Total K-Os
Kelly Osbourne‘s gig at the Granada on March 14 certainly owed its sold-out status to her reality sitcom notoriety more than to her pedestrian Shut Up. Yet the concert contrasted with The Osbournes at every turn. It was distant and rote where the show is uncomfortably intimate and spontaneous, it was polite instead of profane, and it drew its entertainment value from a teen-ager’s raw potential rather than from a doddering legend’s diminished capacities.
From a T-shirt slogan at Kelly’s merch stand (“My dad is the prince of fucking darkness and all I get is this shitty T-shirt”) to the Ozzy-obligated presence of gruff-looking mosh-pit veterans, father Osbourne maintained a prominent presence. But when her backing quartet began its blandly competent set, all eyes — if not cameras, for once — were on Kelly.
The eighteen-year-old seemed to relish the attention, though she didn’t appear ready for prime time. With her bleached-blond hair and vintage-Barbie dress, she was a dead ringer for a young Courtney Love, but Kelly didn’t flash her doll parts or commandeer the show with befuddling banter. Instead, she showcased a promisingly jagged yowl (between flat attempts at melodic singing) and some limited strip-club-shimmy choreography. She directed most of her wiggling toward her band members, furthering the impression that audience members were sitting in on a practice instead of viewing an actual performance. The fact that her two best tunes, “Papa Don’t Preach” and “Sunglasses at Night,” were ’80s standards did little to alleviate the nagging feeling that this was just celebrity karaoke.
A few genuine moments salvaged the evening’s integrity. “More Than Life Itself,” just another ballad on disc, turned out to be a touching reflection on her mother Sharon’s cancer diagnosis. (The announcement that Sharon had beaten the disease received the night’s most boisterous applause.) And an untitled number about love gone wrong also became a crowd-pleaser, perhaps because fans were familiar with Kelly’s recent breakup with Used frontman Bert McCracken. It was a distinctly reality-show-style scenario: see a relationship disintegrate, watch one of the participants instantly write a song about it and perform the piece publicly. But instead of baring her soul to the cold lens, Kelly received immediate feedback from fans, and she seemed to thrive on it. It’s clear what Osbourne can get out of a life as a touring musician; perhaps in the future she’ll be able to offer the paying faithful more in return.
