Rihanna is an artist that is one of the hardest working in music today (on and off stage), and her only real problem with her show at HP Pavilion in San Jose last night was that she has so many hit songs – even at just 25 years old – she could not fit them all into a sprawling, nearly two-hour non-stop concert event. A prolific artist, Talk That Talk came out in 2011, just as she was wrapping up her Loud Tour (named after the studio album before that), she’s since release 2012’s Unapologetic, and tickets for this tour actually went on sale late last year as well. The show in the massive HP Pavilion was sold out and filled to its 14,500 capacity, and it was one of the best giant arena audiences I’ve seen. Rihanna did not disappoint, as the place was bouncing and euphoric before she ever took the stage, and things only cranked up from there. She put on her usual top class show fueled with energy and heartfelt emotion and gratitude, as I experienced at the O2 show in London in late 2011 as her last tour came to a close. This is definitely one of the must-see tours of the year, with both figurative and literal pyrotechnics.
