Selena Gomez at Molson Amphitheatre – Aug 23, 2011

Photographs by Jaimie Milburn

There was a grand staircase, countless costume changes, a handful of back-up dancers and enough sparkle and glam to make any young girl envious. Yes indeed, Selena Gomez and The Scene put on a show Tuesday evening to a sold-out crowd at the Molson Canadian Amphitheatre. But let’s be honest here for a moment, “The Scene” part of the name basically stands for a glorified back-up band standing in the shadows, until their few songs in the spotlight, while Ms. Gomez steals the show in her shimmery outfits front and centre. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, as the young Disney starlet certainly has the vocal and performance chops to make it on her own. Descending down the staircase to “A Year Without Rain”, Selena spent nearly the next hour and half belting out pop-meets-dance-meets-R&B tracks from her three albums to the crowd’s delight.

Obvious crowd favourites were the latest singles “Love You Like a Song” and “Who Says” with even the youngsters standing up in their seats. Speaking of youngsters, the crowd was full of surprisingly young fans no more than 7 to 9 years old, accompanied by their parents of course, and sporting hundreds of dollars of merch to remember what was likely their first concert. During one of the many costume changes a pre-recorded message from Selena appeared in which she shared a story of her first concert when she was 11. The concert was none other than Britney Spears and Selena reappeared with a medley of some of Britney’s hits; a feat that was surely overlooked and underappreciated by the young crowd. An obvious admirer of her fellow peers’ work, Selena even busted out a verse from Nikki Minaj’s “Super Bass” earlier in the evening which believe or not was flawless. No matter what she was doing up on that stage the crowd adored her and throngs of young girls surely went home to dream glamorous dreams.