Nelly Furtado Album: “Loose: The Concert [DVD]”

First off I love Nelly Furtado, she is an extremely talented musician and very beautiful. But this DVD was so disappointing. Let's start with how every song is completely different than the studio recordings now in some cases this is a good thing but here it's not. Nelly's performance is so-so but the thing that really ruined it was the band and her dancers. Also you can tell that the song's were doubled-over, meaning that the studio song is playing in the background and they are singing in harmony with them which is lame. So over all: Don't buy this DVD just watch a couple of clips on youtube and see for yourself.

As a big Nelly Furtado fan, I really looked forward to this concert DVD. But I'd save my money -- Nelly can do better than this. Her albums, be it the more folksy "Whoa! Nelly" and "Folkore" or the more mainstream "Loose" -- are musical powerhouses, full of dynamism, passion, and verve. There's simply no one quite like Nelly, who has been influenced by artists around the world. She can sing Indian-tinged dance songs just as easily as she can belt out a soulful guitar piece reminiscent of Lilith Fair. It is therefore puzzling that her concert DVD falls so flat. Her "Come As You Are" and "Folklore" tours were thrilling, with Nelly running and jumping around the stage, connecting with her audience intimately, and setting the roof on fire. Her previous concerts had the air of someone who, on a caffeine high, just happened to stumble into a concert hall to join and lead the raucous crowd. On this DVD, she is stiff, calculated, and seemingly aware that this is her biggest tour yet -- so it better be commercially successful. Instead of her old school sneakers of yesteryear, she dons precarious high heels that prevent her from moving much. She waves her arms as she's glued to the mike stand. When she does move, it's with half of the energy she's usually known for, curious since this seems to be her biggest audience yet. Though it is understandable that she cannot reach into the crowd as she did with her smaller, more intimate concerts, this does not mean she can't forge a connection, which seems more vital for a show of this size, where there are fans who pay for nosebleed seats to see you perform for them. Her costumes are awkward and ill-fitting, more for the purpose of capitalizing on her new sexy image than for ease of maneuvering. It was difficult to watch the DVD to the end; it was, quite simply, boring, a descriptor I never thought I'd apply to Nelly Furtado. Though it is wonderful that she is experimenting, evolving, and embracing a new and mature image, it is at the expense of showmanship. It seemed that she thought she was performing for an audience made up of cardboard cut-outs. She flashed her beautiful smile, waved to the crowd, and thanked everyone for supporting her, but even these motions seemed rehearsed and choreographed. The live variations of her songs, previously so exciting in that she often brilliantly improvised them, are now awkward and vapid reworkings, akin to the throwaway remixes by obscure DJs you had to endure back in the day when people still bought physical CD singles. "Loose," a great pop album, falls flat in its translation to concert form. Previous album songs are mostly similarly mangled and made irrelevant, with the exception of the gorgeous "Try." I hope Nelly can find a way to recapture the magic of her old performances while continuing to grow as an artist. It seems that she threw out the baby with the bathwater.