P!nk has a dilemma. Her best and most famous song – ‘Get The Party Started’, natch – has a sentiment and a vibe that makes it an ideal concert opener. On the other hand, it is never ideal to open a concert with your best and most famous song.
She chooses to leave it until later in the evening; understandable, perhaps, but this show is decidedly uneven regardless. P!nk is under the mistaken impression she is a jack of all trades, and crams a number of musical styles and costume changes into the show. She would be better off sticking to one tack; the sassy R’n’B and pop-dance numbers are top class, but the more guitar-heavy tracks are leaden and dislikeable, and the musicianship on these songs is dull session fodder.
This sort of thing calls to mind Kylie around the time she started collaborating with the Manic Street Preachers; playing to her strengths became a second priority, as her focus switched – foolishly – to showy eclecticism and frustratingly random genre-hops.
Kylie has learned her lesson, and so must P!nk, as there were several excellent moments this evening. ‘Stupid Girls’ is devilishly good, the Mohawk-ed one flanked by three stereotypically, uh, stupid girls; one a dead ringer for Gwen Stefani, another with comically large breasts – inflatable balloons, it turns out, as P!nk diffidently pops them mid-track.
‘God Is A DJ’ is also pretty good – P!nk in beat-y pop-dance mode, an incarnation we should have seen more of tonight. ‘Fingers’ is the most striking moment of the evening, P!nk stripping to her underwear, while two female dancers share a quasi-lesbian kiss. The track’s thumping, pop-techno rumble provides a suitably edgy backing track, too.
There are a number of minus points: the aforementioned ‘Get The Party Started’ does not rip the roof off The Point in the way it should, and there is really no need for a cover of The Four Non-Blondes' tortuous ‘What’s Going On?’ – that old expression about one’s inability to polish a turd springs to mind.
It may seem like a curious observation, given that she has already established herself as a bona fide Pop Star, but on tonight’s evidence P!nk remains very much a work in progress.