Review: The Wanted live The Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham

That’s not to say there were any problems with the volume coming from the stage or that the speakers were turned up too loud.

In fact, the vast majority of the noise wasn’t coming from the stage at all, but from the audience of teenage girls and their mums.

These girls were seriously excited about seeing the 5-piece boy band and hearing hits like All Time Low and Gold Forever performed live. So excited that they squealed when the sound man walked on stage, squealed when someone played the drums from behind the curtain before the show had started, and squealed when support act Starboy Nathan took his top off.

So you can imagine how much they squealed when The Wanted actually made their entrance. Walls shook, glasses cracked and the structural integrity of Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall was looking questionable. In fact, only when singing along to the chorus of the boys’ latest hit Heart Vacancy, did the teens use their voices for good rather than evil.

Before the band took to the stage for the first time, there was a video of a fake Sky News broadcast in which five guys had been arrested for stealing some pricey diamonds. Five guys who were referred to, for ease, as The Wanted. And even beneath the chorus of squeals, the flimsy narrative was easy to understand and moderately entertaining.

The intermittent broadcasts served as an opportunity for the guys to change their outfits throughout the show – an opportunity they took full of advantage of.

Each member sported a range of looks across the course of the show from bejewelled jumpsuits to the boy band staples of drop crotches and plunging V-necks.

The show was punctuated with their handful of well-known hits and supported by many of the unreleased tracks from their self-titled debut, all of which the audience seemed to have etched into their memory.

Highlights of the show were covers of Taio Cruz’s Higher and The Goo Goo Dolls’ Iris. And while this audience would’ve squealed, cheered and hoisted their banners no matter what was coming from the stage, the band proved that they can hold a tune and even brought out some instruments for a couple of tracks mid-show.

And when they finally performed their number one hit All Time Low for the encore, there’s no doubt that they’d sealed the deal with their demographic of teen girls and that they (and their mums) would be back next time The Wanted are in town.

By Fraser Wilson