The other day I linked to the San Jose Mercury News’ revew of Wednesday night’s Kylie Minogue show (which I had flown from Seattle to see) and included the setlist. I noted that I enjoyed the show more than their reviewer, Jim Harrington. I did, although I had problems with the sound at The Fox Theater and wish Minogue would have relied a lot less on medleys. The fact that the review was negative isn’t what annoyed me. It’s that a rock writer was sent to review a pop show and missed the overall point. This paragraph, in particular, really bothered me:

What we saw, however, wasn’t nearly as dramatic as what was missing from the concert. Minogue, who also performed Thursday at the Fox, failed to illustrate why she deserves her ranking as one of the world’s biggest pop stars – and that’s the one thing she really needs to accomplish with her debut tour on these shores.

No it isn’t. Minogue’s last proper LP, X, was released in 2007 and she’s now 41 years old. She’s long written-off conquering the US market and if she was intent on establishing why she is one of the biggest pop stars in the world, she would have done a lot more press for the tour and would have played more than a handful of cities.

The review explains why the show was underwhelming (and in contrast, I saw Pink perform at Key Arena two weeks earlier and preferred her show) and that’s fine, but it’s not exactly fair to complain that a performer didn’t meet the goals you arbitrarily established - which were contrary to the performer’s own interests.