Photo by Hannah Khorshidi
Matt Reinstein
Managing Editor of Arts
I know this article is coming a little late, but that’s only because I needed to process this last concert I went to. I experienced a lot of emotional turmoil afterwards, and my body was changed forever.
I say emotional turmoil because it was hard for me to grasp the fact that I wasn’t going to see Ariana Grande perform again for a little while. It was just that good.
I’ve recovered maybe 75 percent of the way emotionally, 50 percent physically, but I think enough time has passed for me to write a recap of the concert.
A concert recap includes the openers, but no one is reading this for Social House or Normani, so let’s go quickly over these two.
Social House sucked. But not in a bad way. In a funny way. They were just bad. They tried to get the crowd to clap along to their songs, but they were performing at TD Garden. TD Garden has a capacity of 20,000 people. I think maybe 1,000 people in the country know who Social House is. You picture those goofballs trying to get people to sing along. Yeah, I thought it was cringy too.
I can’t knock these boys too much, though. They opened for Ariana Grande. For most artists, that’s making it. So there is a level of respect towards them. But my gosh, were they underwhelming.
Normani was okay. She was a better performer than an actual singer, though she did have a really pretty medley of Rihanna songs. The Rihanna medley was probably the highlight of the performance, since much of the rest was Fifth Harmony songs.
I always find it a little awkward when a solo artist sings songs from her former group, though. Now I like Fifth Harmony as much as the average bear, but seeing one member perform those songs that were written for a group seem 1.) just not right and 2.) a little sad in the sense that the said artist is still reeling in the popularity of their past (yikes).
As I said, though, Normani is a natural performer and busted out the moves. A little too much. The arena mainly had an eight year old demographic. Speaking of which, the backup dancers for Normani- way too suggestive for that audience.
In conclusion of the openers, who cares? They didn’t put a dent in the show, nor were they supposed to. The point of stadium tour openers is just to put filler noise in the audience’s ear so they don’t fall asleep before the main act comes up. If Social House or Normani put a performance that stole the entire show, they would have been doing something wrong as openers.
Ok. Onto Ariana.
This was my first time seeing an artist with as large a name as Ariana Grande. I have seen my fair share of concerts, but all of which were either at underground house shows or $20 ticket venues. All of the artists I’ve seen seemed to have a personal connection with the audience. Perhaps it was because there was more of an appreciation for the lower number fans that they had, or maybe it was because performing wasn’t their day-jobs.
But the one thing that Ariana Grande really was not strong at was her emotional tie to her audience. Everything she said seemed programmed to the generic superstar code. She seemed awkward and robotic in relation to the crowd, which I hadn’t experienced during a concert before.
Again, I do attribute this to the magnitude of her stardom, but it is a shame that it came at the expense of Ariana’s depth of persona. She seemed very one dimensional as a person. And that’s something I’ve felt about Ariana for quite some time now: that she lucks out from the fact that her music is smarter than her. She couldn’t hide behind that aspect of her celebrity in her concert.
Now, I start off with a negative because everything else? Spectacular.
She performed songs from Sweetener and thank u, next respectively (of course, she ended with “thank u, next”). Personally, I like thank u, next just a little bit more than Sweetener so I was pleased that she performed songs from both. Originally, it was just supposed to be songs from Sweetener.
I mean, you know how it goes. All the hits from that LP: “blazed,” “God is a woman,” “breathin,” and “no tears left to cry” were all superb (I’m currently on Thesaurus.com looking up synonyms for “amazing” because I don’t want to use that word too much).
The lights were great, the choreography was raw, sexy, yet held together. Ariana was often carried around stage by men while the women bounced around in unison taking the audience momentarily away from Ariana.
During the thank u, next songs, the color scheme shifted from blue to pink. The whole production reeked of money that definitely could have gone to a better cause than putting on an Ariana Grande show, but I don’t care. It was a hell of a show. A huge disco ball was lowered into the arena and it glittered with pink and purple lights. Nonsense, but awesome nonsense.
The thank u, next songs were crazy. Everyone in the audience was singing along, everyone was dancing. The person next to me was crying. He knew every single song by heart. There was just so much energy. The energy was even crazier when 2-Chainz made a surprise appearance during “7-rings.”
As (someone who likes to consider themselves) a vocalist, there were moments I was in my seat shuddering at some of the sounds Ariana made with her mouth. There were moments that ranged from me being inspired to work harder on my vocal range, to me being just envious of her voice, knowing no matter how hard I work, the fluidity of her runs will be something that I will never be able to accomplish. They were something else.
As a performer in relation to her audience though, like I said, nothing special. But I digress.
In the end, the money I paid for an Ariana Grande ticket (actually, I didn’t pay for it at all. It was my Hanukkah present) was worth just listening to Ariana’s pure work of vocalism, as it was the core of the show’s quality.
