The glitzy, TikTok-ready Vax Live let the message – and Prince Harry – outshine the music

The Vax Live charity extravaganza staged at the SoFi stadium in Los Angeles had one thing going for it that no large-scale concert has enjoyed for over a year: an actual audience. There was, admittedly, plenty of elbow room, with 27,000 masked and fully vaccinated key workers assembled in a space for 100,000.

But the performers certainly seemed pleased not to be playing into the usual sterile void of a live stream. Film-and-music star Jennifer Lopez opened proceedings with a rousing singalong of Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, presumably just so she could hear all those people bellowing “touching me, touching you!” at the top of their voices.

Filmed last week and broadcast on Saturday night, Vax Live was America’s first post pandemic Covid-compliant large scale music event. It was ambitiously billed as “The Concert to Reunite the World”, a vague slogan covering broad aims of lobbying for equitable vaccine distribution to poorer countries. The sentiments were laudable, even if the concert itself was laughable.

Global televised charity concerts have changed quite a lot since Live Aid in 1985, with the slickness of the messaging increasingly getting in the way of the soulfulness of the music. Indeed, I wasn’t sure if I was watching a concert or an extended infomercial. Much in the way that advertising oppressively dominates American televised sport, this felt like a show in which the sponsors had become the main event.

Between celebrity guest spots and sharply edited YouTube-ready public information videos with subtly integrated branding from supporters including McDonalds, Coca Cola, Verizon and Delta Air Lines, the whole affair seemed purpose built to be sliced and diced and recycled as TikTok memes. I think they managed to squeeze four songs into the first half hour, and not much more than a dozen over the whole 90 minutes.

For such a big event, the bill was not so much all-star as who’s-available-at-short- notice? R’n’B singer H.E.R. seized her moment by delivering stomping one-chord rock anthem Glory in a car park backed by 200 local guitarists. Rapper Saweetie was similarly consigned to the great outdoors, where she committed the charity concert sin of promoting her latest single Fast (Motion). I’m not sure “My back is aching, my bra too tight” was really the message organisers wanted to get across.

Despite its global ambitions, the event was about as genuinely international as the US baseball World Series. Colombian singer J Balvin and second tier Korean boy band NCT 127 (a 10-piece “sub unit” of a franchise whose acronym stands for Neo Culture Technology) effectively represented the rest of the world.

When the action bizarrely switched to Ireland, viewers may have hoped for a message from sainted superstars of charity concerts, Sir Bob Geldof or Bono, but instead got some bog-standard pop rock from local heroes Picture This.

Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder belted out a couple of well-meaning but obscure rockers with a noisy pick-up band, including a provocative cover of Little Steven’s I Am a Patriot. At least the Foo Fighters tried to rise to the occasion, bringing on AC/DC’s Brian Johnson to deliver Back In Black. It looks like they went down great inside the stadium but (as is often the case with heavy rock music that relies on power and aggression) the televised mix gave Johnson’s high vocals all the grit and substance of an agitated cartoon mouse squeaking for its life.

It was a glitzy, fun event but the dissonance between music and message was glaring. Where Live Aid ended with every famous rock and pop star on the planet coming together onstage to join a Beatle singing Let It Be, Vax Aid had J-Lo in a swimsuit shaking her booty to Ain't Your Mama.

The music stars were comprehensively outranked by filmed guest spots from world leaders including President Biden and the Pope. Perhaps the biggest cheer of the night went to Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, delivering a sincere speech about the dangers of vaccination disinformation. He seems popular with the locals, but just a few months into his self-imposed exile, Harry’s description of the audience as “awesome” suggested he has already been in America too long.