Jennifer Lopez live
Jennifer Lopez, AllPhones Arena, December 15 2012
It says a lot about the state of Jennifer Lopez’s musical career that the before-show DJ set at her AllPhones Arena last night was punctuated by regular ad breaks. For Lopez, 43, music is but one arm of a cottage industry that is J Lo Inc.
So busy is she with other aspects of Brand Lopez, the Dance Again World Tour actually marks the sometime-singer’s first-ever world tour – 13 years into her music career.
Lopez has enjoyed something of a musical resurgence in recent times thanks to last year’s world-conquering, Lambada-sampling single On The Floor, and much of her show focuses on similarly Eurodance-flavoured material.
It makes for a frenetic, relentlessly upbeat greatest hits set, with the energy only dropping during her frequent costume changes. Lopez has never been a remarkable vocalist, but she uses what she has with aplomb, cannily mixing in heavy backing tracks to mask the limitations of her own, weaker, live vocals as she focused on shaking that famous derriere.
Throughout, the ephemeral nature of Lopez’s hits is what really stands out, as the songs shift from her early urban-pop sound to her current incarnation as a club diva. Earlier hits like Ain’t It Funny, Jenny from the Block and a surprisingly effective acoustic rendition of If You Had My Love Peppered the set.
By show’s end, though, Lopez was back to dance mode. Finishing with the knockout one-two punch of On The Floor and its more recent soundalike Dance Again, she in threw everything at the kitchen sink: feverish booty dancing, glitter cannons, even fireworks.
info: Jennifer Lopez plays the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Tuesday December 18. Tickets through Ticketek: www.ticketek.com.au
