Conor Maynard @ O2 Academy, Sheffield

This Is Ark writer Leah Wilson tells us how Brit pop sensation Conor Maynard charmed the socks off the audience at his Sheffield appearance…

Conor Maynard live

Conor Maynard the Brighton-born 19-year-old would rather be not known as “the British Justin Bieber“. As far as they’re concerned, he’s the British Justin Timberlake – a white suburbanite with enough unexpected R&B nous to have already won the respect of genre heavyweight Pharell Williams, who has helped out on his forthcoming debut album. Unfortunately for the image-makers, Maynard‘s fans – the (what else?) Mayniacs – emit such screams when he bustles on to Academy 2s’ tiny stage that the Bieber comparison isn’t going to go away.

Baseball-capped and sweet-faced, Maynard spends this show establishing that he sings pretty well, but has a long way to go before he reaches either of the Justins’ level of stage presence. Sandwiched between four band members, he busts a few tentative moves and uses the same phrase before three different songs: “Mayniacs, are you ready to paaarty?” If it weren’t for his voice, which glides from insinuating carnality on the Usherlike grinder Vegas Girl to baby-smooth yearning on a medley of Drake hits, he could have been plucked from an X-Factor audition queue.

But at this stage, awkwardness is inevitable. Last year, he was in his bedroom, uploading videos of himself singing cover versions; today he’s No 2 in the charts with the cute urban-pop single Can’t Say No and being pushed as the hope of a nation that has yet to produce a 21st-century male pop star able to win over little girls and their older brothers alike. It must be an odd balancing act for a singer who obviously craves the respect of the over-25s – there are more here than you would expect – but needs to keep the younger fans onside. To the latter end, he gives his baseball cap to a girl in the front row, generating more of the squeals that seem destined to accompany him for the foreseeable future.

Want to hear more about Conor Maynard? Check out Leah’s interview the cheeky Brighton chap.

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