Live review: Rihanna (for The Music Network)

07 March 2011

by Poppy Reid

Acer Arena, Sydney, NSW
Friday March 4 

You have to give a pop icon credit when they shamelessly let their backing vocalists do most of the lung-work. The 22-year-old may have let her back up and the crowd sing for her at Acer Arena on Friday night but her obvious and candid refusal to do it herself as she held her mic high in air did set her apart from one Britney Spears. Oh, and the flashing article excerpt on the big screen, which read: “the retarded slut can’t sing.”

Opening with a disappearing act, Rihanna welcomed us to the Mad House of multiple costume changes, guns and chains galore and the sexiest booty dancing the gaggles of tweens have ever seen. In opening tracks like Only Girl (In The World) and Hard dancers flaunted fluoro pink guns while Rihanna rode the cannon of a pink tanker. ForDrive, she took to a graffed up car with a baseball bat and weaved through stilt monsters for Disturbia.

“You are the consumer, She…The Soul Option,” the marquee of text streamed across the big screens, this couldn’t be more true as I looked at 10-year-old protégé’s in awe of the diva who was now in a pleather one-piece rubbing her crotch; lovely.

During Rockstar, the singer showed her non-existent guitar skills as she haphazardly strummed on the electric instrument, we could have cared less though; the dancers, the projected imagery and the way she later brutalised her drum kit more than made up for it.

Slower tracks like Love The Way You Lie and Take A Bow gave Riri a chance to actually prove her flawless vocal capabilities. The only tracks where her entourage outshone her was in Te Amo with their impressive Capoeira fight-dancing and also Nuno Bettencourt’s guitar solo in Unfaithful. However, apparently not everyone was pulling their weight onstage, “forgive me, my piano players having a bad night. Give it up for the keyboard!” She didn’t even know her musicians name and blamed him for her being out of time in the intro to final track, Take A Bow.

Encore tracks Wait Your Turn, Live Your Life, Run This Town andUmbrella came too soon, the mash-up mix of crowd favourites had everything you’d expect from a Rihanna concert, climactic dancing, epic live sound and explosions from high and low of red confetti.

“Sydney I love you so much I think I'd like to come back here man!”