Reader, I let you down. But I did so for the right reason: for love. On a night when all of London’s music critics were at the Royal Festival Hall for Christine and the Queens, I deserted my duty. But, honestly, I don’t regret it. The reports back from the RFH suggested some baffling melange of performance art, am dram, experimental pop and gender identity, wrapped up in a concept piece about red cars. Not me. I’ll stick with Rod, a man so comfortable with his gender identity that he’s a byword for male libido.

My love for Rod Stewart is pure and noble. I love that he embraces his own absolute Rodness; that, at just shy of 77, he’s still all leopardskin print and skintight trousers, hair like a haystack in which some young couple have been writhing. I love his rueful roguishness, the fact that he knows all the bad things he has done, and doesn’t regret them. Most of all, I love his music. Not all of it – you could make several box sets out of records it would be better Rod Stewart had never made – but anything he recorded for Mercury in the early 1970s is pretty much guaranteed to be brilliant, and there were startling singles for a good while afterwards.

But, yes, he’s 77. His voice has not been what it once was for a fair few years – he struggled with high notes at the O2, often descending instead of ascending the octaves; there was no disguising the thinness a lot of the time, and the pitch sometimes betrayed his frailties. He doesn’t stride around the stage like a Cockney peacock any longer. The age gap between him and his young, blonde backing singers is getting ridiculous. And the notion of him singing ‘It’s late September and I really should be back in school’ is just silly. What kind of school? Evening pottery classes?

But when he needed to be good, he was very, very good. Ten songs in, he took on Etta James’s ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ – he recorded his own version in 1972 – and the years suddenly counted for him. The lyric is nothing much – the singer is sad because their lover is leaving – but the expression of every syllable was perfect, racked and despairing. As with Sinatra in his dotage, at this point you are paying as much for Rod’s understanding of a song as for his voice. At its ending, he turned away from the crowd and muttered into the mic, half to himself, half to the audience, ‘Still got it.’ He really does.

There were lots of little pleasures, often in unexpected places. I’d entirely forgotten the 1984 single ‘Infatuation’ – largely because it deserves to be forgotten – but laughed out loud at its vocal hook, which is essence of Rod: ‘Oh no! Not again!’ Of course, you old bounder. Of course it’s happening again! ‘Young Turks’, from 1981, was brilliant synth-driven, motorik, new-wave pop, the sound on which the War on Drugs have launched an entire career.

Of course, you don’t get stars like Rod Stewart any longer. Part of the reason is that it’s pretty much unthinkable that a young artist could build a career from the simple proposition that they are willing to sleep with anyone of the opposite sex, and then live that life without them becoming the latest sex-pest cause célèbre. Partly it’s because Rod made his name at a time when artists were allowed to pursue their own paths – those Mercury records blissfully blend soul and folk and R&B and rock’n’roll. Partly it’s because the great theme of Rod’s career – not giving a monkey’s what anyone else thinks – is no longer considered viable. Singers these days have to be brands more than people.

Sam Ryder, who ascended to instant national-treasure status in the spring by finishing second in Eurovision with his song ‘Space Man’, embodies the narrowing of what is allowable in a pop star. He has one character setting: puppyish enthusiasm. No matter what you said to him, he would at least pretend to be delighted.

‘Hi Sam, I’ve just slaughtered your entire family with a chainsaw.’

‘Amazing!’

‘Hi Sam, I’ve prepared this delicious meal of dog turds and decomposing budgie for your tea.’

‘Brilliant!’

Ryder has a terrific voice, and he didn’t struggle reaching the high notes at Outernet, a subterranean box that is central London’s newest midsize venue. While he looks like a rocker with his long hair and beard – and apparently is one by inclination; his expert rocktacular gurning when he took a guitar solo was that of someone who has spent time in the metal world – his music is bland pop that sounds focus-grouped to scare as few people as possible. One suspects that both he and I would have had a lot more fun if someone allowed him to be like Rod, and damn the consequences.

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