It was a day before my birthday, on 16th of July when I attented to Britney's "Circus" Tour date in Helsinki. It's been ten years of being a huge fan, literally having all of her singles, albums (even Radar Promo from 2007) and waiting for the opportunity like this. In my wildest dreams, I never pictured Britney arriving to Finland and performing on a gig but neither did most people think Britney would ever tour again. After seeing the gig, I could say this is like a warm-up for another chapter of her career and another tour in few years.

It was long day behind me when the show started. I pretty much roughly used something like 150 € on her merchandise as well as my ticket for In the Zone-area, the best standing seats costing another 150 € but it was well worth it. My feet were killing me and I could barely stand after being on queue for the merch and walking across the town before the gig but standing seats are standing seats and I was expecting alot from the night. The show was started by DJ Havana Brown that slowly started to get people dancing and warming up for them before Miss Spears was due on stage, but apart from her gorgeous looks I could've skipped her part. Then after a pause the Big Apple Circus started the show with amaizing talent acts that from my opinion were awsome, but again I could've moved on to the main thing. Quickly when the show went on, I realized that these clowns and dancers were pretty much the show, or at least huge part of the show - Too big part of the show.

Another thing I noticed, the stage itself was brilliant idea but the reality of it was horrible. Britney tried to fill too big boots with the stage being in the center and her trying to fill up the stage as a solo act with the dancers. It was done previously by acts such as Backstreet Boys, but there is five singers instead of one, so it probably worked better. As a result, she pretty much drowned in to the dancers and half of the time the eyes were searching for Britney, even though she should be shining like a star and never turning invisible in the middle of the dance crew but she was sinked in, especially with her brunette hair do that was more of a hair Don't. And the dancers were also making it so hard to take pictures, as well as the star herself. She had to walk around the stage every second to be seen from every corner and every seat and it has to be hard trying to focus on the routines while you're "running" the show through. So the big minus from the stage that didn't turn out to be as amaizing and about Britney almost hiding behind her dancers.

"Circus" started the show finally and it was well re-recorded, you really thought it was live because it sounded so real. She danced around with a whip and it was pretty much a circus in the stage at that time, very good number. "Piece of Me", my favourite part was soon followed and I must say that I NEED to get the official tour version of the song, the remix is off the hook! It's so dancey and gives just the right twist to the song! Apart from the dark hair not fitting to the performance AT ALL, She pulled it off and worked her butt in that cage. "Radar", the third song was also one of my favourite numbers, it was dynamic and well reharsed and definately a type of a performance this song deserved. The song was also very well achieved by the audience and the first beats started a huge cheer from the crowd, this has to be another hit for her.

Medley of "Ooh Ooh Baby" and "Hot as Ice" was okay, especially the one mentioned first had gorgeous glittering princess outfit and Brit looked awsome, but unfortunately the number itself was bit of a filler with only half of the song being relevant with another half being just "played" on the background of a magic number. "Hot as Ice" performance was like "If U Seek Amy" part two so it almost went by unnoticed. In the boot camp sequence, "Boys" was fantastic! Another good number with lots of action and definately one of the best performance, even though the lipsyncing at that moment was bit sloppy. "If U Seek Amy" was a huge success by the crowd's action from the first seconds, it started a huge screaming and it was definately one of the best performances from the show and I still can't believe how badly it did comercially compared to "Womanizer", even though you never get used to the song -it's SO GOOD.

"Me Against the Music" turned into bollywood remix worked pretty well too, with lots of fun routines filling the stage. Before "Everytime" was the first time when Britney took a contact to the audience and asked us how did we enjoy it and introduced the ballad to be performed next. In the front row where I was, friend of mine and half of the audience were crying literally. It was beautiful performance and she could've added at least another ballad to the show, because it was very good. In the local newspapers, it was claimed that her real voice singing on the playback was mainly heard in the corridors and she wasn't much critized even though the biggest media's boycotted the gig due the strict photographing contracts. Luckily fans got to take pictures though, without any censorship.

The next sequence "Freakshow/Peepshow" was very good, possibly my favourite one. It started with the low bass beats of "Freakshow" and Britney dancing across the stage with dark outfits. It was very "Blackout" how she looked during that number. Another great number, "Get Naked" involved lots of dancing and moving around the stage and definately worked very well, better than how I imagined. Her freshly added new song, "Mannequin" was quickly started and it wasn't as boring as it looked from the videos from Paris and it was nice to know it was all Britney's idea. The outfit was changed from the yellow t-shirt to a small tank top with flowers and glitter. "Touch of My Hand" was luckily cut from the show, already in Stockholm but it could've been nice to see her hanging from the sealing with a dancer during the song but luckily "Breathe On Me", one of my favourites of all time wasn't removed and she performed it as well hanging in the air, in the middle of the huge frame.

"Do Somethin'" and "I'm a Slave 4 U" quickly followed the band intro and Britney showed up on stage performing a cool energic numbers. I would've loved to see the gold metal corset instead of the black top she wore now (Knew it was removed though), but what can you do if you're "Pussy is hanging out". It was fun to see the old routines being used on the dancebreak of "Slave". At least something old-school Spears was there. After the too-long-dancer-interlude it was time for her two huge hits "Toxic" and "Baby, One More Time". Once again, the crowd went crazy for the intro of "Toxic". The two performances weren't unfortunately nothing really uplifting or new but I wouldn't cut those out from the setlist.

It was soon the end of the show and after "Break the Ice" intro, "Womanizer" was performed. She looked smoking hot in the cop outfit and danced around the stage with a sparkle rain finnishing the show. She also was well prepared as she thanked the fans and said good night to them in Finnish along with saying "Hei Suomi, Miten Menee?" (Hello Finland, How are you Doing?) and recieving a huge cheer from the crowd. Well unexpected from Britney, but very fortunate.

Overall the show started out as a dissapointment and I felt like a bad fan, adoring her for ten years and feeling dissapointed at the show, but there WAS both negative and positive things in the show and until this day I couldn't decide if it was dissapointing show or pure fire. Because it was both. She had the smile on her face through the night and was so beautiful in person and I still can't get my head around seeing her from 10 feet away! But her stage presence was rather shy and not-fully-there than fierce, but with all that behind her and with the amount of pressure put on her I'd probably be like that too. Although I could claim that I love performing so much, that I could over-perform for the whole night better than she did (Lipsyncing). Her energy was so good at some sequences and some of them lacked energy. Some performances were also pretty dull and irrelevant, and seemed like they needed to work of few of them.

But even if the review sounds negative, it's not all that. It was all worth of that money and it was Britney Spears! She really had a great show around her, but she just weren't as big part of it as I would've expected her to be. It was more like "The Circus Tour featuring Britney Spears".


Discuss.

It was a day before my birthday, on 16th of July when I attented to Britney's "Circus" Tour date in Helsinki. It's been ten years of being a huge fan, literally having all of her singles, albums (even Radar Promo from 2007) and waiting for the opportunity like this. In my wildest dreams, I never pictured Britney arriving to Finland and performing on a gig but neither did most people think Britney would ever tour again. After seeing the gig, I could say this is like a warm-up for another chapter of her career and another tour in few years.

It was long day behind me when the show started. I pretty much roughly used something like 150 € on her merchandise as well as my ticket for In the Zone-area, the best standing seats costing another 150 € but it was well worth it. My feet were killing me and I could barely stand after being on queue for the merch and walking across the town before the gig but standing seats are standing seats and I was expecting alot from the night. The show was started by DJ Havana Brown that slowly started to get people dancing and warming up for them before Miss Spears was due on stage, but apart from her gorgeous looks I could've skipped her part. Then after a pause the Big Apple Circus started the show with amaizing talent acts that from my opinion were awsome, but again I could've moved on to the main thing. Quickly when the show went on, I realized that these clowns and dancers were pretty much the show, or at least huge part of the show - Too big part of the show.

Another thing I noticed, the stage itself was brilliant idea but the reality of it was horrible. Britney tried to fill too big boots with the stage being in the center and her trying to fill up the stage as a solo act with the dancers. It was done previously by acts such as Backstreet Boys, but there is five singers instead of one, so it probably worked better. As a result, she pretty much drowned in to the dancers and half of the time the eyes were searching for Britney, even though she should be shining like a star and never turning invisible in the middle of the dance crew but she was sinked in, especially with her brunette hair do that was more of a hair Don't. And the dancers were also making it so hard to take pictures, as well as the star herself. She had to walk around the stage every second to be seen from every corner and every seat and it has to be hard trying to focus on the routines while you're "running" the show through. So the big minus from the stage that didn't turn out to be as amaizing and about Britney almost hiding behind her dancers.

"Circus" started the show finally and it was well re-recorded, you really thought it was live because it sounded so real. She danced around with a whip and it was pretty much a circus in the stage at that time, very good number. "Piece of Me", my favourite part was soon followed and I must say that I NEED to get the official tour version of the song, the remix is off the hook! It's so dancey and gives just the right twist to the song! Apart from the dark hair not fitting to the performance AT ALL, She pulled it off and worked her butt in that cage. "Radar", the third song was also one of my favourite numbers, it was dynamic and well reharsed and definately a type of a performance this song deserved. The song was also very well achieved by the audience and the first beats started a huge cheer from the crowd, this has to be another hit for her.

Medley of "Ooh Ooh Baby" and "Hot as Ice" was okay, especially the one mentioned first had gorgeous glittering princess outfit and Brit looked awsome, but unfortunately the number itself was bit of a filler with only half of the song being relevant with another half being just "played" on the background of a magic number. "Hot as Ice" performance was like "If U Seek Amy" part two so it almost went by unnoticed. In the boot camp sequence, "Boys" was fantastic! Another good number with lots of action and definately one of the best performance, even though the lipsyncing at that moment was bit sloppy. "If U Seek Amy" was a huge success by the crowd's action from the first seconds, it started a huge screaming and it was definately one of the best performances from the show and I still can't believe how badly it did comercially compared to "Womanizer", even though you never get used to the song -it's SO GOOD.

"Me Against the Music" turned into bollywood remix worked pretty well too, with lots of fun routines filling the stage. Before "Everytime" was the first time when Britney took a contact to the audience and asked us how did we enjoy it and introduced the ballad to be performed next. In the front row where I was, friend of mine and half of the audience were crying literally. It was beautiful performance and she could've added at least another ballad to the show, because it was very good. In the local newspapers, it was claimed that her real voice singing on the playback was mainly heard in the corridors and she wasn't much critized even though the biggest media's boycotted the gig due the strict photographing contracts. Luckily fans got to take pictures though, without any censorship.

The next sequence "Freakshow/Peepshow" was very good, possibly my favourite one. It started with the low bass beats of "Freakshow" and Britney dancing across the stage with dark outfits. It was very "Blackout" how she looked during that number. Another great number, "Get Naked" involved lots of dancing and moving around the stage and definately worked very well, better than how I imagined. Her freshly added new song, "Mannequin" was quickly started and it wasn't as boring as it looked from the videos from Paris and it was nice to know it was all Britney's idea. The outfit was changed from the yellow t-shirt to a small tank top with flowers and glitter. "Touch of My Hand" was luckily cut from the show, already in Stockholm but it could've been nice to see her hanging from the sealing with a dancer during the song but luckily "Breathe On Me", one of my favourites of all time wasn't removed and she performed it as well hanging in the air, in the middle of the huge frame.

"Do Somethin'" and "I'm a Slave 4 U" quickly followed the band intro and Britney showed up on stage performing a cool energic numbers. I would've loved to see the gold metal corset instead of the black top she wore now (Knew it was removed though), but what can you do if you're "Pussy is hanging out". It was fun to see the old routines being used on the dancebreak of "Slave". At least something old-school Spears was there. After the too-long-dancer-interlude it was time for her two huge hits "Toxic" and "Baby, One More Time". Once again, the crowd went crazy for the intro of "Toxic". The two performances weren't unfortunately nothing really uplifting or new but I wouldn't cut those out from the setlist.

It was soon the end of the show and after "Break the Ice" intro, "Womanizer" was performed. She looked smoking hot in the cop outfit and danced around the stage with a sparkle rain finnishing the show. She also was well prepared as she thanked the fans and said good night to them in Finnish along with saying "Hei Suomi, Miten Menee?" (Hello Finland, How are you Doing?) and recieving a huge cheer from the crowd. Well unexpected from Britney, but very fortunate.

Overall the show started out as a dissapointment and I felt like a bad fan, adoring her for ten years and feeling dissapointed at the show, but there WAS both negative and positive things in the show and until this day I couldn't decide if it was dissapointing show or pure fire. Because it was both. She had the smile on her face through the night and was so beautiful in person and I still can't get my head around seeing her from 10 feet away! But her stage presence was rather shy and not-fully-there than fierce, but with all that behind her and with the amount of pressure put on her I'd probably be like that too. Although I could claim that I love performing so much, that I could over-perform for the whole night better than she did (Lipsyncing). Her energy was so good at some sequences and some of them lacked energy. Some performances were also pretty dull and irrelevant, and seemed like they needed to work of few of them.

But even if the review sounds negative, it's not all that. It was all worth of that money and it was Britney Spears! She really had a great show around her, but she just weren't as big part of it as I would've expected her to be. It was more like "The Circus Tour featuring Britney Spears".


Discuss.