| Spears' pop persona may be wearing thin |
Teen pop is very two years ago as far as today's musical landscape is concerned. Stripped-down is what's in vogue now, and a pyro-laden extravaganza like Britney Spears' Monday night performance at the Palace of Auburn Hills seems all the more excessive in the wake of the recent garage rock boom.
Fans are aware of it, too. Most of the near-capacity crowd of 16,000 that made up Monday's audience greeted the mayhem on stage with glazed expressions and rolls of the eyes. They even booed as they were mercilessly marketed to by the likes of Pepsi and Nabisco before the show began.
It didn't help that the very same show was seen by millions in November on HBO, and by millions more since on DVD. Only a few new wrinkles from last time around emerged, and only those well-versed in the "Dream Within a Dream Tour" would be able to catch them.
An assemblage of video clips, narrated by an electric fairy, opened the show, but things didn't start poppin' until Britney herself emerged from below the stage, strapped to what looked like a device used in medieval torture, singing a metal-upgraded version of "Oops! I Did it Again."
Clad in what was the first of about a dozen outfits for the evening (a long black overcoat, black pants and a belly top), she shimmied and shook across the stage surrounded by waves of explosions.
Britney worked the stage -- two stages, really, connected by a large catwalk; it resembles an elaborate crop circle from above -- the whole evening, climbing poles on one end and dirty dancing on the other, stopping to grind along the waist-high rails in between.
She emerged from a rather large music box dressed as a ballerina for a quick montage of hit singles -- "Born to Make You Happy," "Lucky," and "Sometimes" -- and worked "Overprotected" in a poured-on gold bodysuit, unzipped a little past the point of suggestive.
Britney, often chastised for her bipolar personas -- sex bomb one minute, sweet and innocent the next -- played both roles equally Monday night. And while she's more-often-than-not compared to Madonna, both the "Britney" album and the "Dream" tour reveal her to be more akin to Janet Jackson, who's similarly played dual roles throughout her career.
Britney's "Boys" is pure "Control-era" Janet, while "Anticipating" -- which Britney performed on a Crayola-inspired backdrop, complete with cardboard cut-out cars -- recalls Jackson's "Escapade." Also like Jackson, Spears' almost-robotic declarations of adoration for her audience come off as wholly too-rehearsed.
Unlike the HBO show, Monday night's program came without a guest shot from Jon Voight. But happily, also missing from the proceedings was a video-rendered bald Britney, which likely didn't go over well with the target audience the first time around.
Spears did throw one new song into the mix, a ballad that preceded her "Crossroads" theme "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman." The song took the shape of an R&B confessional, but proved far too soulful for Britney's unseasoned vocals.
Spears managed to lip-synch her way through most of the evening, and during parts of "Boys," she didn't even attempt to fake singing. She may have been off-put by the miffed audio that rendered an earlier address to the audience inaudible.
Confetti was showered onto the audience at one point, and later, bubbles. But the ultimate shower occurred at night's end, when Britney stood underneath a waterfall -- literally -- in the show-closing "Baby -- One More Time."
Teen pop isn't dead, but it is starting to show signs of wear. Nipping at the heels of sirens like Britney are talents such as Michelle Branch, who was seated in the audience Monday, gleefully signing autographs for throngs of fans.
If Britney fades into the background as she begins to set her sights more on underperforming movie projects, maybe she'll make good on her tour's title. Maybe it was a dream within a dream all along.
Adam Graham
|
|
