Britney Spears
June 18, 2011
@ HP Pavilion
Better than: Not crossing a two-man religious picket line on a Saturday night to (apparently) celebrate fornication, homosexuality, and general hell-raising.
"God hates Britney Spears!" yelled a man in a "Repent or Perish" shirt. He was addressing a line of fans headed to see the pop star perform inside San Jose's HP Pavilion.
"Well," the man conceded after being yelled at by a clutch of Spears fans, "he probably likes her legs."
Britney Spears' Femme Fatale Tour kicked off two nights earlier in Sacramento. Based on the Good Morning America performance we covered in March at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, we didn't arrive in the South Bay with high expectations for her dancing. In S.F., her movements during her three-song show looked stiff at best and pained at worst, a contrast to the backflips and hip shakes of years past. But here, nearly three months later and with a much longer 90-minute performance to execute, Spears displayed noticeably more pep in her step and elicited bigger cheers from any arena show we've attended so far this year. She thrilled a predominantly female and gay male crowd with sparkly costumes, an impossibly flat tummy, pyrotechnics, flying, and shirtless, acrobatic man-candy. Before Spears took to the stage, Nicki Minaj, a theater kid turned rap star from Queens, employed a storyline about a fairy godmother (a nod to the treatment for her "Moment 4 Life" video) and a wicked witch for her performance, lending her show a childlike air despite a couple of adult-leaning black-and-white corseted costumes. During the course of her set, Minaj and/or her gay male alter ego Roman Zolanski (yes, really) were put under a spell, "died," were attended to by a funeral procession of dancers high-stepping to something that sounded plucked off an Enya album, came back to life to slay the wicked witch in a hail of bullets, and had her triumphant "Moment 4 Life." In between, she managed to squeeze in songs from her debut album Pink Friday such as "Roman's Revenge" (her answer to Lil Kim's barbs), "Your Love," "Superbass," and "Check It Out," the latter accompanied by a giant projection of song collaborator Will.I.Am. She also offered snippets of her memorable verses on songs like Ludacris' "My Chick Bad," Young Money's "Bedrock," Trey Songz' "Bottoms Up," and Kanye West's "Monster." Minaj sounds fiesty and fierce on record, and is impressively animated with her face and body, but she sounded swallowed up by her glittery pink microphone and her "Superbass." It was, however, a marked improvement over even more diminutive live performances we've seen on television -- Minaj has noticeably improved her choreography and energy level. A 45-minute intermission gave fans a chance to rest their vocal cords and queue for snacks. We wondered why the break was so lengthy until we caught our first glimpse of an intricate, multilevel set and its myriad projection screens, which were later used to add amazing visual depth. Spears also employed a storyline -- hers unfurled through filmic interludes rather than Minaj's voiceover narration -- but we found it a little bit hard to follow because of the volume of the fans cheering. As far as we could tell, it had something to do with a creepy broadcaster dude who liked to chomp on Blow Pops and stalk Spears. The scenes showed spears in the most Femme Fatale-esque guises from her videos for songs like "Toxic," "Womanizer," and the recent "Hold It Against Me." And the story had something to do with Spears running from cops and getting ready to kick someone's ass. At the end of this vignette, the creepy stalker dude eventually met his match when Spears found him in his broadcasting lair. We're still pretty confused about the Blow Pops. You can ask for no more of your pop idols than for them to soar above you in a hail of sparks, smoke, and/or confetti, so Spears did this multiple times, donning wings to "fly" into the air for "Piece of Me," one of several playful pokes at her paparazzi attention. She swung and briefly actually sang to the ballad "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know," and also went airborne to close out the show on current hit "Till the World Ends." The latter is a slice of pop perfection Spears hasn't achieved since "Toxic" (which was also performed here with her in a cute kimono with an anime version of herself printed on the sleeve). Britney has toned up substantially in the past few months, with a stomach any other mother of two would swear would be impossible. Her costumes largely fell in the skimpy leotard family, with a number of two-piece situations that few but Spears could pull off. Her female dancers seemed mostly modestly clad compared to the male ones, who spent a lot of time being topless and harnessed as they performed flips and astonishing aerial tricks. Spears concentrated heavily on her current album, Femme Fatale, but she didn't deny her fans her first hit " ... Baby One More Time," here rendered into a motorcycle mama's theme song, and followed it up with her faux-raunchy verse for the No. 1-on-the-charts remix for Rihanna's "S&M." And a giant (we mean giant) electric guitar thing was wheeled out for her to mount for a catchy version of Madonna's "Burning Up." We were impressed with Spears' stamina through an obviously demanding show with choreography that involved a lot of climbing up the various levels in the set and covering the long catwalk on the stage, though part of it had a Jamiroquai-style conveyer belt. If she was winded, she kept it from the audience until the moments when she was lowered offstage. As far as vocal expectations for Spears, we had none: We came for sequins as opposed to singing, and that particular objective was more than met. But anyone who suspects -- as we did in our last report on her live performance -- that she lip-synchs during her shows will be happy to know that on Saturday, she did seem to have a couple of fleeting moments of actual singing underneath her tracks. That's not this entertainer's forte, though, and we don't care: It's Britney, bitch. Check out more photos from the show in our slideshow from Saturday night. Critic's Notebook Personal bias: We have a deep appreciation for sequins and sparkle owing to a childhood spent as a competitive figure skater. Her dizzying changes into outfits including a Swarovski crystal-encrusted white leotard, a shiny pink latex and lace coat, a gold-mirrored Egyptian bikini, and a pair of chrome-studded Daisy Dukes were great fun to watch. Random detail: A few of the official shirts for sale were cute, but our favorite was a homemade one we spotted on a blond chick that said, "It's Whitney, bitch!" Go ahead, Whitney. By the way: Spears' gorgeous costumes were designed by Zaldy Goco, who also created outfits for Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour and what would have been Michael Jackson's final performances.----
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