The pop singer grows up but proves she's not yet a woman
(Rolling Stones review of Britney's tour)
The more Britney Spears tries to grow up, the more she seems to be stuck in a childishly exaggerated impression of adulthood, playing lounge singer, porn star, doctor, anything her script demands. But despite all her obvious physical effort, there was not one moment during her Onyx Hotel Tour when the singer seemed emotionally invested in what she was doing. Spears came across more like a lap dancer who was preoccupied with balancing her checkbook or was contemplating her next elective surgery - anything but the task at hand.
The Onyx Hotel premise, a tribute of sorts to the thirties move Grand Hotel (complete with dancers dressed as bellhops performing with luggage racks) was the framework for Spears to hang her familiar costume, scenery and choreography. The dance with the hat and chairs for Oops, I Did It Again, was eerily reminiscent of Madonna's "Keep It Together" routine, and the bed romping for "Breathe On Me" evoked her pals "Justifty My Love" clip. But it was secondhand tittillation, with little sense of homage or parody.
Musically, things peaked quite early with Britney's current and fantastic single "Toxic", which opened the set. Older hits were either tossed off "Overprotected", mercifully omitted, "Sometimes," or, in the case of "...Baby One More Time," redone as a terrible lounge number. As for the singing...when a thicket of bangs periodically wrapped around Spears' headset and pulled it away from her mouth, no loss in vocal volume occured. Draw your own conclusions.
Opening act, Kelis, most definitely sang live. She missed more notes than she hit. But her funk band rocked startingly hard, and she got the crowd hyped with just her songs and her rambunctious presence.
Nothing Britney did could elicit the same response as "Milkshake", whch had thousands of young women and their gay male friends chanting the lyrics and shaking what mama gave them. Moments like this reaffirmed that the scream your guys out TRL pop esthetic that's been around since the Spice Girls and the boybands still has its virtues. The headliner, sadly, did not.