It seemed like an amazing omen when, exactly one minute before the start of “We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert,” the sun blared through what had been a thoroughly overcast day. But the bright metaphor for what this five-hour extravaganza was designed to celebrate – New York City’s emergence from some of the earliest and deadliest COVID waves – ended the way of so many things in 2021: with a giant sigh.

About halfway through the Saturday night gathering at the Great Lawn in Central Park – just as Barry Manilow was segueing from “Mandy” into one of his other countless hits – rain, lightning and an evacuate-the-premises order from the city quashed the merriment. The 60,000 fans on site (vaccinations were mandatory to attend the free show) as well as those watching live broadcast, were denied performances by some of the marquee names tapped for the event: Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, The Killers and Patti Smith among them.

For almost three hours after fans fled the concert site in the downpour, anchor Anderson Cooper gamely kept TV viewers engaged with amusing stories, his trademark giggle and phone calls with Costello, Smith and Manilow, who intentionally added some irony with a few snippets of “I Made It Through the Rain.” But while concert curator and music titan Clive Davis, as well as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio – both of whom made appearances on stage earlier in the concert – hoped to restart the music even sans audience, the unrelenting rain led to an official cancellation just before 10:30 p.m. Organizers had no information in the hours afterward about a possible make-up date.

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