Shawn Desman was a Canadian pop radio hit machine in the early 2000s. His headlining show at The Royal Theatre in Victoria Friday showed he hasn’t lost a step in his live performance despite all the years he has been away from the music industry.
It’s the first time Desman has been back in Victoria since his show at Capital Ballroom in 2024 when he officially launched his comeback.
Backed by a three-piece band and two dancers, Desman’s started his ‘Back to Life’ tour stop in Victoria with a fitting sample of Soul II Soul’s ‘Back to Life’ before taking the stage to kick off the show with 2010 hit ‘Electric’. He followed that up with more recognizable singles in ‘Let’s Go’ and ‘Get Ready’.
While the show wasn’t sold out, the Royal Theatre had a solid crowd of mostly women. Many of whom were likely teens or kids when Desman originally rose to fame in 2002. Some of those fans brought their kids to the show including Meagan James-Sam, who’s young daughter Lili was brought on stage briefly to get a photo. It was Lili’s first concert.
Desman asked Lili for a favour before sending her back to her mom, “Don’t fall asleep during the show, okay?”. During his performance of ‘Night Like This’ towards the end of the set, Desman went into the audience and noticed Lili and exclaimed with a laugh between lyrics, “I knew it! I knew she was going to fall asleep.”
The Victoria show was the second of three straight days of performing. He was in Kelowna the previous night and Vancouver was scheduled for the night after the Victoria show. I saw Justin Timberlake headline a festival this year and I found Desman had a more energetic performance with fast dance routines and quick wardrobe changes and had better fan interaction.
I’m often wary of pop shows due to the tendency to overly rely on backtrack vocals and lip syncing due to the choreography. Thankfully there was no lip syncing at all. Desman’s live voice could be heard loud and clear and sounded on point.
A highlight came in the middle of the set when he was joined by opening act Jamie Fine to perform their their collaborative single ‘Body’. The song reached the top 5 on Canadian charts this year.
After a couple more of his songs, he then went into a medley celebrating strong independent women performing songs by Janet Jackson, Madonna, Belinda Carlisle, Paula Abdul and Whitney Houston. It got the elder millennial crowd singing 80s hits at the top of their lungs.
For the encore, Desman stepped back on stage shirtless and promoted his new single with Canadian country music star Dallas Smith ‘One Good Life’ before performing it acoustically. One thing I found odd about this moment was Desman mentioned to the audience that his father was quite sick in the hospital while being shirtless and sweaty. Lowering the mood and tempo like that probably would have been better suited before the encore and fully clothed.
the 21-song show (26 if you split the 80s medley) with a reprise of ‘Electric’.
Jamie Fine’s opening set showed that you don’t need choreographed dance routines to have an entertaining pop show. Her voice and connection with the audience was more than enough. Though, during one break between songs Fine began to talk about her mental health when an impatient audience member yelled, “We want Shawn Desman!” The rest of the audience immediately started booing that audience member. Fine then went on to tell her story about how she started doing philanthropic things at her shows. For this tour she has partnered with World Vision Canada and so far concert goers have sponsored more than a 100 children.
My first encounter with Fine was from her realty show competition win on CTV’s The Launch with Elijah Woods. Sine 2020, she has embarked on a solo career with a lot or pop radio success garnering five Juno nominations.
It was clear throughout the night that Shawn Desman and Jamie Fine were having fun and so was the audience… except maybe one guy standing in front of me who was clearly only there because his girlfriend wanted to go to the concert.
