Sean Alexander
This was a weird one. I’m still unsure over a month later if I enjoyed myself. That’s part of why it’s taken me since early December to write this. Overall, this show was two parts good and one part bad—dare I say—I wish the trio were a duo.
Ricky Martin
Out of the three, Ricky Martin was the one I knew the least about. Outside of “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” I couldn’t name a song of his. He was just an artist that had a song in Shrek to me. I wouldn’t say that I instantly became a super fan of his but he put on a good show that had strong vocals and strong choreography, the strongest choreography of the three despite him being the oldest. The biggest thing that stood out about his show was how much you could tell he loved it. He had a wide, genuine smile on his face the entire show and by the end of it, you could tell he left it all out there on the stage for the audience and gave it his all.
Pitbull
The second performance was Mr. Worldwide (Armando Pérez). Based on the energy from the crowd and the amount of people singing along, I would say he definitely should have been the main act.
The performance was almost exactly what I would expect, except for one thing. About halfway through his set he went from performing a song where there was more than enough twerking and dance moves of that variety, then shifting into a presentation about the SLAM Foundation, which is a series of 14 public K-12 charter schools in Florida, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona of which Pérez founded in 2012. Now, this is great. Given that I don’t follow Mr. 305, I didn’t know this was a big part of what he does outside of music and the fact that he has done so much philanthropic work is fantastic.
Overall his performance was fun, and never having considered myself a huge Pitbull fan, I found myself knowing the vast majority of the music he performed.
Enrique Iglesias
Smoke erupts from around the stage as Iglesias walks out, and the first song he performs is Tonight (I’m Loving You). I’m convinced for a second maybe this won’t be as bad as people tell me his performances have been. Then as he got to the front of the stage it became as bad as everyone said: his lip syncing was off, and the dancing wasn’t so much dancing but just moving from one part of the stage to another. It was not, however, the constant dry humping of the stage that TikTok would have had me believe, thankfully. There was one song, “Loco,” in the middle of the performance that he sang with an unidentified singer that was actually quite good and heartwarming. For a brief moment, it felt like maybe the two had actual feelings for each other. Then right after it, he went back to bad lip-syncing and I was pulled from the one good moment of his set. I left disappointed before the set finished as did many others.
Are you or someone you know a musician or involved in music? Do you like to talk about your music? Well, email sean@su-spectator.com and potentially be featured in the column After the Show.