Monday night’s opening show in Brisbane was not a good omen for fans of Whitney Houston who flocked to the Acer Arena in Sydney to see the diva perform. However most were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the singer’s voice, at least for about an hour that is. It took nearly a quarter of an hour for the singer to change costumes and when she returned to the stage to perform an acoustic set of old crowd pleasers everything started to fall apart. The coughing which had disappointed fans at the Brisbane concert had returned along with the obvious strain on her voice.
By now some disappointed fans were heading for the exits and more decided to leave after Whitney started her gospel set. On the upside the backing singers did a tremendous job, but the fans hadn’t paid $100 per ticket to listen to the backing singers. For the majority of the fans who decided to stick it out Whitney did pull it back to some extent with her final three and arguably most popular songs: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, How Will I Know and I Will Always Love You.
Unfortunately for many of the 12,000 who attended the concert, it was not enough. One fan said that she had been looking forward to seeing Whitney in concert since Christmas when she had received a ticket to the show as a present from her son. She said that she would now be encouraging her son to get his money back.