Dubai – so often the land of the reformed nostalgia act, the one-hit wonder DJ and the cheesy cover band – hosted a line-up on Friday that was so contemporaneously hot, it hurt.
Hosted at Zero Gravity, the inaugural DXBeach punched in with two heavyweights – Mark Ronson and Jess Glynne – whose critical mass has multiplied monumentally this year, making waves, or rather tsunamis, with respective number-one smashes.
As big as Glynne's Hold My Hand is – it was just knocked off the No 1 spot in the United Kingdom after three weeks at the top – it is a mere stone crushed by the boulder of Ronson's tune. Uptown Funk is a phenomenon – No 1 in 20 countries, including 14 weeks at the top of the charts in the United States, which ties as the biggest stateside hit of the century.
“Do you think I should play my own stuff?” Ronson asked innocently, at the end of our interview earlier in the day. Yes Mark, you should.
It seems he took the advice – the first 20 minutes of his set was like a manifesto for his production prowess, polishing off highlights from each of his four albums.
Taking to the decks a little after 9.30pm, wearing a Scarface-style white suit – the jacket was off in seconds – he kicked off with his most-recent single Feel Right, a storming funk featuring the rapper Mystikal. Ronson then leapt back to his first hit, Ooh Wee (from 2003's Here Comes the Fuzz), followed by Bang Bang Bang (from 2010's Record Collection) and his rework on Radiohead's Just (Version, 2007).
At exactly 10pm, he went nuclear and dropped it like it was really hot – and it is – Uptown Funk.
"This is the first time I've got to play this song to so many people," said Ronson. He'll be spinning it to far bigger crowds at Glastonbury and Lovebox soon, but for now, Ronson seemed genuinely touched – so much so that he played Uptown Funk again, debuting a brand new remix, just 45 minutes later, after a deep and dirty mid-set hip-hop detour.
"We've got 15 minutes left, let's go back to the funk," he said. Like an excited schoolboy eager to share his influences, he broke all the rules and dropped two James Brown classics in a row – Get Up Offa That Thing and Sex Machine.
“This is my dream – to see 5,000 people on a beach dancing to James Brown,” he yelled. “You’re the best crowd I could hope for.”
This from a guy who played at Tom Cruise’s wedding. Ronson really is the ultimate party DJ – someone sharing the records he loves, because he loves them. He just happens to have produced some of them, too. Some of the best ones.
Just before Ronson we had Glynne, who proved she had more to say, musically, than we’ve had a chance to hear so far.
Her breakout hits My Love and Rather Be – for Route 94 and Clean Bandit, respectively – were early crowd-pleasers, but they came sandwiched between several promising, unfamiliar originals from the 25-year-old's upcoming debut album, which hint at a more mature, soulful sound.
Closing, inevitably, with Hold My Hand, this was the perfect booking for this venue on this day – but in a year, Glynne could be on whole other level.
A word on the set-up. All the chat beforehand focused on one buzzword – Sandance. Was it a fair comparison?
DXBeach is a case of “same same, but smaller”. Much is familiar – the venue’s shape and vibe, the branding, the PA – even the view back to land from the sand. What set DXBeach apart was the line-up. Sandance long distinguished itself with the might of its bookings – from The Killers to Calvin Harris – but it rarely scored a booking quite as contemporaneous as DXBeach’s dual headliners.
With talk of a follow-up in October, it’s only right to be excited about who they might bring in next.
rgarratt@thenational.ae