Here's a "what if?" scenario for you -- what if
Bryan Adams had gone country?
He might be able to fill Rexall Place twice, like Keith Urban, whose country rockin' stylings has yielded few tunes anyone who wasn't a country fan would know --unlike
Bryan Adams, whose songs are far more of a draw than he is and in doing so has become one of the most unlikely country superstars ever made.
Born in New Zealand, moved to Australia, then to Nashville, Tenn., reformed drug addict, happily married to Nicole Kidman, new father to a baby girl, which increases the "aww" factor in Urban's popularity exponentially, this is quite a story.
Last night's two hour display of complimentary traits (handsome, talented, good singer, smart songwriter, decent guitarist) come together for a common cause (to make women melt) was as country as the average
Bryan Adams concert, which is to say it was only country accidentally, and just as filled to the brim with romantic homilies.
Urban and his capable band opened with the upbeat Hit the Ground Running basically a warning that he won't take "we're through!" for an answer segueing gracefully into the slightly less upbeat Days Go By (a reminder that life is short) and then into the downbeat ballad Stupid Boy, an admonishment of some former cad boyfriend she's better off without.
Women near the front of the stage waved New Zealand flags (maybe Australian, hard to tell from a distance) and proffered roses, not the first or last display of female Urban-generated hysteria. Yes indeed, most if not all of Urban's material is about or directed at women. Know your target market!
Later came Once in a Lifetime, with its telling line, "Don't fear it now, we're going all the way," before getting into all the stuff about having kids and growing old together. This remains one of the best pick-up lines ever penned. The man is a master.
Small countrified trappings like a largely inaudible mandolin player who looked like Nikki Sixx or the fact everyone was wearing blue jeans did little to detract from the essential '80s-rock, balls-to-the-walls,
Bryan Adams ness of the evening.
All that was missing was a man singing about his first real six-string he bought at the five and dime in the summer of '69. Keith Urban was two years old in 1969, although the trusty "six string" appears in one of his best-loved songs, Who Wouldn't Wanna Be Me, not being played until his fingers bled, but with his girlfriend, "across her pretty knee."
Much has been made of Urban's prowess on the six-string, but again he is less a real "picker" like Brad Paisley than a basic rock guitarist. At one point, he copped his best Eddie Van Halen solo and sang at the same time. You don't hear that every day.
Urban was also unafraid to take the spotlight to himself in several songs, holding 14,000 fans in rapt attention with only his voice and strumming guitar on heartrending love ballads, mainly.
The more obvious romantic stuff got the biggest response, of course, including a late evening rendition of You Look Good in My Shirt while draped in a Canadian flag. Real crowd pleaser, that one. Basic message of the song: Sure, we haven't worked out our problems yet, but the sex is awesome, so let's keep trying.
Taking the metaphor to music: Keith Urban still hasn't come up with a song I'm going to remember two minutes after it's over, but his showmanship is so amazing that maybe it doesn't matter. We'll see what happens when the long honeymoon is over.
Openers Lady Antebellum sure has a new fangled, high-falutin' sound for such an a quaint name basically "Lady Before the Civil War," which I guess means that they're more than 150 years old and owned slaves. Well, never mind.
These good looking young singers probably picked it because it sounded cool. Or maybe Antebellum in this case refers to before the Gulf War, which may explain why all their music sounds like bad '80s pop. This, of course, is one of the hallmarks of modern country music identifiable only as such by blue jeans and perhaps a slight twang in the voice. So there's not a lot of depth here, but plenty of flash with a pair of strong singers --one male, one female -- singing smoky romantic ballads into each other's eyes when they're not frolicking around the stage to lively tunes so radio friendly they practically hump your leg.
Faithful versions of both Boys of Summer and Hurts So Good seals the band's fate as yet another woefully unoriginal product of the Nashville hit machine. In short, they're the new Sugarland.
Urban's show repeats tomorrow night.
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SOUNDCHECK
MAIN EVENT
KEITH URBAN
IN THE SEATS
14,000 IN REXALL PLACE
NOTE PERFECT
THE
BRYAN ADAMS OF COUNTRY PULLS OUT ALL THE STOPS TO MAKE HIS FEMALE FANS MELT IN THEIR SEATS.
Rating Four Out of Five
