now. Here they were in Leeds on Friday when our equally obsessed Hoot team went along to see them:
Much like their unskippable albums, there wasn’t a single low point in the entire set but highlights included ‘Purple’, ‘Arizona’, ‘Emily’, the ultimate thrasher that is ‘July’ and cult-favourite ‘Superman’, which has only be played a handful of times on this tour. How lucky are we, eh?
In fact, we spent this entire song holding one fan a lot as he didn’t crowd surf so much as he just slowly spun in absolute dreamland and it’s the most envious I’ve been of someone so clearly in the moment that I’ve possibly ever been.
My arms are still aching, as is everything else to be fair, but there is nothing like walking away from a gig knowing that you left it all out on there and so did everyone else.
They were incredible and so were every single one of you inside the venue. I don’t care how over the top it may sound, nights like that are when the power of music literally floors you and makes you feel grateful to be alive to experience that level of emotion.
Anyway, enough of all that uncomfortable sincerity; this review of Wunderhorse at Manchester Academy wouldn’t be complete without the song everyone was waiting for: ‘Teal’, a.k.a. song that made me so happy I let out a tear the second the intro started. Soak it in and go see them for yourself.
Manchester musicians, celebrities and more are uniting to help save Salford Lads and Girls Club
Danny Jones
Salford Lads and Girls Club is under threat and Manchester musicians, celebrities and other important local figures are uniting to help try and save it.
An absolute institution and the site of some of the most important moments in Manc music history, Salford Lads and Girls Club is sadly facing the risk of closure simply due to a lack of funding and the rising costs facing so many organisations around the country.
As the place where countless local artists attended as youngsters and played some of their first gigs, not to mention the same spot where the most iconic photo ever of legendary Manchester band The Smiths was taken, the importance of this location to our region’s culture cannot be overstated.
That being said and with the news that they need to raise serious finances to keep the club going, those who know full well how much it means are doing what they can to keep it afloat.
Much-loved DJ Mike Sweeney, AO founder and CEO John Roberts, The Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess and local musician-turned-journalist John Robb from Louder Than War are among those calling for support.
In fact, 82-year-old Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills and Nash has already put money where his mouth is by donating £10,000 to the cause and his generosity has since been surpassed by Salford City Council themselves, who are setting aside a whopping £100k to help steer the club to safety.
As the constituency’s MP Rebecca Long-Bailey told the That’s TV network earlier this week, it is Salford Lads and Girls Club is “one of the most iconic buildings and organisations in Salford and it’s transformed countless lives with their activities.”
Be it the regular sports teams, music events, own charity fundraisers or their annual summer camp which has provided an outlet to generations of those less fortunate who may never have travelled outside their hometown without it, the club has had a huge impact on so many around Greater Manchester.
Indie-rock five-piece and fellow Mancunian band Rolla are also going out of their way to try and help the Grade II-listed by putting on a special one-off gig at the venue itself next month, with “every single penny” going towards keeping the doors open. It sold out almost immediately.
Whether you’ve ever been there or not, it’s evident how much people care about this place and it’s moments like these when the community bands together that we’re most proud to be Mancs.
We have until the end of November to save Salford Lads and Girls Club and with more than 120 years of history, heritage and culture behind it, letting it die out simply isn’t an option.
The fundraiser has now reached over £130,000 of their overall £250,000 target with the help of council money, so please donate to the official GoFundMe page HERE if you can and help do your bit by resharing wherever possible.
Since 1903, their motto has been “to brighten young lives and make good citizens” – those values aren’t going anywhere. Let’s make a difference.
Since 1903, football has been at the heart of @salfordladsclub, and today, our teams—especially our girls’ team—carry on that proud tradition.
Daisy Jackson -
21st October 2024 
