Loosening up, hitting his stride

A hunk in a hat, a babe in a corset, an Australian surfer dude ... welcome to country music 2003.

Not that the genre’s disengagement from its traditional rural roots is breaking news. But a decade after Garth Brooks changed the rules by bringing flash pots and rock swagger to sleepy old Nashville, the question is what artistry of any kind might survive the lure of crowd-pleasing spectacle and creeping pop content.

Kenny Chesney, who headlined Thursday’s three-act bill at the Universal Amphitheatre with Australia’s rock-leaning Keith Urban and feisty singer-songwriter Deana Carter, is one of country’s top guns now. His latest album, “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems,” has sold more than 2 million copies, and he recently won the Academy of Country Music Award for best male vocalist.

That’s a high honor for a singer who on record is pleasant but undistinctive, and easygoing to the point of passiveness. But passivity wasn’t the problem at Universal, where the kid from small-town Tennessee was swept into view on a flashy audio-visual assault, showing a severe case of identity confusion.

Is this cool customer in a low-slung black hat, sleeveless T and tight jeans a neo-Jimmy Buffett? (The tour is titled “Margaritas & Senoritas.”) Are he and his hyperactive band the Backstreet Boys on “Hee Haw” (that exaggerated mugging and prancing on a stage outfitted with ramps and a sensory overload of lights and video screens)? At that point it looked as if it would be a long haul of bombast and faceless choreography.

Chesney seemed content to milk the audience for screams and cheers, spout “are you having a good time?” cliches and zip through his tunes -- mostly country-pop hybrids with traces of pedal steel and a fiddle, preserving a link to tradition country -- at high volume and low feeling. There was no reason to expect things to change, so it was a pleasant surprise when the performance started to loosen up, maybe around the time Faith Hill stepped on stage for a brief duet with the star.

Chesney began to seem less robotic, and though the athleticism never lost its compulsory feel, he let an engaging playfulness emerge. That naturalness finally extended to his singing in the first encore segment. Alone on stage with just piano backing, he gave Bill Anderson and Dean Dillon’s “A Lot of Things Different” the vocal shading and emotional investment to keep its sentimental account of a lifetime’s regrets from getting too sticky.

That moment suggested that Chesney has the potential to live up to the awards and success, and its afterglow lent the concluding segment -- a rowdy rave-up that also included Hill and her husband Tim McGraw, along with opening acts Urban and Carter -- a sense of spontaneous celebration rather than contrived crowd-pleasing.