Britney Spears Concert Reviews

Friday, November 2, 2001
FEATURES - ACCENT & ARTS 11H

By Aaron Beck
Dispatch Pop Music Critic

Illustration: Photo

And on the first day of November, Britney Spears rose from the stage in Nationwide Arena. The clothes on her back tacked to a steel table that rose horizontally and then vertically, she greeted us with a snap of her neck to the rafters, before dancers in shredded cowboy gear unhitched the pop-singing lass.

Oops! . . . I Did it Again filled the air, which was mixed with the screams of those in a nearly sold-out arena. The heat from columns of fire shot 15 feet high from the grated steel stage.

During the first performance of her new tour, Spears would go on to rise from a jack-in-the-box and be helped to the runway by tuxedoed suitors. She would go on to bungee jump from a steel platform suspended by cables.

She smiled at us. She giggled. She told us, "I'm so happy to be here tonight.'' She asked us to "give the heroes around the world a round of applause for all of their hard work.''

She spent as much time off the stage as she did on. Costume changes, don't you know?

The band -- a guitarist, a bassist, two backup singers, a drummer and three synthesizer/keyboard players -- able players all, laid down bombastic dance music laced with the occasional metal riff or deep- grooved R&B (mostly on the new tunes) and contributed more keyboard and synthesizer sounds than two or three Yes concerts combined.

From white material made to resemble a cocoon, a cadre of dancers emerged and moved like beings sucking their first air, loping all around.

The kids went nuts. The fathers holding kids held their babes with one arm and peered through binoculars to appreciate, of course, the thought and time that went into what little clothes covered the gyrating, thrusting and strutting bodies moving all over the elaborate, nearly football-field-length stage.

With the exception of Janet Jackson's stolen goods, Boys, most everyone in the audience stood still when Spears and company sang the new tunes. Pounding the message into the kids' heads takes time and research.

The image of Spears is in flux. Her marketers began promoting the former Mouseketeer as a pouty- faced, midriff-baring teen in 1998. In 2001, with the release of her third album, Britney, coming on Tuesday, the people behind the curtains -- choreographers, the folk who coach her before interviews, stylists, dieticians, et al. -- the puppet masters, are hoping the kids will "grow'' with Spears.

Many of the songs on the new disc deal with the evolution of Spears from innocent young thing to naughty seductress. (Jive Records recently sent advance copies to reviewers.) She yearns to be her own woman. Throughout the disc she asks us in so many words why we won't let her be her.

From the sights last night, most everyone was all ears. Children in mothers' arms, bopping along to lyrics such as "I just want you to touch me'' and "I was born to make you happy'' said, if anything, "Britney, honey, we all are open-eared and open-armed. We shall follow you down your Pepsi-sponsored path to ladyhood.''

Caption: James D. DeCamp / Dispatch
Britney Spears kicks off her tour at an almost sold-out Nationwide Arena. She was accompanied by backup singers, a band and dancers.

Those who caught her bumping and grinding with a 7-foot albino python at the MTV Video Music Awards were no doubt saddened by the lack of a suitable snake for Britney Spears to charm in her concert last night at the Mellon Arena.




		Britney Spears opened her show at Mellon Arena last night strapped into place on a swinging metal platform. More photos.

She's moving on, refusing to repeat her greatest spectacles of "Not A Girl, Not Yet a Woman" sexuality -- the snake, the pole, the Catholic schoolgirl uniform -- without abandoning the qualities that made her America's sweetheart.

The show began with Britney hanging face-down from a swinging metal platform, strapped in place and purring -- or seeming to purr -- "I'm not that innocent" while dressed in black but looking nothing like a female Johnny Cash.

It ended with her hanging from the ceiling in a harness, back arched, water dripping from the rhinestone cowgirl clothes she'd worn while strutting through an onstage downpour.

Nearly every song entailed an elaborate stage production with dancing and costumes and fire and flying and video footage. "I Love Rock 'n Roll," a Joan Jett tune that came off sounding like a hip-hop remix of an old Black Sabbath single with a female in for Ozzy, ended in the singer bungee-jumping off a flying platform.

Her costumes included a ballerina in a music box, a low-cut space-girl outfit for "Overprotected," a long fur coat for "Lucky," lime green go-go boots, a flowing scarf and not much else for "I'm A Slave 4 U," her latest hit, which Britney introduced by asking "Have you ever heard a song that kind of took over your body and you just lost control of yourself?"

If the crowd's reception to the new material was muted, there's a reason. "Britney" hasn't hit the streets yet. When it does, the kids will know to sing along to such obvious highlights as "Anticipating," "Boys" and "Overprotected."

In the meantime, they were right there in her corner for such hits as "Sometimes," "... Baby One More Time," "Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know," "Stronger" and "Oops! I Did it Again."

When I walked in to write about the concert, someone asked if she was really singing. If you have to ask, you wouldn't like it. Britney rules a universe where art and artifice are flip sides of the same hit single.

Air Canada Centre, Toronto
Monday, November 5, 2001

Britney's New Spin

Teen-pop queen Spears targets an older demographic in an extravaganza that displays a healthy amount of sincerity alongside the razzle-dazzle.

Britney--she's not just for kids anymore.

The eye- and ear-popping new tour starring "the reigning queen of teen pop," as Spears has been introduced of late, is unequivocally a show that a lot of discriminating pop fans over 20 might latch on to--if they can get past any biases toward someone as unrelentingly perky as this 19-year-old pop phenom and sex kitten.

The big question is whether, in consciously reaching out to an older demographic, Spears will sacrifice the fans who gave her the keys to the kingdom in the first place? Some parents have been reluctant to take their preteens to see what's been touted as a darker, more mature production, although plenty were still on hand Tuesday when the former Mouseketeer played to a near-capacity house at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, a night before her tour reached Staples Center in L.A.

But despite some mildly exotic numbers featuring mysterious characters that might have been plucked from a Cirque du Soleil troupe, it's only sporadically more sexually charged than her previous tours. Think of it as the difference between PG and PG-13.

It is, however, more thoughtfully conceived in its overarching attempt to explore the process of growing up, through the eyes of one adolescent who has the whole world watching her.

The 80-minute extravaganza, featuring an all-stops-out set that covered three-quarters of the arena's floor, opened with "Oops! ... I Did It Again." It wasn't simply a way to launch the evening with a hit, but a conscious effort to set the tone via the lyric in which Spears boasts, "I'm not that innocent."

She fleshed out that theme--literally and figuratively--with many of the songs drawn from her just-released third album, "Britney." The sentiments aren't always artfully expressed or exceptionally deep, but Spears put them across as honest expressions from a young woman going through a transition that's both confusing and liberating.

The performance is framed as "a dream within a dream." That conceit is a rather slight excuse to help justify the parade of costume and set changes, the constant being the most flattering displays imaginable of the world's most famous navel.

Most shows by teen-pop performers develop into nothing more than random acts of hyperkinetic choreography, but Spears' work ethic and genuine charisma infuse much of her lightweight material with a sincerity her peers can't touch.

The only time that sincerity is undermined is when Spears professes not to understand the sexual fantasies exploited in her songs, videos and concert production numbers. If Bob Dole is in on the gag, certainly Spears must know more than she's letting on. Since she's constantly asking not to be treated like a little girl, maybe it's time she stops acting like one.

Her show is generally more impressive than the new album. The one exception was the loss of some canny album production work on songs such as "I'm a Slave 4 U" amid the decibel-happy, bottom-heavy sound mix.

In any case, it's a demonstrable step forward for Spears, even if we're not talking Springsteenian integrity or a Peter Gabriel-level rock-as-theater experience. The more fitting yardstick would be a big-bucks Broadway musical built on razzle-dazzle lighting and choreography, hummable pop tunes and a genuinely endearing main character at the center.

Opening acts such as O-Town, on the other hand, make pop music's original made-for-TV band, the Monkees, look better with every passing year.

Britney shares fantasy, not music, in lavish spectacle

By DAVE TIANEN
of the Journal Sentinel staff

Last Updated: Nov. 27, 2001

The master of ceremonies at Tuesday night's Britney Spears concert at the Bradley Center was a percussionist named Slam. It fell to Slam to introduce the newly hatched boy band that opened for Britney - O-Town. In so doing, Slam didn't bother himself with matters of musicianship, songwriting or vocal talent.

Suffice it to say that Britney's tour prides itself on its bootylicious assets and other visual charms. Even more than most teen pop extravaganzas, this one is built around the projection of adolescent fantasy through a non-stop array of high-tech and high-energy spectacles. It is, measured by its own values, an arresting event. But it's not an event where music seems to be the prime objective. This circus is about spectacle.

Virtually every song was a full-blown production number with dancers and lavish effects. There were fireworks, geysers of flame, rolling clouds of fog, lasers, multiple video screens, at least a half-dozen costume changes, airborne acrobatics, showers of confetti, an enormous stage that ramped to the very middle of the hall and a troupe of eight dancers.

For "Born to Make You Happy" Britney rose from a giant music box in the costume of a fairy tale princess. For "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" Britney and her girl dancers rode a suspended mini-stage that sailed out over the middle of the hall 20 feet in the air. At the climactic moment, Spears leaped from the platform to cavort in midair with two male dancers suspended on bungee cords. That presumably was the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Diva portion of the evening.

For her encore of ". . . Baby One More Time," Britney once again went airborne, this time singing in the rain beneath a man-made cloudburst while showers of confetti fluttered down on the fans. All that production made for an entertaining and fast-paced show if you weren't fussy about musical issues. Clearly the tour isn't. It is perhaps significant that they introduced the back-up dancers but not the band.

With any Britney event, people want to know what she did to vex or placate parents. Britney's most precarious balancing act is not on a bungee cord. Her slacks certainly did a reasonable approximation of spray paint on several occasions, the famous tummy was almost always on display and there was probably more cleavage than we've seen from Britney before. The one time she clearly pushed it to an extreme was during "Slave 4 U" when she essentially stripped down to bra and bikini bottom.

There's been a lot of talk about the new more adult (read eroticized) Britney. The odd thing about that whole controversy is that judging by Tuesday's near-sellout crowd, her core audience is still very young girls in the middle school and junior high group. In fact, there was a significant showing of 5- and 6-year-old ladies who presumably jilted Barney for Britney. The majority of adults there were obviously escorting fans too young to attend on their own.

Those very young ladies obviously look up to Britney Spears as a fantasy role model and big sister. Which raises a question: If your audience is made up of very young teen and preteen girls, what pressure is there to project a more sexual, adult persona? You wouldn't think there were many 12-year-old girls leaving the Bradley Center Tuesday complaining, "Gee, I wish Britney had given us more cleavage."

Some dancing, jiggling and a little singing—it's Britney's show

By Greg Kot

Britney—is a last name even necessary?—shimmied into the Allstate Arena on Wednesday, a one-woman navel maneuver who displays her assets, conceals her flaws behind a wall of technology and makes her audience scream for more.

Air Canada Centre, Toronto Monday, November 5, 2001

Britney shares fantasy, not music, in lavish spectacle

By DAVE TIANEN of the Journal Sentinel staff

Last Updated: Nov. 27, 2001

Air Canada Centre, Toronto
Monday, November 5, 2001

By DAVE TIANEN
of the Journal Sentinel staff