Selena Gomez–Disney girl metamorphoses into a woman

“I DO FEEL at home,” the singer-actress said of performing onstage. Photos by Magic Liwanag/Wilbros Live

In one of the three visually striking video interludes at her recent Manila concert, pop star Selena Gomez was shown bathing in a tub filled with petals, her eyes flirting with the camera.

The next second, she was standing up, her bronzed body almost naked, only an arm wrapped around her chest.

Onstage, at the SM Mall of Asia Arena, two towering inflatable roses “blossomed” to form. As it all happened, a Spanish guitar-inflected cover of “You Don’t Own Me”—the empowerment song by Lesley Gore—gently piped out of the stereos: “And don’t tell me what to do/And don’t tell me what to say…”

Her message couldn’t be any clearer: The girl has metamorphosed into a woman—defiant, comfortable in her own skin and ready to assert control over her craft and over her life.

This newfound sense of authority could be gleaned from her generous setlist dominated by tracks from her latest album, “Revival,” which is also Selena’s first outside Disney, and whose creation she was heavily involved in.

The 24-year-old artist opened with “Same Old Love,” a torch song encapsulated in moody synth-pop sounds.

Her new material’s proclivity to electronic dance—infused at times with pop, jazz, R&B and rock, but always laced with throbbing beats—more or less defined the concert’s musical direction. There was the smoky and sultry “Hands to Myself,” the festive “Me and My Girls” and “Survivors,” which had a palpable trance and house flavor.

Even her previous hits such as “Come and Get It” and “Love You Like a Love Song” were rearranged accordingly to suit her current sound. “Since this is my first time here, let me give you a little bit of a throwback,” she told the audience of mostly young females, among them local stars Maine Mendoza and Liza Soberano.

Her choreography was on the sparse side, but when she did, she made sure to embrace her sensuality, as in the breathy “Good for You,” which had her doing a chair dance.

She writhed, arched her back, as she cooed onto the microphone, “I just wanna look good for ya, good for ya…” In “Body Heat,” she cavorted with lithe, bare-chested dancers.

SELENA embraced her sensuality.

And as she hopped from one midtempo ditty to the next, Selena flirtily sashayed around the stage, pointing at the different sections of the crowd and promptly eliciting earsplitting shrieks and cheers. “I’m far from home, but when I come onstage, I do feel at home,” said Selena, who vowed to return to the country in the future.

Midway through the show, mounted by Wilbros Live, Selena slowed things down with “Who Says”—the anthem about insecurities that never fails to make her emotional—and a somber rendition of “Transfiguration,” a worship song.

Such segments are usually taken by singers as opportune moments to show off their vocal abilities; this one, however, only exposed the chinks in Selena’s instrument.

Her vocals, pleasingly sweet and warm in its lower register, was mostly sufficient for what her material requires. And while she has improved in this aspect of her craft, her voice is still limited, preventing her from soaring above the busy instrumentation and injecting some much-needed heft to anthems of uplift. And more often than not, her backup singers, served not only as accompaniment, but as a crutch.

Still, she managed to give a consistently entertaining—if a little front-loaded—show that had fans dancing and singing along.

The production was a feast for the eyes, with three screen walls that displayed a swirl of trippy imagery and effects. She had a number of costume changes, too—a cropped top and leather pants, a robe and matching pair of boxing shorts, a simple dress—almost all of them in black.

Selena regained momentum with a cover of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams,” and sustained it with the club banger, “I Want You to Know.”

By this time, the stage and arena had turned into a festive maelstrom of blazing laser beams, thumping music and dancing bodies. And all the while, Selena’s voice blared throughout, in repeat: “This is my revival.”

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