Music for the Masses

Many of the reasons people moan about KIIS-FM (102.7) were on glaring display at the Top 40 radio station’s fifth annual Wango Tango concert Saturday at the sold-out Rose Bowl: the relentless self-promotion; the commercialism that filled the stadium’s video screens with ads for soft drinks and phone services; the airhead mentality (this station makes Radio Disney sound like NPR) embodied in the on-stage and on-screen appearances by its personalities.

KIIS--and other stations with what’s now called the “contemporary hits radio pop” format--also takes a lot of heat for its musical transgressions, and while it’s true that it’s harbored the perpetrators of teen pop and has no qualms about serving up schlock, the diversity of the Wango Tango lineup was an argument for leniency on all counts.

If nothing else, the female voice that’s been all but shut down at, say, alt-rock outlet KROQ was given free rein at Wango, with everyone from Alanis to Ashanti, Pink to Paulina turning the approximately 10-hour concert into a veritable Oxygen Network of pop music.

Marc Anthony, Craig David, Will Smith, Ja Rule and a few other males constituted a squad of lonely guys swamped by those singers as well as Mary J. Blige, Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton and India.Arie. And, always looming like an iceberg in the dark, Celine Dion.

Actually, Dion was mercifully and atypically restrained in her brief performance, declining to unleash the full force of her potentially overpowering voice.

That left the excess to the likes of Mexico’s Paulina Rubio, packing her crossover aspirations into a skimpy two-piece number and scampering all over the stadium, and No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani, leading her band ever deeper into a corner of cartoonish shtick.

In this landscape of artificiality, reality doesn’t always thrive, and Alanis Morissette’s intense, personal confessions, which are devoured eagerly by her own audience, didn’t seem to stir the crowd too much. Aretha heiress Blige, whose soulful aggression was not to be denied, and especially Pink were the artists who best bridged the gap.

Pink has the kind of fondness for glitz and flash that gets her admitted to Top 40 land, but in her late-afternoon appearance, the singer brought a sense of inner tension to her rock-edged material.

She swaggered with a rock star’s authority, but there was an undercurrent of vulnerability in the roughness of her voice, and the spontaneity in her phrasing suggested that even she wasn’t entirely sure what emotion might erupt next. There was also an unforced joy in her spirit, and her closing duet with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler on her corporate-rock soul ballad “Misery” was a highlight of the day.

The question of artificiality and reality became Ozz-terized by Kelly Osbourne, who got to perform her version of Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” because, as the daughter of Ozzy Osbourne, she’s a reality TV celebrity. In a moment of genuine reality (it seemed to be, anyway), papa himself, the bleeping Prince of Darkness, came out and embraced his daughter and waved to the crowd as she left the stage. Happy Father’s Day.

As far as tracking the pop music currents, the fact that O-Town and Aaron and Nick Carter were the only established teen-pop acts on the bill suggests that KIIS is diving off that teetering bandwagon. Its alternative--a brand of more “mature” artists from the adolescent age group--was represented by earnest singer-songwriters Branch and Carlton.

KIIS programming also gets knocked for its indiscriminate eagerness to please, but that sounds like sour grapes from people who moan that radio is too rigid and unadventurous, but actually mean that it doesn’t play the kind of music they like. The station’s range--from hip-hop to teen pop to soul to rock--sounds like the eclecticism of ‘60s pop radio, whose passing is always being mourned.

The overall quality might be down, but with the potential of Blige, Pink and others, it might be time to stop complaining and get the party started.