In the six years since her peppy, poppy debut album reached No 1 in the UK, Rita Ora has proven herself to be queen of the side hustle. In a world that has embraced the gig economy, she has enthusiastically turned her hand to pretty much anything, anywhere. There have been bipartisan judging stints on The Voice and The X Factor. She was selected to spearhead the reboot of America’s Next Top Model. And in the Fifty Shades film franchise, she had a recurring role as kink magnate Christian Grey’s sister, Mia. The reward has been enviable visibility and sustained popularity.
Even if her unnamed second album seems to be perpetually pushed back (recent reports suggest it will arrive in autumn; an appropriate title might be Zeno’s Paradox), Ora’s fast and furious work ethic is undeniable. She recently killed it on the Met Gala red carpet, but you could plausibly imagine a Deliveroo moped parked up in the background. This impressive juggling act of income streams has included a steady drip-drip of monster singles, and the guaranteed success of Ora’s smoochy new hit Girls will see her elbow past Shirley Bassey and Petula Clark to claim the record for the most Top 10 singles by a UK solo female artist. Like Kylie Minogue, she is a pop star who makes hard graft seem effortlessly glam.
On the first night of a sold-out UK road trip to relatively intimate venues – her first proper tour in three years – Ora scales things back while still gleefully over-delivering. There was presumably no pressing need to take to the stage in the swaggering, soft-butch silhouette of a Dick Tracy trench coat stitched together from three different tartans, but in Glasgow she does it anyway. “Who’s ready to party and bullshit with me right now?” she yells, introducing How We Do, her pleasingly laid-back hedonistic hymn. The audience, which includes a considerable number of mums and young daughters, clearly adore her, singing along to every word of Poison, one of the greatest yet most agitated love declarations of modern times.
Within four songs, Ora has ditched her big mac to reveal a dazzlingly diamante-studded yellow tartan two-piece. For the slow jam Body on Me, she also dismisses her four dancers to create some impressively Tina Turner-esque drama using only a mic stand, a flapping chiffon cloak and a wind machine on full-blast. Her standout new track Soul Survivor is an unvarnished account of being signed by Jay-Z and his label Roc Nation, a fractious relationship that deteriorated into a court battle. A no-holds-barred lyric video with conspicuous footage of a dove flying free emphatically make Ora’s case for emancipation.
With her second album seemingly in stasis, Ora delivers a smartly tailored set that barrels forward with infectious vigour. With only a handful of new songs, it feels like a celebratory consolidation rather than a vaunting reimagining. A particular highlight is Girls: she plucks four fans from the crowd to jive with her on stage, which seems like a moment of genuine impromptu connection rather than a stage-managed meet’n’greet. She closes with the lost-soul anthem Anywhere, and while the “over the hills and far away” chorus invokes memories of nursery rhymes, it feels more like a fairytale ending.
• At Academy, Newcastle, on 13 May. Box office: 0844-477 2000. At Academy, Manchester, on 15 May. Then touring.
