What was Ariana Grande thinking?
Disappointing Dangerous Woman Tour hits SAP Center
Ariana Grande is not afraid of the dark.
That much seems clear after watching her perplexing, confounding and ultimately disappointing concert Monday at the SAP Center in San Jose.
What was she thinking? One can only guess, because it’s hard to imagine why any pop music superstar would choose to embark on something like Grande’s current Dangerous Woman Tour.
The production is full of holes, basically from start to finish. Yet, by far the most troubling is that Grande basically hides from the audience all night.
Oh, sure, she’s out there on the stage — technically speaking, that is. But the production is so poorly lit that it’s often hard to see her.
Combine the poor lighting with Ariana’s amazing lack of stage presence — something that has plagued her for years — and you’ve got the recipe for a real mess.
And that describes the Dangerous Woman Tour in a nutshell.
What a shame. With all that Grande has going for her, she should be slaying it on a nightly basis. But this show was pretty much a yawner, as one of the biggest stars on the planet failed to generate any real star power in front of the approximately 12,000 fans in attendance.
The show just seemed so commonplace, coming across like it was whipped together in about an hour’s time by people who have watched too many Madonna and Britney tour videos — and not the good Madonna and Britney tour videos.
Maybe that’s why they decided to stage it in the near-dark, hoping that we wouldn’t notice how trite it was.
The show opened with a swirl of confusing activity, as Grande and 10 dancers took the stage to groove through “Be Alright,” one of the many mediocrities to be found on Grande’s third studio album, last year’s “Dangerous Woman.”
Grande seemed anything but dangerous as she milled meekly about, quickly lost in the crowd of dancers, the overactive fog machines and lack of appropriate lighting. Things wouldn’t improve much as the star continued through three more tracks from the new album — “Everyday,” “Bad Decisions” and “Let Me Love You” — before she left the stage for a costume change.
She performed all 11 songs off (the standard version of) “Dangerous Woman,” which made for anything but an ideal set list.
There’s a lot of filler on that album, so it would’ve been nice to get a little more from the star’s first two solo efforts — 2013’s “Yours Truly” and 2014’s “My Everything.”
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was that none of the live renditions managed to reach the heights (however meager they may be in many cases) of the studio versions.
Her vocal work was restrained, even tentative, as she coasted through subpar take after take.
She also did so little to connect with the crowd, barely speaking — and certainly revealing zero personality — between songs. You really don’t get any sense of who Ariana Grande is by going to see her in concert.
That’s too bad. Because it seems like she does have a lot to offer.
Right now, however, she’s just offering pure mediocrity to her fans in concert.