Her arrival hearalded by a big drum intro, Alexandra Kay bounded on to the stage, her sparkly outfit catching the lights to great effect as she launched into "Tall Boys" a nice drinking song to kickstart the Sunday Morning slot on the Radio 2 stage. The band were certainly not in the mood for anybody with a hangover, booming out support and there was to be little let up from Alexandra for the whole set.
The next song "Best Worst Ex" carried the sound on in a similar fashion - it also exposed something about Alexandra's performance style - with the lyrics being almost a conversation with the audience, especially the first few rows who were seemingly constantly in eye contact with her
It ended with Alexandra declaring "That's how you do it at 10:30 in the morning!"
Whether it was to really get the party started or just part of her normal routine ( one that a number of her compartriots also resorted to over the weekend ) next was the "90's Medley". It contained many of the usuals ( Shania, Phil Vassar etc, ) - there was nothing wrong with it as such, and Alexandra was clearly having a ball singing them, but with such a short amount of time to make an impression - it felt like a missed oportunity - the crowd would equally have lapped up some more of her own material as the rest of the set would go on to prove.
The new single "Skip This Part" saw Alexandra return to conversational performing again, as she prowled the stage really sharing the song with those first few rows of the audience. With its poppy anthemic chorus and some fantastic extended vocals - this was surely displaying her talents at their best.
For the big ballad "How Do We Go?", the story of a relationship falling apart, Alexandra seemed to live each line with various hand gestures reinforcing the point. It was interesting for Alexandra to mention how she was an independent artist, as it easy to assume that all of the C2C performers have record company backing.
One of the advantages of being independent though, is your ability to quickly release material, and this happened in the case Alexandra's cover of Blink 182's thrash "Dammit". It is well worth digging out the original for comparison and definitely kudos to Alexanda for finding the tender diamond hidden in the noise. For this song there was to be no movement, this was delivered standing motionless at the microphone. The final song "Backroad Therapy" was not so much performed to the audience, as performed with them, such was the bond that that had been built that they felt truly included and that link along with an undoubted talent to hit the big notes with ease is undoubtedly going to be key to her future success.