Top Of Her Game

Tuesday April 27, 2010

By HISHAM ZULKIFLI

Kelly Clarkson was a pro and put on a KL show that thousands of delirious fans will remember for a long, long time.

AT FIRST, I was nervous about going to a Kelly Clarkson concert. I mean, I’m pushing 40 but was about to be surrounded by a mass of screaming teeny-boppers. And why not? American Idol has plenty of fans and Kelly Clarkson is the first and biggest American Idol there is; in fact she is the first Idol to hold a real concert here.

Previous appearances by Chris Daughtry, David Archuleta and Kris Allen don’t count because they held showcases, not full-blown concerts.

But when I arrived at the National Stadium in Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur, on Sunday night, one-and-a-half hours before Clarkson’s All I Ever Wanted 2010 KL gig (presented by Hotlink and Galaxy) was supposed to start, I saw that I needn’t have worried. There were people of all ages casually making their way to the various stadium entrances, including bored-looking parents accompanying their young children.

With 23 million albums sold worldwide, you have to agree Clarkson has a diverse and wide following!

Sweating it out: Despite the humidity, Kelly Clarkson managed to put on a credible show for her fans.

Once inside, however, anybody can see that the young, youthful and energetic were in control. The air was electric, and even the forgettable performance by One In A Million winner Suki, who opened the show after Malaysian Idol winner Jaclyn Victor (who was better, but it was still all karaoke to me), couldn’t dampen the mood.

At times, these kids seemed to scream for no reason, so excited were they to be there. I first thought they were screaming for every white tech guy that happened to come out on stage, which was a silly assumption, of course. Whatever they were screaming at, I couldn’t see it from my vantage point.

When the Fort Worth, Texas-born Clarkson and her band came on stage, the energy in the air and the screaming went up a couple of notches, if that was possible.

There were a lot of good things about this concert experience, chief of which was the energy coming from the performers and the audience, each seeming to feed off the other.

From the opening song, All I Ever Wanted, this gig was like a fast rock train, determined to run its course without even a hint of hesitation. The second song, Miss Independent, was made cool by the inclusion of the signature guitar riff from Black Sabbath’s Iron Man. Clarkson had said in an interview that they liked to amp up their performances, and she wasn’t kidding: distorted guitar tones were the order of the night.

Thankfully, this train slowed down at appropriate points in the show. Like when Clarkson and the band combined covers of Alanis Morissette’s That I Would Be Good and Kings Of Leon’s Use Somebody. Or better, the medley of five songs halfway through the concert.

Normally I don’t care much for medleys, but it was somehow a welcome breather from the general high energy tone that preceded it. The songs in the medley included the hits Low and Behind These Hazel Eyes.

Indeed, some of the best music of the night happened when I could hear Clarkson’s voice without having to strain to make it out through the loud guitars, like the aforementioned medley and the excellently performed I Want You.

The Grammy award-winning Clarkson, who turned 28 last Saturday, was also quite chatty with her fans, sometimes talking about a few of the songs she sang. Other times she remarked about how hot the weather was, at one point saying, “I feel like I’m in some kind of Gospel revival and the Lord is sweating it out of me.” Or something like that. And, “I’m having fun sweating to death.”

Her fans at Bukit Jalil lifted her further by singing “Happy Birthday!” to the singer and that brought on the smiles. To her credit, Clarkson has hardly slowed down since topping the US charts last March with her fourth album, All I Ever Wanted, which has seen her finish up a US tour, an Australian tour while her Asian tour, running now, ends in Macau early next month. She’s back on the road in the United States in July, with a Lilith Fair festival date as a highlight.

At her KL concert, she was a bundle of energy and enthusiasm. But where there are roses, there must be thorns, and here I must deal with a thorny aspect of reviews of any kind: how to be honest without being clobbered by extremely obsessed fans. Let me start off by saying that I like Clarkson and her music; after all, I volunteered to go to this concert and write this review.

But this has to be done: for one thing, the prominence of the rock-guitar sound in Clarkson’s live sets, although they helped to “amp up” the performances, threatened to overwhelm her voice. In fact, the whole band, at times, seemed too loud for her. The sound worked well in many instances, like in Never Again (which was written hard anyway), Walk Away, the big hit Since U Been Gone and the concert closer My Life Would Suck Without You (which I thought was the best performed song of the night).

But many times, it was difficult to hear that wonderful voice of hers through the band. True, it’s a rock concert, or rather pop-rock, and you gotta have them guitars makin’ that headbangin’ sound. But too much of it can result in a kind of sameness that quickly leads to boredom. Thankfully, there was enough variety to keep me sated and awake.

Surprisingly entertaining was I Want You, which was different in character from most of the other songs in the set, being the rare – as she said – positive song. It was a feelgood ditty, and I wish she had more of those.

I also felt that this live show was only a little better than her performances in the albums, but since the album recordings were already excellent, this is really just a minor gripe.

But my real gripe had very little to do with the fab Clarkson and comrades: the Bukit Jalil National Stadium is definitely not the best place to hold a concert, especially one featuring an artiste of Clarkson’s standing. The seats were tiny, as were the rows between the seats, making for a cramped entertainment experience. Also from my position, at the front of the block of seats to left of the stage, it was hard to make out perhaps a third of the stage. Sure, there were big screens put up, but when I go to a concert I want to see the act performing, even if I can’t make out their faces. If I wanted to watch the screen, I would’ve stayed home and watched Clarkson on YouTube.

Keeping my head or body turned to the stage to watch the performers on stage for the length of a song was not easy, let me tell you. Many times I had to take a breather and look at that silly screen. The only thing good about that screen, to me, was that it occasionally showed parents looking awfully bored while being surrounded by excited children. And I could’ve sworn I spotted an elderly person in the audience. Clarkson seems to have fans of all ages.

Despite all of that, I’m glad I got to see her perform here. Even when the Malaysian weather seemed to be affecting her performance a little, she was a pro and put on a show that thousands of excitedly screaming and delirious fans will remember for a long, long time.

Hope you come back, Miss Clarkson.

Posted Date : 28 April 2010

Posted Time : 2.21am