It’s the Same Old Songs for Anne Murray

Contrary to what NBC would have us believe, not everyone spent Thursday night bidding adieu to the “Seinfeld” gang. OK, so roughly 76 million viewers did, but a little concert at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa attracted some attention too.

About 2,100 people turned out to see Canadian songbird Anne Murray, who was well aware of her competition. Early in her nearly two-hour show, she quipped: “Now, does everyone have their VCR going at home? C’mon, sure you do. . . . Don’t kid me.”

During “Seinfeld’s” final year, members of its creative team--particularly its star--openly questioned whether the program’s quality had slipped. The same issue surrounded Murray’s nostalgia-laced affair, raising the question of whether she can recapture a place in the pop mainstream as she did almost 30 years ago.

Sure, pretty-sounding numbers such as Kenny Loggins’ “A Love Song,” “Shadows in the Moonlight” and her 1969 breakthrough hit, “Snowbird,” were as mildly pleasing to the ear as ever. But the hits stopped coming long ago for this middle-of-the-road pop-country singer who’s sold more than 30 million albums. Her most recent studio effort, 1996’s “Anne Murray,” has sold just 57,000 copies, according to SoundScan.

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The 52-year-old singer recently released her first live album, “An Intimate Evening With Anne Murray.” Although she has a reputation as a studio perfectionist, Murray said she did it because she wanted to offer “more of me . . . something a little rough around the edges”--not to mention possibly jump-starting her career with guest appearances by two fellow Canadians, singer-songwriter Jann Arden and rocker Bryan Adams.

During her show, as on the album, Murray peeled away some of the glossy production sheen of her earlier studio work. Her strongest songs were simple, uncluttered versions of such heartfelt numbers as “Me Too,” “Could I Have This Dance” and her signature love song, “You Needed Me.”

Yet old habits die hard. Slick, generic-sounding, mid-tempo ballads on which she was backed by her seven-member band are still the norm, and they quickly grew repetitious. Only the spicy harmonica work of Brian Gatto during “That’s the Way It Goes” added seasoning to the otherwise bland musical diet.

Murray relies entirely on outside material, and too many suffer from mundane lyrics. Slogans and generalities abound, as on “The Other Side:” “On the other side of fear is love / On the other side of doubt is faith / On the other side of pain lies strength.”

The singer’s biggest problem is her lack of a distinctive musical persona. This unintentionally surfaced when Murray and three of her band members gathered for an “unplugged” segment.

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Although her intentions were good, she opened quite a Pandora’s box when she solicited requests from the audience for her lesser-known songs (“All of my big hits are already part of the show,” she promised). What she got were calls for hits by Simon & Garfunkel (“Bridge Over Troubled Waters”), Tammy Wynette (“Stand by Your Man”) and the Eagles (“Desperado.”)

Murray also mentioned at one point how U.S. fans have repeatedly approached her after concerts to complain: “You didn’t play my favorite song of yours: ‘I Am Woman.’ ” Apparently even to her fans, there’s little separating the Helen Reddys and Anne Murrays.

To her credit, Murray’s rich alto still soars. Only it’s frequently wasted because her paper-thin material lacks the kind of complex, dark undercurrent that makes contemporary female pop-rockers such as Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole and Jewel so intriguing.

Hummable and yada yada yada will only take you so far.