Rihanna: Loud Tour Live at the O2 Blu-ray Review
Loud doesn't necessarily mean good.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, December 21, 2012
Quite often in the contemporary world of entertainment a star's private life will completely subsume actual career
accomplishments. Take the recent case of the ill-fated Lifetime television film
Liz and Dick for just one potent
example. I defy you to find a review of this made for television outing that didn't at least touch upon star Lindsay Lohan's
troubled personal life. In fact several feature articles in some trade papers and magazines were built up around that very
aspect of the production. Something at least somewhat akin to that situation tends to often happen with Rihanna, due to
her hyperbolically publicized relationship with Chris Brown, a relationship that has quite infamously included charges of
domestic violence and assault. Rihanna's on again, off again relationship with Brown has provided lots of fodder for the
tabloids, and many have questioned the still very young singer's choices, at least with regard to Brown. With all of the
hoopla surrounding Rihanna's private life, it's sometimes hard to focus on her actual musical (and now nascent acting)
accomplishments, but her string of platinum albums certainly is manifest evidence of her continuing popularity (even if her
most recent album, the not so accidentally named
Unapologetic, hasn't
yet attained that status). This new
Blu-ray featuring Rihanna in concert (as well as Rihanna backstage, Rihanna arriving at various locations and Rihanna
doing pretty much everything you'd expect a superstar to do) may well give at least a little indication of her obvious allure
and talent, but it's a middling release at best, one hampered by barely acceptable video and the mind boggling decision to
only include lossy audio options.
Rihanna: Loud Tour Live at the O2 follows a recent glut of "concert" releases that also include a lot of
confessional and backstage elements interspersed with the actual live performance footage. In this case, we get
Rihanna arriving at a London dock on a yacht a la Cleopatra on her barge (an image which unwittingly may bring up
similar images of Freddie Mercury doing much the same a bit further to the east in
Hungarian Rhapsody:
Queen Live In Budapest Deluxe). Then, in one of several kind of annoyingly self-serving moments, we get
Rihanna getting all misty eyed recounting how on
this tour she's really gotten to "know" her fans and that she
now considers them her "friends". To which some cynics might ask, "How 'friendly' are you going to be if your 'friends'
show up at your front door?" Adding to the kind of pretentiousness of this sequence (as well as several others
featuring Rihanna's confessionals) is the fact the everything she says is also scrawled across the screen in
superimposed text, supposedly for those who like reading more than listening.
Rihanna has made no bones about the fact that she idolizes Madonna, something that might be evidently from her
decision to be known by one name. But for someone who so emulates The Material Girl, this concert is a surprisingly
tame affair, despite the requisite razor sharp choreography, emphasis on blatant sexuality and lots and lots of scantily
clad men (and women). However, like Madonna's concerts, there's an emphasis on stagecraft here to the point that
sometimes the music gets at least slightly pushed aside. That makes some of the "smaller" moments, like when
Rihanna walks out onto a thrust in a gorgeously flowing yellow gown and sings with a sole acoustic guitarist (for a
moment at least, until it all turns into yet another huge production number).
If one were to simply not turn on the television and simply listen to this concert (getting past the overtly pretentious
confessional sequences), there is a lot to enjoy. Rihanna is an interesting star, one who tends to not exhibit the
melismatic fury of, say, Mariah Carey (or any of her many, many vocal acolytes), and who tends to stay down in her
lower register quite a bit of the time, something that somehow adds to the West Indian influence she attempts to
invest at least some of her material with. Her backup band is fantastic (though they, too, are a little self-conscious
about "emoting" whenever the camera is on them, something that also obviously disappears if the television is off), and
her coterie of backup singers also sound great. Everything is pitch perfect, but there's also a kind of glossy, slick quality
to everything that only occasionally actually becomes emotionally involving.
Even loyal Rihanna fans may be upset about this Blu-ray's video and audio quality, however, and the decision to utilize
an "ancient" video codec and lossy audio is really kind of amazing, given how far we are into the high definition era
now. It obviously doesn't rise to the level of assault that Rihanna has already endured, but someone at Def Jam is at
least guilty of major disrespect, for the audience if not for the artist herself.
Rihanna's set list includes:
- 01. Only Girl (In the World)
- 02. Disturbia
- 03. Shut Up and Drive
- 04. Man Down
- 05. S&M
- 06. Skin
- 07. Raining Men
- 08. Hard
- 09. Breaking Dishes
- 10. Unfaithful
- 11. Hate That I Love You
- 12. California King Bed
- 13. What's My Name
- 14. Rude Boy
- 15. Cheers (Drink to That)
- 16. Don't Stop the Music
- 17. Take a Bow
- 18. Love the Way You Lie
- 19. Umbrella
- 20. We Found Love
Rihanna: Loud Tour Live at the O2 Blu-ray, Video Quality
Rihanna: Loud Tour Live at the O2 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Def Jam with an MPEG-2 encoded 1080p
transfer in 1.78:1. MPEG-2 compression is in and of itself a
bad thing, but this transfer has several problematic
elements, including some really unusual banding, something that doesn't regularly turn up in live performance videos, at
least in my experience. There's also consistent moiré that crops up on the pointillistic light display upstage, including a
couple of times that almost look like the image is warping it's so severe. Contrast is spotty, and the image is often kind of
fuzzy and ill defined. (Ironically some of the best looking elements are actually the confessionals and backstage
sequences). Colors are nicely saturated and fairly robust, but overall this is a middling video presentation at best.
Rihanna: Loud Tour Live at the O2 Blu-ray, Audio Quality
Rihanna: Loud Tour Live at the O2 features only two lossy Dolby Digital mixes, in 2.0 and 5.1, certainly one of the
more bizarre decisions for a Blu-ray release by a major artist. Adding to the weirdness is that the DTS logo is firmly
emblazoned on the back cover of this release. The audio here is okay, nothing more, nothing less, though there's simply
not much
oomph to anything, despite the propulsive nature of many of Rihanna's tunes. The low end is generally
pretty anemic sounding, only occasionally rising to really aggressive levels. The mix is decent, however, with a good
balance between vocals and band. The 5.1 mix does reveal more of the ubiquitous audience noise.
