Big stage exposes Justin Bieber's limitations

The first big disappointment of the night was when he put on the Yankees baseball cap after the second song. There it sat on top of Justin Bieber's head through the rest of his sold-out concert at the Oracle Arena in Oakland on Saturday like a giant black fly on a flat-panel HDTV.
It might not mean much to anyone who is over 12 years old, but this was a serious infraction between the young star and his even younger fans. Not only is Bieber's mop-top the most discussed and desired in all of pop music at the moment, but that stupid hat meant the phalanx of squealing girls that filled the arena were going to get cheated out of witnessing the thing they actually cracked open their piggy banks to see - that famous Bieber hair flip. (Seriously, look it up.)
Maybe Bieber was just feeling a little insecure. Just three years after the precocious teen from small-town Canada started uploading clips of himself to YouTube playing drums and singing sweet cover versions of songs by R&B artists like Usher and Ne-Yo, he has sold millions of albums, become the top Twitter trending topic and the most-viewed artist on the video-sharing site where it all started.
In Oakland, it quickly became apparent that no one was prepared for him to get so popular so fast. Between the studied swagger and canned dialogue ("When you smile, I smile," he said at one point to the audible groan of one from my general direction), it was clear that the 16-year-old was still finding his way as a live performer.
His laptop charm didn't always translate into real life. With just the one proper full-length album out, "My World," he struggled to fill the standard 90-minute headlining set. The evening was buffered with lots of home movies, extended showcases for his assorted touring partners (including a medley of other people's top-10 hits by his Bay Area-based backing singers, Legaci), and even a public service announcement on the dangers of texting and driving.
The stage set looked like it had been thrown together the week before the tour launched - just a couple of modest video screens, some bare scaffolding and a large blanket of Christmas lights. At one point the singer climbed into a heart-shaped cage that was lifted over the floor to sing a pair of acoustic tunes, "Never Let You Go" and "Favorite Girl." The contraption looked like it was constructed out of Home Depot bathroom pipes and a golf cart seat.
All the extraneous filler made the concert feel like it lasted an eternity. Bieber's voice, meanwhile, was almost as hard to spot as his shag. Having warmed up the crowd before arriving onstage with a run through Michael Jackson's greatest hits, his own adolescent pipes (on the few songs he actually used them) sounded coarse and constrained - unlike the smooth croon evident on his album. A medley of Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' " and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" amusingly laid his limitations bare.
Bieber's own material - an even mix of overwrought "Backstreet Boys for Dummies" ballads and feather-light dance tracks - wasn't served well by the production. There were plenty of stunts but little substance: Bieber climbing the side of a building for "Somebody to Love," serenading a fan plucked from the audience for "One Less Lonely Girl," looking like a Keebler elf as he traded verses with opening act Sean Kingston on the club track, "Eenie Meenie." If he's hoping to follow Justin Timberlake's career path through puberty, he's going to have to show at least a flicker of imagination.
The concert-closing "Baby" brought a dash of headlong joy to a night where the most entertaining thing had been watching the contorting faces in the bleachers. But by then it was too late - the arena was dotted with tweens who had curled up in their seats and fallen asleep.