Global Citizen Live 2021, review: hugely ambitious Livestream Aid, but the BBC didn't do it justice

“We are uniting people across the world as a force for good, through the power of music,” explained Hugh Jackman at the very start of the BBC’s coverage of Global Citizen Live 2021. Think of it as Livestream Aid: one of the most ambitious concerts of all time, running across 24 hours, with hundreds of acts – including Elton John, Kylie Minogue, Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Stormzy, Duran Duran and BTS – taking to stages across the world to show politicians, global corporations and individuals with vast wealth that, in Jackman’s words, “everyday citizens really care, and will not settle for anything less than change right now”.

Rather than raising money from the viewers, this livestreamed festival was about putting pressure on those in power to act. Staged ahead of the G20 summit and the UN Climate Change Conferece, and featuring a star turn in New York from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Global Citizen aimed to push governments to do more to offset carbon emissions, deliver two billion COVID-19 vaccines to the poorest countries and donate meals for 41 million people on the brink of famine. And it worked. By the end of the festival, $1.1 billion, 157 million trees and over 60 million COVID-19 vaccines had been pledged.

The BBC’s coverage opened with a performance in Seoul by K-Pop icons BTS. Their gleeful, polished performances of Permission to Dance and Butter were undeniable proof of why they’re the biggest boyband on the planet.

Then we went to London, where Stormzy, after a nervy introduction, started with a piano-led version of Crown. It was a very different mood to his bold headline sets at Reading & Leeds Festivals last month, but he’s always been an artist with as much heart-wrenching emotion as swaggering bravado. During Racheal’s Little Brother, a song that swayed between gospel and urgent rap, he called himself “my country’s greatest poet”. This warm, poignant performance let his lyrics about community, systemic racism and belief take centre stage.

Kylie Minogue then delivered a glee-inducing performance at London’s Sky Garden to an audience of a few hundred (tickets were free to people who’d signed petitions and shared hashtags). Dance Floor Darling was a jazzy disco number that really cranked up the tempo while Can’t Get You Out Of My Head inspired as much excitement as it did when it was first released, almost 20 years ago. Despite sharing a virtual stage with modern-day pop phenomena like Billie Eilish and Ed Sheeran, it felt like Minogue was the one who brought the raw star power to Global Citizen.

Even so, as at last year’s virtual Global Citizen concert, One World: Together At Home, it was Sir Elton John who stole the show. While his scrappy, meme-worthy backyard performance of I’m Still Standing in 2020 was all excitable passion, tonight was an emotional, effortless showing from a living legend. There was a spine-tingling rendition of Your Song that found John in fine voice, before he brought out singer-songwriter Charlie Puth for their romantic electro-pop collaboration After All – although why an American and Englishman were chosen to headline the Paris concert, in front of the Eiffel Tower, was never really explained.

Talking about his memories of the Aids epidemic, John remarked that “we’ve always followed the science and we put our arms around everyone to make sure no one gets left behind. These same lessons apply equally to the COVID pandemic. We must not leave anyone behind.” Similar messages of compassion and togetherness were repeated throughout the night, but it was stars like John who said it best.

It’s a shame, then, that the BBC put more emphasis on explaining the point of Global Citizen with talking heads rather than letting people actually experience it. Most of the sets were broadcast as just highlights. Anyone watching the Youtube livestream instead would have seen John also deliver a beautiful rendition of Tiny Dancer as well as a brash, dramatic Rocket Man. If only the BBC had remembered that, with any attempt to make the world a better place, a little less conversation and a little more action go a long way.

Highlights available on bbc.co.uk/iplayer and youtube.com