Kelly Rowland @ Next Blue
The signs were all there. The Next Blue MC pleaded for the crowd to “make some noise, Kelly Rowland is in the building!” and the masses managed a half-hearted ruckus. Finally, after voice-overs announcing her status as “in the building” three times, the petite R&B star skipped out from behind a curtain held aside by a minder who looked like he could snap old-growth tree trunks in half. She looked amazing, like a life-size Barbie doll: flawless skin, incredible red and black hair with not a strand out of place, subtle but obviously expensive jewellery. But she performed with the enthusiasm of a shop window mannequin: when she whooped “whaddya say we break it down now” during Can’t Nobody, she tossed off some perfunctory urban dance moves as though sleepwalking, and every song was true to the record with a precisely measured sprinkling of vocal gymnastics to ‘keep it real’. She opened with ‘her bit’ from Dilemma, her
duet with Nelly, and then led into Stole, an album track, and finally
Can’t Nobody. And then, as suddenly as it began, it was all over.
“Thank y’all and God bless” in her bell-like Texas drawl,
then nothing. Hundreds of dedicated R&B fans looked around the room
like confused meerkats. Maybe I’m an idealist, but there was something
in making these fans pay for what, essentially, they could have just squeezed
into a shopping center to see for free that was incredibly mean. I know
it was a showcase performance, but for an evening that was billed as a
‘personal thank-you to the fans’ it was more like a quick-buck
cash-in at their expense. I imagine it’s what the crowd at Festival
Hall experienced in ‘60 when Chan Romero played Hippy Hippy Shake
five times and left.
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