"The bigger the better," Nelly Furtado sang on Big Hoops, "the bigger the better." Perhaps not.
In November, promoter Live Nation moved her scheduled Jan. 9 concert at Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre down to a venue one-third its size, the Commodore Ballroom. Now, shows are being cancelled, first at Winnipeg's MTS Centre and, as announced Tuesday, at Ottawa's National Arts Centre.
The artist's Spirit Indestructible Tour is clearly falling to pieces, but it isn't like we couldn't see this coming. The saddest spectacle at this summer's MuchMusic Video Awards was Furtado, a style-chasing 34-year-old pop star performing to a lip-glossed horde who showed little interest. With her multilingual warble, she had plans for global domination: Her latest album, The Spirit Indestructible, was her first English-sung effort since 2006's blockbuster Loose.
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In 2007, Furtado played the Air Canada Centre, but in 2013 she's booked for the Sony Centre, with $96 tickets available at half the price at groupon.com. She lost her way and her audience, her last hit single off Loose being a prophetic one: All Good Things (Come to an End).