By Pauline Hunt

Date / Venue: Friday November 24th, 2017 - The Studio, Auckland

Eric Benét Jordan or better known professionally as Eric Benét, has been in the music industry since the late 1980’s yet this was the first time he was performing live in Auckland, NZ. Originally singing with a Top 100-style group called Gerard, then later forming a band with his sister Lisa and cousin George Nash Jr. named Benet which saw them release a self-titled album and went on to sell over 100,000 copies. It was only in 1994 that he decided to break into the music scene on his own and signed with Warner Bros.

Warming the night up was DJ Reminisce along with his signature style of old school hits to take the audience down memory lane. Playing classic hits from artists such as Blackstreet, to TLC to Bell BivDevoe, you were sure to be in for a good night. Next up was the opening act TJ Taotua with support singing hits we grew up to such as Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” to Tevin Campbell’s “Can We Talk” as well as Blackstreet’s “Before I Let You Go”. They ended their beautiful opening with an original “Special Place”.

Anticipation while waiting for Eric Benét to make his presence known, but while the band were setting up, DJ Reminisce is back on stage for a couple of minutes, this time with a more up to date set with club hits to make sure your feet keep moving. Once the band is all set up, you could tell what was about to happen as the audience were screaming with excitement.

The band start playing the instrumental to “Love Don’t Love Me” as the host introduces Eric Benét before he comes out on stage, of course everyone starts screaming, before you know it, Eric makes his presence known. Next up were well known hits such as “Spirit of Love” to “Chocolate Legs” to “A Love Of My Own” which is from his album “A Day In The Life”. Next song up was one of his well-known No.1 hits, which was a duet with Tamia “Spend My Life”. Before performing this classic, decided to the audience of how it came to be and his reason behind it for wanting to perform it with the beautiful Tamia. Of course, the audience just went crazy.

Benét went on to commemorate artists who had passed way too early before stopping on the one artist whom he aspired to be like, Prince. He then performed Alicia Key’s well known hit “How Come You Don’t Call Me” whilst adding his own falsetto notes which would definitely make you think it was actually Prince himself performing the hit song, but the execution of the record was perfect. He went onto perform one of his well-known hits as well as ending the night on “GeorgiePorgy” and made the audience step to the beat. Just when we all thought it had ended, the audience asked for more, before Eric Benét came back to perform one more song, the groovy tunes of “Why You Follow Me”.

Eric Benét has been out of the music scene for a while but yet when he came decided to announce his tour down under, it was sold out with a huge line waiting outside to see him perform for the first time. Time did not do harm to voice as his vocals were still on point, showing off his beautiful voice and still hitting those high notes. Definitely a night to remember and I know that it will be a night that old school lovers will not forget.

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