Like a Perky Windup Doll, Spears Shows Little Heart

Bopping and spinning amid a kaleidoscope of lights, music, dancers, singers and costume changes, pop star Britney Spears had all the bells and whistles of modern teen pop at her service when she made her local headlining debut on Saturday.

But the lack of spontaneity and human warmth made her Universal Amphitheatre show less a concert than an elaborate mechanical music box, with Britney as the teen-queen ballerina on top.

The Louisiana-born singer stepped lively and smiled prettily throughout the hourlong set, hitting her marks with the frenzied gusto of the lead hoofer in some glitzy Vegas revue. Yet, though the former Mouseketeer frequently thanked the capacity crowd for helping to make her a success, she kept her emotional distance and never uttered a word that didn’t seem scripted.

This sort of glossy cheesiness has long been a part of pop, and decades ago labels such as Motown perfected similarly slick presentations in which artists had their moves down pat and every hair in place.

But, although Spears’ “Soda Pop” somewhat evoked the upbeat bubblegum of ‘70s-era Jackson 5, such pallid hits as the title track from her quintuple-platinum debut album, “ . . . Baby One More Time,” never came close to matching Motown’s classic teen pop.

The peppy pigtailed blond’s voice was bolstered by layers of slick recorded vocals, and her backing quintet might as well have been windup toys for all the spark they brought to their note-perfect renditions. Whether they played watered-down R&B-pop;, hip-hop-flecked dance tunes or ingenuous midtempo ballads, a persistent, booming bass beat overwhelmed every number like a sonic sledgehammer, flattening out what little variety existed.

Still, such songs as “Sometimes” and “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart” did convey the fetching vulnerability and youthful optimism that makes Spears appealing to her largely pre-adolescent female fans. Yet, even in this frothy context, she failed to show any musical depth or personality.

A medley that included Madonna’s “Material Girl” and Janet Jackson’s “Nasty” seemed designed chiefly to allow Spears to reenact moments from her favorite videos and left a lot of young fans a bit nonplussed, as if the songs meant nothing to them.

If those flashy productions showed a quirky sense of camp, her take on the bombastic Journey ballad “Open Arms” revealed more serious weaknesses. Though the band summoned all the pomposity of the original, Spears’ relatively unadorned and utterly emotionless vocals not only didn’t come close to Journey front man Steve Perry’s overwrought passion, but scarcely rivaled the capabilities of your average neighborhood karaoke bar champion.