Battersea Power Station has added another chapter to its history with live music. On Monday, September 28, Elton John walked out to a grand piano inside the landmark building to inaugurate Apple Music Hall. The room accommodates only 600 people, but the performance reached far beyond the four walls. Apple streamed the debut concert directly across its platform, while simultaneously projecting the live video feed onto the brick exterior of the power station for onlookers gathered outside.
John kept to a focused, one-hour set of twelve songs drawn from his classic catalogue. He sat down first to play 'Your Song', before digging into his earliest albums for 'The Greatest Discovery' and 'Border Song'. The show moved through his defining material from the seventies and eighties, touching on 'Bennie And The Jets', 'I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues', 'Mona Lisas And Mad Hatters', and 'Tiny Dancer'. An extended version of 'Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going To Be A Long, Long Time)' gave the performance some room to stretch, clearing the path for 'Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word', 'Take Me To The Pilot', 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road', and a closing run through 'Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me'.
Apple introduced the space earlier this month as its first custom-built live venue. While the floor plans mirror the feel of a small club, the technical setup behaves like a full broadcast studio. A reconfigurable 38-foot stage anchors the room, paired with a 48-speaker Spatial Audio installation. Behind the scenes, the facility integrates more than 16 camera lines alongside two dedicated recording and mixing suites. The entire design allows a performance to work at once as an intimate club gig, a live global stream, and a broadcast-grade capture.
Calling on John to open the space follows an established broadcast relationship between the musician and Apple Music. John has hosted his weekly radio program, Rocket Hour, on the service since 2015, passing 400 episodes along the way. The show has offered him a regular forum to interview peers and champion younger artists, including Sam Fender and Fontaines D.C., the latter of whom he once named as the best band out there at the moment. As John noted in the past, running the program introduced him to a whole ballgame of new artists, emphasizing that he has never lost his drive to hear new music.
That balance of vintage songwriting and current pop will shape the venue throughout the rest of 2026. The calendar turns quickly from John to younger sounds, with Baby Keem scheduled to perform on October 2. Upcoming dates will feature Skye Newman, Troye Sivan, Arlo Parks, Burna Boy, Chase & Status, and Charli XCX.
For John, the Battersea show fits his current approach to live work. After concluding his massive Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour in 2023, he stepped away from regular touring itineraries to concentrate on select appearances, including a headline set at Rock In Rio in Brazil earlier this month. As John previously remarked, the energy these big one-off dates have given him since leaving the road is unbeatable. The London performance will not keep him off stage for long, with two rescheduled Farewell Yellow Brick Road concerts waiting in Mexico City on October 2 and 3 to fulfill dates originally delayed by the pandemic.
