 |
 |
OTTAWA - Damn you, Hilary Duff. My precious ears damn you.
Halfway into her Still Most Wanted gig at Scotiabank Place last night, the squeaky-clean Texas teen-queen was introducing her band when she suddenly turned and scolded the fans.
"C'mon, I know you can scream louder than that," she said, as if her mouth was full of sugar.
That's when all hell broke loose. The crowd of 11,200 -- seemingly all girls between 7 and 14 -- showed me how painful it is to have an eardrum ripped in half.
Good gosh golly, with a timer on the two sidescreens bookending the stage, counting down the seconds to Duff's arrival, you would have thought those nasty Fear Factor boys had dumped thousands of mice on the floor.
Girlish squeals aside, Duff's gig was about as much fun as I've ever had at a marketing event. Ever.
|
Excuse me, sure I had a good time, but I couldn't escape the feeling that Duff's concert was more about product placement and marketing her image than delivering a decent show.
Yes sirree, Duff knows as much about marketing ice cream, popcorn, the ubiquitous glow sticks and of course,
T-shirts, as Disney. My heart goes out to all the parents who have to look into a second mortgage every time Duff comes to town.
But if you look past all the machinery, Duff actually delivered a pretty entertaining show.
Opening with Wake Up and The Getaway, it didn't take the 18-year-old long to mesmerize the pretty-in-pink-clad fans with a slick 75-minute set of bouncy '80s-style bubblegum pop.
Beat of My Heart, Fly, Break My Heart and Rock This World are all cute dance numbers that Depeche Mode might have written 20 years ago if they weren't so morbidly depressed.
Duff left nothing to chance and no room for loose ends in this tightly choreographed performance. There might have been one guitar solo all night.
Accompanied by a hot band and five or six dancers and dazzling, neon-coloured laser lights, Duff's musical confection was thrilling fun, with a lot of bonding exercises, including shared secrets about the boys in the road crew, a couple of positive messages about accepting yourself, a plug for her charity and endearing cliches about how much she loves playing Ottawa.
About the only surprise of the night was her occasional bouts of lip-synching.
But even if she did pull a Milli Vanilli on this, the last night of her long tour, do you think her 10-year-old fans cares?
They're too busy having a good time screaming, singing and waving their glowstick to actually notice.