Justin Bieber - Manchester Arena

Following on from some indifferent festival appearances over the summer it was with trepidation I approached Justin Bieber's current European tour. The redeeming factor was that his last album, Purpose was actually very good and stood up in its own right. For the last few months he has seldom been out of the UK single charts with tracks he has sung on with Major Lazer and DJ Snake.

Surprisingly the audience is not totally female, as there are a lot of males here who have come with their friends; they have probably grown up listening to Bieber.

It is a big production tour: as a pop spectacular it is superb, whether the fireworks and the other gimmicks are to distract away from Bieber is debatable.

It is a novel way in which he arrives on stage via a huge plastic see through cube. His 12 dancers work energetically throughout the show. Bieber dances with them in formation at many points during the show and he can dance, which I was not expecting.

Dressed casually in a sweatshirt with the word Staff on the front, he could easily be one of the male members of the audience.

He asks the fans to "keep quiet please between songs, you can scream at the end" as he sits down on a long settee with his guitar to perform acoustic versions of Cold Water and Love Yourself. He performs on a huge stage that has now been suspended from the arena ceiling in the middle of the fans.

After a 20 minute interval he is back on stage for a rousing version of As Long As You Love Me, to show that he not just a one trick pony. He is now behind a drum kit as he gives us a drum solo before dancing with 4 young fans on stage. They all dance together in unison for the track, Children, which was well rehearsed and was a novel part of the gig.

"I can feel a lot of love in the room tonight" he informs the fans before he performs Let Me Love You. Whilst he was singing live previously, whether he was during this track is open to debate. Sounding note perfect it was a defining moment of where pop music is at the moment. His breakthrough hit Baby was a track on which he was definitely singing live.

He appeared quite focused throughout despite some of the fans booing when he told them to keep quiet, but he beefed it up later by suggesting that "there is only one you and to be yourself"

Encoring with a brilliant version of Sorry as rain poured down on him seemed a masterstroke. (Kylie and Adele have both done this previously).

A huge surprise to me as it was far better than I was expecting, in fact to be honest, he was rather good.

Justin Bieber appears at Sheffield Arena on Wednesday 26 October and the show is sold out.