Billy Ocean — Castle Park, Colchester 20 August 2026

Billy Ocean — Castle Park, Colchester

20 August 2026

Review by Robert Corich

There are certain voices that don’t so much belong to a particular era as become part of the soundtrack to several of them.

Billy Ocean has one of those voices.

Walk into virtually any British pub, nightclub, wedding reception, car stereo or kitchen where somebody has reached a certain age and sooner or later you’ll hear it. Smooth, unmistakable and effortlessly soulful, it belongs to the 1980s — but the songs themselves have proved considerably more durable than the decade that made them famous.

So, standing in Castle Park on a warm August evening, there was never much doubt that this was going to be a night of memories.

What was less predictable was just how good those memories would sound.

Opening with “One World,” Ocean wasted little time before moving into “Love Really Hurts Without You.” And suddenly we’re back in the 1970s, when soul and pop could still occupy the same record without anyone worrying about genre boundaries.

Then comes the song everybody is waiting for.

“Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car.”

It’s impossible to hear that title without the chorus arriving in your head several seconds before the band gets there. A ridiculous pop song? Absolutely.

A brilliant one? Also absolutely.

And that’s the trick with Billy Ocean.

He has always understood that great pop music doesn’t have to apologise for being great pop music.

“Red Light Spells Danger” keeps the momentum going before “The Colour of Love” slows things down and allows that extraordinary voice to take centre stage.

Then “Nights (Feel Like Getting Down)” reminds us that Ocean’s roots were never simply in chart pop. There is genuine soulfulness underneath all those enormous choruses, and live, that becomes even more apparent.

The decision to include Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” is an interesting one. It could easily have become a routine crowd-pleasing cover, but in this setting it makes sense. Ocean has always occupied that territory where soul, reggae, pop and Caribbean influences overlap.

And then we get “Mystery” and “Suddenly.”

The latter is one of those songs that carries a whole period of British popular culture inside it. The early eighties had a particular kind of romanticism — glossy without necessarily being cynical, emotional without being embarrassed about it — and Suddenly is almost a perfect example.

Then comes “Loverboy.”

Now the temperature rises again.

If Get Outta My Dreams is the exuberant Billy Ocean, Loverboy is the sophisticated Billy Ocean: the immaculate groove, the slick production, the unmistakable vocal and the sort of chorus that seemed designed specifically for a dance floor.

By this point the audience is doing what audiences do when they know every word.

They sing.

Not politely.

Not occasionally.

They absolutely bloody sing.

“When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going” is next, and you could probably have measured the volume from somewhere over the other side of Colchester.

It is one of those songs that has somehow escaped its original context and become part of the national vocabulary. You don’t even have to like it — although, frankly, what’s wrong with you if you don’t? — because everybody knows it.

Then “Daylight” and the inevitable “Caribbean Queen (No More Love on the Run)” bring the set towards its conclusion.

And Caribbean Queen is still a magnificent piece of pop craftsmanship.

There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about it.

A groove.

A hook.

A great vocal.

A chorus you can shout after a couple of drinks.

Sometimes music really doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

Looking down the setlist afterwards, what strikes me is how little filler there is.

“Love Really Hurts Without You.”
“Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car.”
“Red Light Spells Danger.”
“Nights.”
“Suddenly.”
“Loverboy.”
“When the Going Gets Tough.”
“Caribbean Queen.”

These aren’t obscure catalogue selections dragged out because someone forgot to write anything new.

They’re songs that have survived.

And survival is a useful word when talking about Billy Ocean.

Because while the musical fashions surrounding him have changed almost beyond recognition, the songs haven’t required updating. They still do exactly what they were designed to do.

They make you feel something.

Walking away from Castle Park, the striking thing wasn’t that Billy Ocean had recreated the 1980s.

He didn’t need to.

He simply reminded us that the best music from that period never really went away.

It was waiting patiently for the opening chords.

And once that voice arrived, the years between then and now seemed to disappear rather quickly.

One world, one voice, a whole lot of memories.

And, judging by the reaction in Colchester, an awful lot of people who still know exactly where they were when they first heard those songs.

Not bad for a Thursday night.

Not bad at all.