Hanging platinum records on the wall is passé. In the streaming age, Spotify stats are the new measures of pop success, and Camila Cabello has been racking up some seemingly bulletproof benchmarks. Her debut solo album Camila – which had the melodramatic working title of The Hurting, the Healing, the Loving before she opted for the Ronseal route – was released in the doldrums of January. By February, it had been streamed a billion times. Her amiably woozy single Havana, a seductive earworm that has proved to be the most in-demand Cuban export since Cohiba cigars, recently became the most-streamed song ever by a solo female artist.
This accelerated, seemingly unstoppable ascent is all the more impressive considering Cabello started out at 15 as part of Fifth Harmony, a girl group assembled by Simon Cowell from a clutch of US X Factor hopefuls in a conspicuous attempt to create a distaff One Direction. While they never fully clicked in the UK, Fifth Harmony shifted a hefty amount of units in the US, though since Cabello’s fractious departure in 2016 the group’s subsequent chaotic career flame-out feels comparable to the fate of booster rockets used to launch space shuttles.
Cabello certainly feels established in her own separate orbit now, leaving her pop-puppet past far behind and clearly relishing her autonomy. On the opening night of her first European solo tour, the 21-year-old unexpectedly goes full goth, emerging in a lace bolero cape, spider-web tights and fingerless gloves. If this ensemble seems slightly at odds with Cabello’s sultry popular image of sundresses and mojitos on the beach, it does at least chime with the more emotionally forensic aspects of her songs, or at least the ones that treat passionate relationships like crime scenes to be examined.
Her moody opener Never Be the Same taps into the narcotic, almost vampiric nature of love – “you’re in my blood, you’re in my veins”, she sings – while on the plaintive, minor-key In the Dark, she requests all the house lights get switched off to literalise the experience. Winningly, she sticks to her goth guns throughout this 80-minute gig – her six tireless, tumbling dancers get all the costume changes – although the Elvira effect is diminished slightly simply because Cabello cannot stop grinning in response to the high-pitched enthusiasm of the crowd.
This solo tour overlaps with UK dates supporting Taylor Swift – a hint at the multitasking work ethic required to sustain a pop career in 2018 – and Cabello has a similarly big-sister approach when interacting with fans, taking regular time outs to preach a gospel of self-care and self-love. On the sparse, acoustic guitar sway of Real Friends, she hoists a handful of them up on stage to help out with the chorus, and they seem genuinely awestruck.
It is a heady, energised mix of bangers and ballads with the odd joyful detour. On the clipped, slick pop-crunch of Into It, the band briefly zigzag into Prince’s Kiss, and you get the sense the purple one might approve of a lyric such as, “I see a king-sized bed in the corner, we should get into it”, especially delivered with Cabello’s whipcrack timing. Inevitably, she closes with her signature hit. As the slightly battered piano intro of Havana creaks into life, Cabello is haloed by footage of a huge orange sunrise: two gigantic stars for the price of one.
- At Academy, Birmingham (0844 477 2000) 6 June, and Brixton Academy, London (0844 477 2000) 12 June. Then touring until 23 June.
