Review: Luis Miguel skips crowd interaction in career-spanning, sold-out, Tampa show [PHOTOS]

After logistical problems prevented him from fulfilling his originally scheduled appearance last October at downtown Tampa’s Amalie Arena, Latin music superstar Luis Miguel finally made his way to the massive local venue. As part of his massive 2023-2024 tour, which started last August and runs through next November, the pop superstar, one of the best-selling Latin music artists of all time, is on pace to break records on this trek for possibly pulling off the most lucrative worldwide concert tour any singer from the genre has ever embarked on. Last Tuesday night’s sold-out show certainly helped to fatten those stats.

As a child pop star who recorded his first album at 11 and won his first Grammy three years later, the 54-year-old has been a household name for the bulk of the globe’s Hispanic community for decades. From teen heartthrob to actor to pop singer to interpreter of classic Latin ballads and love songs, the man has wisely made a career out of changing with the times, staying relevant, and retaining a reputation as an exciting and charismatic live performer. His boyish good looks never got in the way either.

Kicking off at an unusually early start time, the Puerto Rican-born, Mexican-bred Latin pop icon was onstage before 8 p.m., and what a stage it was: a massive, multi-tiered, Las Vegas-style setup including bandstands lined with bright neon lights, a jumbo screen at the rear of the stage, and a variety of smaller screens adorning the sides and the top of the stage. Plenty of room was needed for the horn section, backup singers, and the backing band which are all part of the singer’s current entourage.

As for the star of the show, the always dapper and well-dressed Miguel donned a smart solid black suit and tie and appeared as fashionable as ever. Making his way from side to side of the stage and eliciting plenty of screams and howls from the equally well-dressed Latinas in the audience, Miguel smiled, winked, and waved at his adoring fans while throwing in his usual gyrations and dance moves too.

While this had the makings of another exciting, high-energy show by the king of Latin pop, something was lacking throughout the night. The singer’s usually commanding and multi-octave vocals were buried low in the mix of music. While it is understandable that many in the audience who have, no doubt, grown up listening to and supporting Miguel, would be compelled to sing along with him throughout the barrage of hits he included in his set, there were plenty of occasions where the audience’s vocal contributions were more audible than those of the singer himself.

Smartly revisiting various eras of his 40-plus year career as a pop star, Miguel touched on his straight-up pop hits, dating back to songs from his teen years, and spent the bulk of the night focusing on his interpretations of classic Latin ballads that helped his mega-platinum albums, Romance (1991) and Segundo Romance (1994) such huge successes. Like many other pop artists who’ve had luck revisiting classic songbooks and finding enormous success doing so (Rod Stewart comes to mind), Miguel reached another stratosphere of success when he did so. Those albums, and the ones in that vein that followed, helped him connect with an older audience that was already familiar with those standards while introducing the music to an unaware, younger audience. His live renditions of those tender ballads drew some of the heartiest responses from the audience at this show, which was to be expected.

However, another confounding and frustrating element of this night was the singer’s complete lack of spoken interaction with the audience. Not one word was uttered by the normally engaging and jovial singer as one might expect. A perfect time to interject some banter would have been the back-to-back “duets” the singer pulled off at the midpoint of the 100-minute show.

As the screens beamed a photo of the night’s headliner next to another picture of the late King of Pop, Michael Jackson, the band began to play the classic 1936 ballad “Smile” (penned by British silent film star Charlie Chaplin). Miguel kicked things off by vocalizing the song’s lyrics, translated to Spanish, and then giving way to MJ’s recorded vocals to take alternating verses sung in English. It was a nice touch and a faithful tribute to Jackson, but it would have been a lot more meaningful with some context, added commentary, or explanation. To make this portion of the show more of a head scratcher, immediately following was a similar number where live concert footage from 80s-era Frank Sinatra singing “Come Fly with Me” adorned the screens as Luis Miguel chimed in and sang along with him and took over a few of the verses himself. Again, this would have been a perfect vehicle for some colorful stories or personal accounts, especially since Miguel had been personally invited to partake in Sinatra’s extraordinarily successful 1994 Duets II album, for a rendition of this very song. Staying completely silent and not introducing these two numbers at all seemed like missed opportunities.

The arrival of a full Mariachi band, dressed to the nines and sounding bold and brassy, injected some liveliness into the ballad-heavy portion of the show. Appearing to play along with “La Fiesta del Mariachi,” and “La Bikina,” two classic Mexican tunes, the band helped take the night to a level of excitement it hadn’t yet reached, to that point. Miguel had even changed into a more comfortable-looking outfit, while still appearing stylish. Donning only a simple black shirt and black slacks, his more casual attire matched the more celebratory portion of the show which included the highlight of the night, a stellar interpretation of “La Media Vuelta,” another classic from 1963, originally recorded by late Mexican crooner José Alfredo Jiménez, which became a massive hit single for Miguel in 1994. The addition of the Mariachi band filled the song out exquisitely and helped catapult the performance above many of the night’s other performances.

As a nod to his longtime fans, Miguel ended the night with a medley of some of his earliest hits, achieved when he was a teenager. The sing-along aspect reached new heights as the crowd stood and sang along loudly with the tunes that undoubtedly served as some of their earliest exposure to Mexican pop music, based on the average ages of those who filled the arena.

Yet another surprising, missed opportunity came as the night ended; the singer reacted and reveled in the hearty ovation he received at the close of that foray into his early material. Again, not a word was said, nothing was spoken from the star of the night. He smiled, waved, and pointed at audience members, and seemingly thanked them with his gestures and actions. And, with that, he, and his large band, who’d all embraced and mugged for photo ops at the front of the stage during the raucous reaction they received, all walked off the stage. As chants of “Otra! Otra!” ("Another! Another!") rang through the venue, in hopes of an encore, the lights soon came on and no encore was offered.

It was disheartening and surprising to not hear the usually engaging singer interact with his loving crowd, despite this being such an impressively-adorned production, apart from it being the long-anticipated arrival of this Latin music icon to the area.

For those who have ever attended a show where rowdy audience members tire quickly of an artist’s between-song spoken interludes and feel compelled to shout, “Shut up and sing!”—I guess this would have been the perfect outing for those types of hecklers to attend.