EDMONTON - The crowd of mostly teenage girls were left with mixed messages after Christina Aguilera's sold-out show at Rexall Place last night.
Being able to tell that Aguilera represented the good was easy enough. Dressed from head to toe in a smart white suit and fedora, she brought a sense of elegance to an Edmonton that we usually only see on awards shows like the Grammys.
After a brief intro video, the curtain lifted and Aguilera rolled in - literally - on a giant white staircase, quickly joined by eight backup dancers. She then launched into Ain't No Other Man with authority.
Aguilera has made no secret of her Motown and Philly soul influences on her latest double album, Back to Basics. Of course, most modern R&B backs pay that sort of lip service to the originators. And while you can certainly hear those influences on the album, they most come to bear when you actually see and hear Aguilera performing them live.
She demonstrated that she not only has an ear for soul, she looked like she could really feel it too, especially on numbers like Back in the Day. She looked wounded and, as such, it sounded convincing.
On big screens behind the stage, images were projected of Aguilera's heroes: Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Otis Redding and others. Darn near educational, really. A way of informing teens in the crowd that, yes, they really honest to gum did record music way back during the 1960s. Even further back than that. No, really!
And Aguilera's voice certainly seems descended from the likes of Aretha Franklin and Etta James.
Her big ol' band paid respectable homages of its own, delivering hit-me-two-times kind of funk by way of two percussionists, two sax players, trombone, trumpet and more. All very smartly dressed in white to boot.
Descending below stage while her horn section took over, Aguilera re-emerged with a costume change. Complementing her bleach blond locks, she came on with a dress that looked like one Marilyn Monroe wore in The Seven Year Itch, except instead of the dress being blown up, the front was blown off.
"I want you to use your imagination," she said, "to escape whatever's going on in your day, your week."
Alas, Christina, a looming deadline meant escape was impossible for me. I left just as she began singing Understand - I can only hope that she actually did.
At least I left on a high note.
For as good as Aguilera was, the Pussycat Dolls as openers were almost as bad. You knew they were bad - bad girls - because they were correspondingly dressed in black. Well, scantily clad in black, anyway.
There are six Pussycat Dolls, two of whom can genuinely sing and only one that is actually worth remembering: lead singer Nicole Scherzinger. She carried the performance. The other gals were mostly window dressing, albeit incredibly fetching and synchronized window dressing.
While the Dolls have won a Grammy, it's mostly on the shoulders of Scherzinger, who can indeed sing. By the end of their set, the other gals gave up even trying to hold up their microphones to seal the illusion that their backing vocals were live - if they were even theirs.
Not that the din of girlish screamery at Rexall indicated anything but love for PCD. It sounded almost like the brouhaha the Spice Girls were once entreated to a decade ago.
The Dolls are a fun group, though their messages for young girls are sort of skewed. For every song about empowerment (I Don't Need a Man) there were two about using sexuality as a weapon or the objectification of women (Don't Cha and Beep).
Commercials for their new show, The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll, also sort of come off as ads for a stripper school. I'm only going to watch until Flavor of Love 3 hits the air - now that's entertainment.
