Ariana Grande's powerful vocals overshadowed by gimmicks at NYC show review

Ariana Grande's powerful vocals overshadowed by gimmicks at NYC show review

Ariana Grande performs onstage Friday night at Madison Square Garden.

Cat ears sprang up all over Ariana Grande's show at the Garden on Friday night.

In several sections, the star sported a sprightly pair, as did hundreds of her fans, mainly girls in the pink years between 7 and 16, accompanied by doting parents.

The feline points have become something of a signature for Grande, a winking allusion to her breakout acting role as Cat Valentine on the Nickelodeon network.

Here, they took on a secondary role — as a revenue stream. Fans could purchase their own glow-in-the-dark pair for an eye-popping $40, or a slightly less extravagant no-glow version at $20 a pop.

Long lines of fans snapped up both, bonding them with Grande, as well as with each other. The exchange sealed the tone of the night as one giant slumber party, with Grande playing a kind of big sister and chaperone to her fans.

As snugly as the tone suited Grande's tender target demographic — which hits the low end of Katy Perry's crowd — it made for an odd contrast to the grown-up character of the star’s vocals.

Grande owns by far the biggest, and most dexterous, voice in her age range (she's 21). Yet much of her first major arena tour seemed hell-bent on distracting us from that. The show sounded as many bells and whistles as possible, from the flashpods that exploded during the opening number — “Bang Bang” — to the papier-mache cloud that propelled the star across the stage like a fairy princess during “Best Mistake,” to the chandelier she rode in “Right There.”

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