Aqua’s Rewind Tour has ’90s-music lovers living their best lives

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/09/2018 (2568 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If there was any question what kind of show was going on at Bell MTS Place on Saturday night, the multitudes of plaid shirts tied around waists, Scary Spice-inspired double buns and miniskirts Cher Horowitz herself would be jealous of would be a dead give away of the theme: all ’90s, all the time.

The irresistible beats of Cher’s Believe, Technotronic’s Pump Up the Jam and the Bloodhound Gang’s The Bad Touch called like a siren’s song to the throngs of Millennials and Gen X-ers who dance-walked their way to the already bumping pre-show Much Music Video Dance Party on the floor. 

Gettin’ Jiggy With It came on; everyone cheered and proceeded to get jiggy. MmmBop came on; everyone cheered and proceeded to bop. S Club Party came on; everyone cheered and proceeded to jump in the air and make an “S” with their finger.

The unbridled joy of 6,600 ’90s-music lovers living their best lives is a beautiful thing to witness.

But the music videos were just one of the enticing, nostalgia-filled elements of this event (officially called the Rewind Tour); the live musical lineup was a heavy triple-header of Danish Eurodance artist Whigfield, Canadian pop group Prozzäk and Norwegian-Danish Europop headliners Aqua.

Aqua rocketed into the collective consciousness in 1997 with their massively popular single, Barbie Girl. They managed to land a few more big songs in the years to come, but eventually faded off the pop-music radar. 

The Rewind Tour is their first trek across Canada ever, and by the response Saturday night, it was a long-overdue trip.

The core three-piece — vocalists Lene Nystrøm and René Dif and keyboardist Søren Rasted — were joined by five more band members for their 15-song set.

Yes, they played all your favourites. Yes, it was great. 

Nystrøm, who was rocking some incredible thigh-high silver boots, and Dif, clad in green sequined shorts, sounded surprisingly unaffected by time. You never know what you’re going to get with these types of nostalgia acts, but Nystrøm’s voice especially has held up impeccably well. Her distinctive, cutesy, nasally tone was more full-bodied and textured than expected and it stood up to the test of an arena setting. Slower moments, such as Turn Back Time and the beginning of My Mamma Said, showcased her range in both vocal capabilities and emotion.

Dif sounds equally as gravelly as he did 20 years ago.

Even though the stage show wasn’t super exciting in terms of production (likely because of the format of the tour), Nystrøm and Dif are very engaging as front-people. They danced with intensity, went into the crowd on more than one occasion, sat on the shoulders of security guards, and even brought a few fans — including an awesome little girl who danced her butt off — on stage during Back to the ’80s.

There was a little lull mid-set with a couple of lesser-known tracks, which halted the momentum a bit, but the hits made up for that ten-fold. Around the World, My Oh My, Dr. Jones and Lollipop all induced such enthusiastic singalongs they almost drowned out the actual performers. 

People poo-poo bands such as Aqua all the time, often considering them too corny or too poppy to be taken seriously, but anyone who can make thousands of people as happy as they were Saturday night can’t be all bad.

Prior to Aqua, Canadian pop group Prozzäk rolled through a few of their biggest hits from the ’90s and early ’00s — Strange Disease, www.nevergetoveryou, Sucks to Be You — as well as a few tracks from their newest record (yes, they have new music), 2017’s Forever 1999.

Prozzäk’s content centres around the lives of animated friends Simon and Milo — voiced by Jay Levine and James Bryan McCollum, respectively — and throughout their zippy 50-minute set, there were many appearances from the cartoon duo on the giant video screen behind the stage.  

The great thing about Prozzäk is in addition to the unbelievable catchiness of their material, there’s also some substance to it; McCollum is a fantastic guitarist, and busted out a flamenco-inspired riff in Sucks to Be You to prove it. The satire is topical and at times very cheesy, but there are also some really clever elements to their writing. 

Performance-wise, it’s hard to compete with the animated music videos, but the real-live humans on stage (including a female DJ/vocalist who helped out on a few songs) did their best to connect with the crowd, even donning Jets jerseys. It was a solid performance that kept the crowd on their feet and hands in the air.

To start the night, Whigfield and her electric-pink jumpsuit took the stage solo to perform a quick five-song set. Whigfield (whose given name is Sannie Carlson), 48, was energetic, fun and sweet; exactly what you’d want the opener for a ’90s night to be. Her vocals weren’t perfect, but they certainly weren’t awful either, not that anyone really seemed to care when the familiar “dee dee na na na,” intro of Saturday Night blasted into the air. 

“I like this tour because it’s all about being silly and free and easy,” Whigfield chirped.

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel