Gig played on 03/06/05

Say what you like the global megabrand that is Destiny's Child - criticise their tastelessness, their insipid last album, the sheer ickiness of naming their tour after McDonalds - but you can't deny their popularity. It's normally impossible to generate an atmosphere in the cavernous hangar of Earls Court (Madonna is just one of those who has failed) but tonight is a hysterical, screaming exception to the rule, with a cast of every age, race and gender keen to join the party. Imagine how the crowd would have behaved if they'd known it was to be a last hurrah before the DC corporation was finally dissolved.

Not that the news should have come as a surprise. Beyonce's extraordinary voice and ludicrously glossy good looks would have made her the star of tonight's show - any show - no matter what, but the megalomaniac Texan takes no chances, with an insultingly overlong solo sequence that leaves Kelly and Michelle looking like rather untalented understudies. The surprise here isn't that Beyonce has now declared herself a solo performer but that she didn't also declare herself Empress of the Free World while she was at it.

None of which detracts from a night out that is, for the most part, glorious. When Beyonce was doing the rounds for "Dangerously In Love" she was dragging a dangerously complacent and boring stage show with her, but tonight's set is defined by some truly energetic choreography, from the Kung Fu acrobatics that whirl around the girls during "Lose My Breath" to the gorgeous ballet routine that accompanies "Bad Habit".

There are some low moments naturally. Beyonce still hasn't learned to sing "Dangerously In Love" without turning it into a gruesomely self-indulgent wibble fest, inspiring another generation of 'Pop Idol' atrocities, and "Through With Love" is like having your ears slowly filled up with cold chip fat. But the barrage of on-your-feet-and-shake-your-fist anthems that close the show - a spectacular "Crazy In Love", a rampant "Survivor", a fierce "Lose My Breath" - are quite literally breathtaking. Utterly contemporary, peerlessly confident and sonically heroic, this is what pop music should sound like in 2005. And then it's all over, although we don't know quite HOW over it is yet.

It looks like there's a just-opened vacancy for an ultra-modern, super-charged Amazonian girl group. The Faders need not apply.

by Jaime Gill