Music

Musical highlights from the London 2012 closing ceremony

by Claire Ward-Beveridge and Aaron Zorgel

The summer Olympics in London ended last night with a multi-billion dollar parade of the best of the best and biggest in English musical entertainment. We’ll do our best to provide you with some video evidence of the ceremony, but with the insane copyright vigilance of London 2012, videos are being axed from YouTube and Vimeo faster than Usain Bolt on his morning job. We’ll do our best.

Last night, we saw performances from the likes of the Spice Girls, George Michael, Muse, Annie Lennox and that Oasis cover band Beady Eye. One CTV commentator noted that the Olympics could bring together 204 nations, but it couldn’t even reunite the Gallagher brothers.

The Spice Girls entered the stadium atop London taxi cabs and lip-synched their way through a mash-up of “Wannabe” and “Spice Up Your Life.” They all looked fairly well-kept and energized, with the exception of one Spice, who seemed to forget her choreography for a moment:

Other performances featured that little ginger hippie fella that busks for millions (Ed Sheeran), and that annoying girl who helped write “Party in the U.S.A.” Jessie J seemed to dominate the ceremony last night. We imagine she would have extinguished the flame with her ghoulish wailing if the organizers would have asked her to.

Of course, not all of the performances featured (relatively) young talent. A few pensioners were trotted out, including The Who, Monty Python’s Eric Idle, and the inimitable Kate Bush. Watch her performance of “Running Up That Hill” over at Gawker.

And that’ll just about do it for the London 2012 Olympic Games. It’s been a slice! One has to wonder what sort of treasures Rio has in store for us in 2016. Astrud Gilberto? Cansei de Ser Sexy? Amon Tobin? Seu Jorge? Viva Brasil!

To sample some of Pop Hunter’s Olympic-related coverage, check out: Hip-Hop Decathlon: 50 Rappers Compete.