Attending On the Blue Cruise 2025 felt like witnessing a week-long production dubbed “Six Degrees of Alan Parsons.”
The renowned producer wasn’t part of the official branding, like Yes used to be with sibling event Cruise to the Edge, but his fingerprints were all over the floating festival — he was one of the top-billed artists, staging two cinematic theater sets with his long-running Project, and seemed to share history with every other band onboard the Norwegian Gem. Was that focus intentional on the promoters’ part? Not sure. But it did give the cruise an intriguing cohesiveness lacking in prior years.
During the red-laminate show, Parsons and his seven-piece band hit their usual sweet spot between adult-contemporary slickness and prog-pop fireworks — a combination that often winds up cheesy when anyone else chases it. There were a couple surprises for the Project heads, including a rare performance of the New Wave-y “Let’s Talk About Me.” Elsewhere, using layers of guitars, synthesizers, and woodwinds, they pumped up classics like “Psychobabble” and “Eye in the Sky.” Zero notes.
Parsons seemed to be everywhere: his songs blasting in the buffet, his T-shirts all over the ship, and so many other artists referencing the man on stage. Ambrosia — who contributed to the first Project album and recruited him to work on their first two LPs — shouted out Parsons from the pool stage, during a set that bounced jarringly (but thrillingly) from elastic prog to buttery yacht-rock. The Zombies frontman Colin Blunstone charmingly grinned his way through a set of atmospheric soft-rock, including a solo take on the Project piano ballad “Old and Wise.” (Given that APP also played the tune, it feels like a shame that they didn’t just join forces.) Then there’s singer-songwriter Al Stewart, who introduced basically all of his artful story-songs — many produced by Parsons — with very, very detailed accounts of their inspiration.
On the whole, the lineup was reliably all over the map, with ’70s brass-rock tribute bands (Leonid & Friends, who focused on the music of Chicago) rubbing elbows with ’80s-birthed arena-rockers (Starship) and ’60s-spawned symph-pop giants (Justin Hayward, formerly of The Moody Blues). But at its core, this year’s On the Blue come across like an expertly curated Parsons (side) Project.
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Gallery Credit: Ryan Reed
