I laughed till I cried.

 

 Rarely has that over-used expression seemed as perfectly appropriate as Wednesday night, when more than 1,600 fans at Centennial Hall witnessed an extraordinary show by Jann Arden.

 

 During a concert that was, in turns, melancholic and hilarious, Arden showed why she's currently one of Canada's top musical stars.

 

 Musically, it was a deeply affecting display of loss, sorrow and missed opportunity.

 

 But between the music -- well, that was another banana.

 

 There was the swollen wiener in the thermos story. (A long and entertaining anecdote about the lunches her mother packed during Arden's school days in Springbank, Alta.)

 

 There was a startling admission: "I've eaten 17,000 Wagon Wheels in my life."

 

 There was the story of her mother's reaction to hearing an Arden tune (I Would Die for You) used in an episode of TV's Baywatch. ("David Hasselhoff was underwater for your whole thing . . . Your father and I taped it.")

 

 There was a behind-the-scenes revelation about preperformance jitters and how they cause the "phantom pee." ("You're standing there behind the curtain and then you think, oh no, and then you run and you undo everything and there's nothing.")

 

 There was, after being presented with a bouquet of flowers by a fan, Arden's beauty pageant acceptance speech. ("As Miss London I vow to eat as much meat as I can.")

 

 There was a comic excursion that threatened to derail the entire evening when, after a volley of questions from the audience, Arden asked for the house lights to be turned up and promised to answer everyone's question "one at a time."

 

 And then that bit of repartee escalated into a Lenny Bruce-like riff about happiness and melancholy.

 

 "When I think of happy, I think of some wacky drunk girl at a party in a tube top, and that really scares me," said Arden. "I wear tube tops, but generally I have to wear them around my waist because that's where my (breasts) are now."

 

 DISCO KITSCH

 

 And then there was a medley of cultural kitsch that included a full-blown disco version of I Will Survive, Snowbird, Send in the Clowns, Feelings and the classic Troggs' hit, Wild Thing.

 

 And then she segued back to the melancholy with Holy Moses, one of the tunes from her new album Happy?

 

 That startling contrast between punchlines and pain stands at the centre of Arden's music and, indeed, her enormous popularity.

 

 Intensely private yet outrageously extroverted, sensitive yet crass, spiritual yet irreverent, confident yet insecure -- Arden's dichotomies abound. This is a musical poet who winces and rolls her eyes at the brightness of the spotlight in her face, then turns over the stones inside her heart and reveals the dark things crawling inside.

 

 But the final result is searing, soaring sadness delivered with heartbreaking honesty and in a breathtakingly beautiful voice. And all of it sends you into the night buoyant and refreshed.

 

 "My mother would be ashamed of me right now," Arden said after another rudely hilarious remarks.

 

 I can't speak for Mrs. Arden. But I think it's fair to say the rest of us there Wednesday night were intensely proud.