IT WAS a typically wet Irish welcome for Britney Spears’s latest visit to the O2 last night – the last, in 2009, for the Circus tour, was in the wake of her breakdown and subsequent comeback, but if it was a process, this show marked a full recovery.
But the torrential rain wasn’t enough to keep fans away, or was serious flooding around the docklands area and a signal failure at Heuston station that meant Luas services to the venue were experiencing difficulties.
Spears's 22-song set – including a performance of Gimme More,which she sang for the first and only time at 2007's MTV Music Awards, a performance for which she was widely ridiculed – comprised a veritable greatest hits, as well as a rendition of Madonna's Burning Up.And it was a set that did not fail to deliver on the entertainment front: the audience was treated to various costume changes, a slow number on a swing that appeared to be sung live, several leotards – can we blame Beyoncé? – and an elaborate "storyline" involving a handsome, accented man in a sepia-tinted room accusing Spears of being, well, a maneater.
It is clear that, above all else, there is a hefty production machine being the Britney Spears brand – there is no shortage of money and imagination behind the elaborate stage show, and with good reason. Some 12 years on from her debut album, Baby one More Time, Spears's fans are still plentiful – and, crucially, willing to spend money to see their idol mime the songs for which she is famous.
Laura Smith from Portmarnock was seeing Spears for the second time.
“I saw her in 2009 and she was deadly,” she said. Of Spears’s vocal abilities – the Louisiana native, while famed for her dancing and “performing”, has been slated for lip-syncing – Smith said Spears “didn’t sing live at all”. But “that’s not what you expect – I loved it, I cried I was so overwhelmed.”
Spears’s skills were not the issue for the hordes of girls – and a strong gay following – who gathered in Dublin 1 to see the world’s most famous 20-something strut her stuff; the true measure of her star power is in her ability to command a crowd that screams her name and sings along, even when they’re the only ones singing.