| <<< Back | | 2003-10-29 ... REVIEW: OVERWROUGHT, OVER-MADE-UP AND OVER HERE | Christina Aguilera understands the rules of the pop game "evolve or die". Over the course of her relatively short career, she has undergone numerous facelifts, starting out as direct competition to teen queen Britney Spears, mutating into a caterwauling Latina trash diva with the dress sense of a saloon tart, cranking up the bad taste factor with the raunchy Dirty before, most recently, scoring her most mature hit with instant classic Beautiful.
Now Aguilera is overwrought, over-made-up and over here for her debut Scottish show before she hosts next week’s MTV Europe Awards ceremony in Leith.
Few of her fans emulated the full Christina garb of leather chaps and underpants. There was no point competing with the main attraction, who was dressed up like a lurid, terracotta-skinned dominatrix.
The stage set was a forest of technological flashiness on multiple video screens and chrome climbing frames. On the less feisty numbers, Aguilera fell back on her huge but unlovable voice and the showbiz "thank you most sincerely" chat, because that’s what divas do, isn’t it? They milk every note dry, make exaggerated gestures, recline on grand pianos.
Aguilera finally tripped up on a gruesome wannabe cover of Etta James’s At Last . She could have been accentuating her youth (under all that make-up she is 22), but instead she was determined to act the dame. Her debut, Genie in a Bottle, was reinvented as a steamy fetish routine, but at least What a Girl Wants prompted some more innocent cheerleader spirit.
These big routines were impressively staged but inevitably, the highlight was Aguilera in simple white T-shirt and jeans, leading the crowd through Beautiful. Finally, she tapped into something truly meaningful for her young fans.
(from: news.scotsman.com) |
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