The first four songs that Sheena Easton performed set the tone at her concert at The Theatre at Solaire on Friday, July 26, 2019. She started with The Beatles’ “Got To Get You Into My Life”, her dance hit “Strut”, ballad hit “Almost Over You”, and multi-artist-recorded-song “Always Something There To Remind Me”. So, throughout the whole evening, she sang her own hits, other artists’ songs, plus her collaboration with other artists.
In her spiel, Sheena proudly announced that she just turned 60 years old and is looking forward to enjoying her senior discounts for movies and food. She also reminisced about how she has been performing for over 40 years now. She is, after all, one of the more popular singers of the 1980s.
Sheena paid tribute to Prince, who wrote “Sugar Walls” for her under an alias, Alexander Nevermind. The song, which became controversial for its sexually suggestive title and lyrics, was a big hit and was part of her 1984 album, ‘A Private Heaven’. In her tribute number, Sheena sang “Nothing Compares To You”, which was also written by Prince, but for Sinead O’Connor.
She also did another collaboration song, “We’ve Got Tonight”, which she originally sang with Kenny Rogers. She performed the duets with Phillip Ingram. “I have worked with many, many duet partners over the years…and any of my fans who have been to my shows know that I say this all the time because it is 100 percent true. Phillip Ingram is my all-time favorite duet partner,” Sheena told the audience.
Sheena Easton sang the duet numbers with Phillip Ingram during the concert.
Besides being Sheena’s favorite duet partner, Phillip is the youngest brother of the late balladeer James Ingram. “One of the questions that I get quite often is that one that you just asked me, ‘are you James Ingram’s brother?’ The answer is, yes. I’m the youngest. James and I are the only ones that decided to make a living out of the music industry,” he told this writer. James Ingram died of brain cancer on January 29, 2019.
Sheena also performed some Motown songs, some jazzy numbers, and the most-applauded number of her personal favorite songs: “Morning Train (9 to 5)”, “For Your Eyes Only” (she cited that she’s proud to have recorded a James Bond theme song) and a couple of stirring ballads such as “How Deeep is the Ocean” from her ‘No Strings’ album, which according to her is a “passion project”.
It was during her encore performance of “Telefone” when the crowd went wild and moved towards the stage to enthusiastically sing along with her, shake her hand, and take selfies. Besides the selfies (not popular yet 10 years ago when she last performed here), Filipinos’ warm reception is what keeps Sheena Easton coming back. Pinoys are not yet over her, it seems…
