This Duff is no Beer

October 7, 2005 by David Blackman

My 10-year-old sister asked me to take her to see Hilary Duff in concert, since I'm so much cooler than our father. Why this mattered to her I will never understand. The concert audience was easily 90 percent female. The primary attendees were 10-to-14-year-old adolescent girls chaperoned by their mothers, aunts and grandmothers.

The concert had two openers. Both seemed like they were there on the good graces of Hil's band. The first sounded like Phil Collins covering John Mayer. The audience didn't notice that this band wasn't Hilary. They didn't even recognize it as distinct from the subdued background music in between sets (most bizarre part of the night: Radiohead's "The Bends" playing barely audibly before and after each set).

The kids in the audience all had glow sticks and attempted to wave them during the openers, seemingly at random, looking like 20,000 spastic children going into insulin shock. I couldn't catch the bands' names because as soon as the lights dimmed and they said "We are ..." the audience went completely fucking bonkers, nearly deafening me. As soon as they realized there was no estrogen on stage, the audience lost interest and resumed talking. The low roar of female voices was hard to distinguish from the bands' inexpert use of guitar feedback.

At this point I noticed how many platinum blond mothers were nursing large cups of Budweiser, and began worrying about how I was going to get out of the parking lot in my father's Camry with hyper-tense steering. The fat girl next to me had such a severe case of rhythm-deficient-disorder that her mother made her stop clapping. The audience went silent when the bands were replaced by Hilary Duff commercials for Kohl's and Ice Breakers gum.

The audience reminded me of Data trying to learn humor by performing stand-up comedy on the holodeck, but failed when he programmed the audience to laugh at all of his jokes. The arena erupted in another ear-splitting roar when it was announced that there were 25 minutes to Hilary. They chanted "Hill-ar-ee Hill-ar-ee" at least seven times during this interval. The girl next to me wet herself when a spotlight illuminated a stage hand.

With three minutes to go, the screens switched from a pre-recorded unfunny "backstage live" with Hil to a countdown with 1/100 second intervals. At 1:00:00 the estrogen and screaming was too much for me, and I closed my eyes and escaped to my happy place.

Hilary's show was forgettable as well. She could mostly sing, and her songs were catchy enough -- which will happen when you lift your riffs from Aerosmith and the Ying Yang Twins -- but she had no stage presence. The girls in the audience would be happy to chant `Death to the Infidels' if she asked them to. But she does not.

Her backing band was three tattooed emo guys who wanted nothing more than to break into a power solo in the middle a song. This made for an odd tension between musicianship and nothingness during her show.

In the later part of her set, she announced they were going to play "I Am," a song they had only been performing for a week, so they might screw it up -- which I think is awesome, because usually when a performer says this, they end up getting about six bars in, screaming FUCK and starting over into an even more aggressive groove. Hilary did not show this level of musicianship. This was the worst song of the night because the visuals were so low budget.

All of her other songs were accompanied by painfully literal video footage or abstract lava visualizations projected by a five-story light matrix behind her, which would've made a pointillist weep with joy. "I Am" is instead accompanied by video on small screens off-stage, with the lyrics highlighted sing-a-long style over a cloudscape. The chorus encouraged "I am special/I am beautiful/I am wonderful/And powerful/Unstoppable..." The footage made me feel like I was at a cult initiation. It was very repetitive and oddly soothing.

At this point, Hil stopped with all of the sensitive songs and got down to business: songs about rocking and being awesome. I looked over at my sister, who seemed disinterested by the whole affair, and decided that I was going to make up for her lack of enthusiasm by doubling mine. I threw my devil horns in the air and sang and felt, I really feel, like Hil and I connected. We both confirmed that "Girl. Can. Rock."

At this point, Hil stopped with all of the sensitive songs and got down to business: songs about rocking and being awesome. I looked over at my sister, who seemed disinterested by the whole affair, and decided that I was going to make up for her lack of enthusiasm by doubling mine. I threw my devil horns in the air and sang and felt, I really feel, like Hil and I connected. We both confirmed that "Girl. Can. Rock."