Title: 13-Year Old Shouts It
Source: St. Petersburg Times
Author: Mike Wilson
Date: February 10, 2001
Topic: Winter 2001 Concert Review
TAMPA -- "I wanna hear you screeeeeeam!" teen idol Aaron Carter shouted at the hall full of teens and preteens.
So they did, ear-splittingly. You can't really say Carter rocked the house Friday night at the Florida State Fair, because what the pinup-come-to-life offered wasn't exactly rock. But you could say he rapped it. And he certainly popped it. This may be as cute as 13-year-old boys get.
Carter, a Tampa native and younger brother of Backstreet Boy Nick, gave a bouncy, energetic performance and delivered just what the kids wanted -- Aaron's Party (Come Get It), Bounce, That's How I Beat Shaq, and his signature confection, I Want Candy. The candy Aaron wants isn't sold in convenience stores, but the kids will figure that out later.
At 50 minutes, the show was brief. At $5 a ticket plus $5 to get into the fair, it wasn't a bad deal. Carter did 11 songs in all, 10 if you don't count the instrumental the band played while he was offstage fixing his hair, or calling his agent, or whatever.
"How's Tampa doing tonight?" the so-called Little Prince of Rock asked at the outset. This apparently harmless boy is your children's first hint that you will very soon be useless. "I'm going to show you how to party!"
Here's how a 13-year-old parties: by doing an engaging, funky version of Iko Iko with four dancers (two male, two female, all lithe as cats) writhing and twisting behind him. By moving seamlessly into a tune called Shake It, which is the title and most of the lyrics. By launching into I Want Candy, which is remarkably similar to a song his parents probably know, Hand Jive. And by ricocheting around the stage in his white slacks and long-sleeved black top like a hard rubber ball on concrete.
Between songs, a member of Carter's five-piece band kept the crowd pumped up by yelling "Aaron C."
Carter has a sweet, high voice, still unspoiled by adolescence, but he didn't do anything you could really call singing. He shouted almost all of the songs, whose lyrics are concerned mostly with girls, girls, shaking it, parties, and girls. Carter is a decent dancer -- he pulled off a daring, one-handed cartwheel -- and a commanding presence on stage. He referred to a band member twice his age as "my man" and didn't get slapped.
The loudest moment of the evening came when Carter shed his black pullover for a bright yellow basketball jersey, his costume for That's How I Beat Shaq.
He bid the crowd farewell, then returned to do Aaron's Party (Come Get It), in which he tricks his parents into leaving the house, throws a party that gets out of control and ends up grounded.
Let that be a lesson to you, kids. Kids?
