There's a reason Beyonce Knowles has become the queen of the charts, and Saturday she affirmed she's no accidental star. Before a diverse audience of about 10,000, she skillfully worked the formula that's brought her so much success with Destiny's Child and now as a solo act, a potent combination of charisma, style and well-crafted songs -- and a powerhouse voice on top of it all.
Auburn Hills was the latest stop for the Ladies First Tour, a cross-country outing with openers Alicia Keys, Missy Elliott and Windsor's Tamia.
But it didn't take long for Beyonce -- grandly carried to the stage on a regal silken litter -- to show which Lady is actually First. In a fast-moving, 70-minute production marred only by a pair of weak ballads and stilted costume breaks, the 22-year-old star delivered the kind of poise blatantly missing from the rest of the bill.
The focus was material from last year's Grammy-dominating "Dangerously in Love," with only a handful of nods to the Destiny's Child days. Launching with the exotic funk of "Baby Boy," Beyonce kept the musical mood largely upbeat in a show backed with heated choreography from a nine-member troupe. When she wasn't engaged in seductive come-ons (the lithe "Naughty Girl"), she was dashing through anthems of self-empowerment (the assertive "Me, Myself and I"), with a gloss as sparkly as her gold-sequined, two-piece outfit.
This was pop music, 2004-style: a blend of brassy R&B and popping hip-hop beats. While occasionally veering into "American Idol"-style vocal bombast, Beyonce was more Patti Labelle than Kelly Clarkson, as much about attitude as acrobatics. Best were the numbers where she plied a kind of cool subversiveness (the fiery "Hip Hop Star" and deathly infectious "Crazy in Love"), revealing that if she keeps her head on straight, Beyonce has the potential to pioneer new and rewarding pop frontiers.
Not so satisfying were the acts who preceded her on stage. Keys offered extended sit-down time between dance-dominated sets, an anemic performance from the blase opener 'Karma' on. She lacks Beyonce's natural charisma, and Saturday her faux-classical gestures ultimately served to showcase her slippery pitch and lack of facility at the keyboard. It was a sleeper of a set redeemed only by a spry cover of Prince's "How Come You Don't Call Me."
Elliott was far more engaged onstage than she was last time we saw her in town, at July's Ford Field shows opening for Eminem. Lively hip-hop numbers like "Pass That Dutch" stood out in a night of R&B-rap hybrids, but too often were dominated by bellowing, mindless exhortations to find out "What's up, Detroit?"
BY
BRIAN MCCOLLUM,
FREE PRESS POP