Review: Tiffany at Gulfstream Park, 4/19/03

by Daniel Tobias

Tiffany, performing at Gulfstream Park, April 19, 2003

See photos in Pictures section

Ten years, almost to the day, from the last time I saw Tiffany perform live (in Las Vegas), I saw another Tiffany concert, this time at the Gulfstream Park racetrack in southern Florida. Tiffany was part of a long list of performers in their winter and spring concert series, which also included Michael McDonald, Huey Lewis and the News, Don McLean, America, The Beach Boys, Cyndi Lauper, Christopher Cross, David Cassidy, and Sheena Easton, among others. Tiffany's concert was the next-to-last in the series, which concluded the following day with Smash Mouth.

For the most part, these acts were part of the "Has-Been Circuit" of singers and groups who were popular at some time in the past, haven't been heard from since, and go around to casinos, resorts, and racetracks around the country making a living by performing for audiences of nostalgia-trippers. Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth were the only ones who had had pop hits in recent years, so they were placed in the first and last weekends of the concert series, respectively, with the rest of the schedule filled with old-timers and few-hit-wonders (I don't think any of them had only one hit). I'm sure the park management thought of Tiffany as falling in this category too, and expected her to bring back memories in the GenXers, now old enough to drink and gamble, by singing her late-80s hits like "I Think We're Alone Now".

She didn't disappoint them -- she did get to all of her old hits -- but she probably surprised some of the more casual members of the audience (as opposed to the fans who've been following her career more closely, a number of whom were in the front rows of the reserved seating) by opening with more recent material. Here's the song list from her set:

"I Will Not Break Down"
"All The Talking"
"Piss U Off"
"Winter's Over"
"Open My Eyes"
"All This Time"
"Could've Been"
"I'm Not Sleeping"
"Butterfly"
"Artificial Girlfriend"
"Silence"
"Me and Bobby McGee"
"I Saw Him Standing There"
"Call Me"
"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"
"I Think We're Alone Now"
"Landslide"

Clearly, she had a much different agenda from being just another "blast from the past" in the concert series. The first three songs were from her newest album, the critically-acclaimed but unfortunately not commercially successful The Color of Silence. She followed with one of several songs she hasn't released on any album yet, "Winter's Over", then another TCOS song, before she finally sang one of her '80s hits, "All This Time", following it up with her #1 hit "Could've Been" before singing two more songs from her new album, and an unreleased song, "Artificial Girlfriend" (when this title was announced, somebody in the audience yelled that it described who he'd been dating). Late in the set, she threw in some cover tunes (including "Call Me", the Blondie song Tiffany recorded for a tribute album), as well as her two most famous pop hits, "I Saw Him Standing There" and "I Think We're Alone Now". Finally, she came back for an encore by covering her idol, Stevie Nicks, on "Landslide" (a song recently covered by the now-politically-troubled band The Dixie Chicks).

She did a good job performing all of the songs, and showed the audience she had plenty of good new material. Even her old songs were done in a new style -- her rendition of "I Think We're Alone Now" sounded more "rock" than the "dance-pop" of the '80s version. Some of the people in the audience already knew her new material (they sometimes called out requests for new songs like "Butterfly"), but I'm sure there were plenty of curiosity seekers who had no idea of her new style until they experienced it here. Maybe some of them will be motivated to seek out her new album (which, unfortunately, may be hard to find these days).

After the concert, Tiffany met with various fans to sign autographs and pose for pictures. See my pictures section for more on that.

This page was first created on 27 Apr 2003, and was last modified 27 Apr 2003.
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