by On Saturday, July 26, Rod Stewart and Cheap Trick performed at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield.
The entire Rod Stewart experience at the Xfinity Center on Saturday could be summed up in one word: garish.
From the stair-step risers that formed the entire back line to the glossy floor, the stage was brightly illuminated and white, resembling an antiseptic disco wonderland that was reused from Solid Gold: garish. The six support vocalists resembled a phalanx of Sabrina Carpenters due to their short skirts with leopard prints and their long blonde hair that was accentuated with volume (save for one lone brunette). The set list was garish, treating the slick, trend-hopping 80s music as being indistinguishable from the free-spirited, acoustic-based rock and roll that made him a household name in the first half of the 1970s.
Things weren’t always like this. In the past, Stewart was able to bring some truth to even a song as loud and direct as the Faces’ “Stay With Me,” evoking conflicting feelings and basic desire from a rather simple morning-after request. However, the singer’s days as an overly sensitive gutter-poet throat-shredder are long gone, as she was replaced by a performer whose main motivation and message was showbiz, with all the glamour and hollowness that goes along with it.
It was evident in the innumerable small flourishes that Stewart felt compelled to incorporate into his performance. There should be pain in the song “The First Cut Is The Deepest,” but not in Stewart’s performance. Even while he sang, he indicated that he was not at all thinking on the song that was coming out of his mouth by making funny little arm wiggles, dancing a little twist, softshoeing, and making a hand gesture that said, “Are you drinking?”
Stewart’s main issue throughout the evening (and over the previous few decades) was that he arrived and just blasted off the notes without any subtlety, always winking to the crowd to convey that he didn’t mean any of it. His voice remained surprisingly intact, both in tone and range, for an 80-year-old singer who never seemed to take special care of his instrument. He could have followed Tony Bennett’s example of embracing the flaws that come with aging in order to reach new levels of vulnerability.
Rather than trying to sell any sort of tale or emotion in his stuff, he hammered it up shamelessly. Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’s ingratiating disco sleaze, in which his backups tossed soccer balls into the crowd, is one thing; Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright), which was supposedly delicate, is quite another, where Stewart drew the line. Don’t use a silly look and a full-body shimmy to deny your man’s desire.
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The result was that Stewart sometimes sounded like the lead singer of the biggest wedding band in the world, from the smoothed-out Motown of It Takes Two to the supper-club sweet nothings of Have I Told You Lately. With a nod to Christine McVie’s soulful rendition of I’d Rather Go Blind in the Sam Cooke style and Ozzy Osbourne’s Forever Young, the newly-minted octogenarian paid homage to friends and coworkers he had recently lost. That one was presented as a tribute to Tina Turner.
The anthemic surge of Rhythm of My Heart, on the other hand, seemed rather out of place with images of the conflict and was dedicated to Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people.
However, Stewart the artist managed to separate himself from Stewart the performer for a single song. He sang Mandolin Wind without ceremony, bobbing his head when he wasn’t closing his eyes and listening, and he kept one hand in the pocket of his silver lam jacket. Being present with his stuff was all he did, and it was blatantly beautiful. In that instant, instead of seeing and hearing the Rod Stewart who was a legend, one could see and hear the Rod Stewart who became a legend.
Cheap Trick for Openers occasionally experienced some of the same issues that plagued Stewart, including noticeable rigidity and Rick Nielsen’s tendency to perform the tunes sloppily due to his obsession with playing tricksy guitar. A weaker Cheap Trick still had a lot of punch, though, as songs like Dream Police, Surrender, On Top Of The World, and I Want You To Want Me were all functionally built to blow past such issues. Even better was If You Want My Love, in part because there was less room for pantsing around due to its slower speed and smooth vocals by a still-excellent Robin Zander.
Setlist for Rod Stewart at Xfinity Center, July 26, 2025
- Infatuation
- Tonight I m Yours (Don t Hurt Me)
- It s A Heartache (Bonnie Tyler cover)
- Having A Party (Sam Cooke cover)
- It Takes Two (Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston cover)
- The First Cut Is The Deepest (Cat Stevens cover)
- Tonight s The Night (Gonna Be Alright)
- Forever Young
- Ooh La La (Faces cover)
- Young Turks
- Rhythm Of My Heart (Ren Shuman cover)
- Maggie May
- I d Rather Go Blind (Etta James cover)
- Stay With Me (Faces cover)
- Lady Marmalade (Labelle cover)
- Mandolin Wind
- You re In My Heart (The Final Acclaim)
- Have I Told You Lately (Van Morrison cover)
- Proud Mary (Creedence Clearwater Revival cover)
- Love Train (The O Jays cover)
- Da Ya Think I m Sexy?
- Hot Legs
ENCORE:
- Some Guys Have All The Luck (The Persuaders cover)
Marc Hirsh can be contacted via Bluesky at @spacecitymarc.bsky.social or at [email protected].
Pop, rock, hip-hop, country, jazz, and many other genres are covered by music writer Marc Hirsh.
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