Stefani's talent, clean lifestyle, put other pop divas to shame

"I was going to do one dance record," Gwen Stefani confessed to the crowd standing at the White River Amphitheatre. "But then you guys inspired me to make two dance records."

At a time when stadium acts are growing older, and fewer acts have the box office draw to fill their place, Gwen Stefani has bucked the trend, rising to the top of pop stardom. Compared with contemporaries Britney Spears, J-Lo and Jessica Simpson, Stefani is a much better idol. For one, she's sane. For two, she's a happily married mother with a successful clothing line and no time in rehab. In short, she's a normal -- perhaps überwealthy -- everyday person.

More importantly, she can sing. Sure, those other voices are technically pretty, but Stefani has a rawness as well as a learned and earned legitimacy from the years -- two decades actually -- spent fronting the band No Doubt. When Stefani sings, there's no doubt that she's really singing.

Yet Stefani doesn't rest in the security of simply us-and-them concert experiences that rely on the performer performing and fans in the audience fanning. She would rather break this so-called fourth wall and turn the concert experience on its head by running through the crowded amphitheater -- stopping in the middle to sing the midtempo love song "Cool."

Not to burst any bubbles, but it's not a spontaneous move. It's as choreographed as all of the big dance numbers that populated the performance. And it happens every night at every venue. Is it still as cool?

Yes, it is.

Her best moments, however, were not the down or even the midtempo tunes but her all-out, aerobic anthems, "Wind It Up," which fuses cheerleader chants with yodeling and a galloping beat, as well as "Hollaback Girl," the song that spells bananas. Truly, Stefani's gifts lie in her ability to turn rhythmic rumpuses -- some with clapping beats, some with clattering beats -- into catchy sing-alongs that are inherently, if not commandingly, danceable. Two exceptions were "Wonderful Life" and "What Are You Waiting For," the latter borrowing heavily from '80s New Wave, a trick Stefani used repeatedly on both solo albums.

The Senegalese American hip-hop singer Akon, whose act has been tamed since that fateful night in Trinidad where he bumped, grinded and spanked a woman who turned out to be a minor, opened the evening with a sexy, shirtless show. For a man as buff and beautiful as Akon, there's just no believing that he could be the titular character in "Mr. Lonely" who moans, "I have nobody for my own/ I'm so lonely."