Aaron Carter’s Show Loses Points for Awkward Staging

Show biz counts in teen pop. Lights, costumes, dancing, cartwheels, handstands. Sometimes music. Aaron Carter should have it all. The 13-year-old brother of the Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter has certainly seen the real thing up close. But something is missing: coherence.

At the Universal Amphitheatre on Tuesday, young Aaron was an eager, energetic performer, working hard to claim his place in the most disposable of pop music genres. But he was trapped in a show so awkwardly staged and paced that his personal charms were lost in the confusion.

Stepping onstage in black vinyl pants and a mesh top that would have been tacky enough on an adult, Carter sang excited versions of Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” and other saccharine hits. But his frequent absences from the stage (for costume changes, etc.) inexplicably left his band to perform various hard rock and funk instrumentals, including Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” for a very young audience perhaps unprepared for them.

No different was Swedish support act the A*Teens, a quartet of singer-dancers who moved frantically while singing synthetic, bombastic originals and ABBA covers.

At least the kids in the audience were mostly having fun, waving glow sticks to the beats, as parents either danced along, stared blankly at the spectacle before them or stood in line for a $30 T-shirt.