Again on the big stage and again completely different. Ben Cristovao prepared a completely different show for the O2 arena

© Marie Trávníčková / musicserver.cz

“I’m not going this time. I was last time and it’s sure to be pretty much the same,” a colleague announces to me at the traditional pre-Christmas gathering of the music server in a business not far from the O2 arena, as I leave my colleagues and head to the sold-out hall packed to the ceiling. At that time, the poor guy has no idea how wrong he is. If you can’t deny something to Ben Cristovao, it’s how incredibly hard he is. It shows in everything he does. After all, in complete silence, in addition to preparing for the third appearance in the Vysočany hall, he just casually released the unannounced album “Animal” a few hours before. It contains the lead single “Nemusim nic”, so it’s aptly sloth on the cover. He replaces the lion that decorated the singer’s visuals a year ago. And the same, approximately three-meter long sloth appeared right at the entrance to the hall, where excited female fans were taking pictures with it since the afternoon.

But back to workaholism. It is extremely admirable about Ben that what the one above did not give him in the vocal range, he tries to catch up elsewhere. And for every important evening, he tries to come up with something different and if possible not to repeat himself. Take the last twelve months, for example. Other bands with the same program tour the country or even the whole world for two years and do not change their pre-prepared speeches to the audience. Not so Pilsen native. If you go to the O2 arena in October, at Rock For People in June, at Colors Of Ostrava in July and then again in November in the neighborhood of the Harfa department store, you will get a completely different concert every time. In everything. And that is absolutely essential. And almost no one does this. Why? It’s laborious. Difficult to prepare. And it costs a lot of money. But it is also absolutely key to understanding the phenomenon that Ben Cristovao has become on the scene. He is completely different from everyone else. And it elevates the home scene in an incredible way. After all, thanks to the program from O2, it is precisely in the songs behind which artists who were completely unknown at the time, who would not have had a chance to break through without it, often manage to make their debut. And it is he and his team from Championship Music who are pulling young talents from the underground to the lights of the big stages. There are plenty of concrete examples, just look at the last twenty singles that he released into the world. You will certainly find names among them that you have never heard of before and who, thanks to the cooperation with him, now have a slightly more open door to show business. And of course, Ben’s critics may argue that not all of them are future stars, but hey – does it work like this in other genres of music, like rock? Maybe a little yes, but certainly not to that extent.

This time, the younger of the two singers performing as Annabelle and Sofian Medjmedj took over the role of frontrunners. Unfortunately, both of them only got a very modest twenty minutes, but unfortunately that was the least of their problems. In both cases, their huge dream and great chance were blocked by the sound engineer. The performance of the main star, who after past experience resigned to a head microphone for the good of things, was a bit better, but it is not good enough to talk about the performance of the supporting duo when, at least in sector 119, i.e. almost directly opposite the stage, it was not even possible to understand them properly. You could watch both of them putting a lot of energy into it on the side screens that were too small, but alas. The unquestionable qualities of the stepdaughter of the actor Martin Hofmann and the still a little too whiny and regretful Sofian failed to sell. Therefore, visit Anna Žitníková somewhere in the club and support her so that in the future she can replace half-playback with backing vocalists and give her best song “Running Out Of Fucking Time” a good start, because otherwise there is no doubt about her upward journey. Her audience will only grow.

It is not so certain with Sofian. In addition to the fact that in every conversation with him there is a different variant of the correct pronunciation of his surname, which can be confusing for newcomers (he introduced himself here as “Between”), identifies Justin Bieber as a role model who steered him on a musical path. And it would be worth thinking about how good a singer you can theoretically become if you have someone like that as your idol. Regardless of the fact that even the twenty-year-old lady sitting next to him, i.e. his target, recognized that there was still nothing to stand for, and were bored by his performance. And that is until the final “VMBR”, which so far is the only one that shows the right way forward. A song made for summer afternoons at a hot district swimming pool. With the arrival of the protagonist of the evening, a huge screen was shown with completely new projections. The stage, which this time did not have a catwalk or a structure for flying, was joined by the backing band with Marcello from No Distance Paradise, who this time sang much more backing vocals than before. And like the legendary Rocky Balboa hidden under the hood, the main actor finally rushed onto the scene. And he appropriately started his show with flames and rackets in the strengthening single “Heavy weights”.

Instead of a welcome, he immediately announced to everyone who hadn’t registered that he had released a new album on this very day, perhaps a little surprisingly, but in the end he didn’t play much of it. However, he let the piece “I don’t regret” sound as soon as the second one. A lot of guests have also arrived. The most visible was Marcell, who sang the joint single “Nevim” with even more vigor than last time. On the contrary, Adam Mišík looked like he enjoyed playing the new “Spider-man” on PlayStation 5 at the Cinestar Anděl cinema three weeks ago at the ceremonial launch, perhaps even more than performing in a full hall. He woke up in the chorus.

A great move was to have the names of the guests projected on the side screens, so even those interested in the less famous participants could easily find out who they were. And it also helped that even twenty-year-old ladies, the majority of whom were in the arena, learned about them. That’s because it seems more and more typical of the tiktok generation to no longer care about the specific artists behind their favorite songs. They just enjoy the songs themselves and generally don’t care who sings them.

The element used several times was a bed-like platform pointing towards the roof, and it was the single of the same name that was played first on it. One of the highlights was one of the more recent pieces, “Brighter Day” sung in English, in which Ben was assisted by Polish singer Sara James. At the age of thirteen, she received a golden buzzer from Simon Cowell himself in “America’s Got Talent” and we will probably hear a lot more about her. The live performance of one of this year’s summer hits also showed that we still haven’t seen everything from her colleague and she still has room to grow.

This was also indicated by the song “Crazy” at the end of the show, during which the projection showed natural disasters, war, slums, dead fish, a burning Zhigulik and other drastic shots, which are, however, the reality of today’s times.

“We don’t know what’s next!” shouted the artist, representing a generation that in adulthood will not remember Merkur, the Englishmen from Matchbox and the Eso hit parade, but rather remote learning in a pandemic and sleeping in bomb shelters or the bowels of not only the Kyiv subway. Even in this, you can see that Cristovao is no longer afraid of more serious topics, similar to the missing song “Smítko”. And as he gets older, he wants to express himself even more strongly about things other than parties, girls and the gym. In the last third of the show, his band disappeared backstage and space was given to pieces that only require a DJ. “Bombs?” he asked the relentlessly screaming female audience members who, five songs ago, were chanting the name of one of his biggest hits, which he admits he doesn’t enjoy that much. “No, I don’t need anything” he answered them rapturously and launched the hit of the same name, which will soon become a classic. But he gave the required banger right away, thanks to which he wrapped the first rows in fired paper rolls. And at the very end, he included the song “Město”, in which the creators of the projections had a great win with the block houses shown.

The man who filmed a delightfully funny show for TV Nova, in which he bakes and otherwise fools around with Rey Koranteng, can’t complain about his third appearance at the O2 arena. Except for the sound, he succeeded in everything important, the audience recorded his hit “Kolotoč”, he will have a lot of photos on social networks, more tickets were sold than before and perhaps no one in the hall sat on the seats that evening. There is only one thing left for him to solve – to find a place on his body where he will next tattoo the date of the big concert number 4. This time from Eden.