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Review: Niall Horan, Maren Morris shine in unequal spotlights at Tampa’s MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre

The One Direction singer and country star perhaps deserved equal stage time.
 
Published Sept. 23, 2018|Updated Sept. 23, 2018

It was a big ol' pop show Saturday night in Tampa, as a Grammy-winning singer behind one of the year's most unkillable singles got the whole MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre singing.

Oh, and Niall Horan was there, too.

The Grammy winner, you might have guessed, was country star and voice of The Middle Maren Morris, the opening act on the One Direction singer's Flicker World Tour. This is her third straight summer opening for a male artist at the Tampa shed, still with no headlining gigs of her own here, despite making one of the decade's best country albums in 2016's Hero.

All due respect to the Church of Horan and 1D — guy puts on a lovely show, and we'll get it to in one sec — but it's hard not to see this as another facet of the country industry's historic (and well-documented) bias against female artists. When a less-accomplished artist like, say, Kane Brown is headlining major arenas and Morris is spending her third straight summer stuck in, well, The Middle — not unlike Kacey Musgraves, who opened this year for Horan's One Direction bro Harry Styles — you know something's not right.

Now, it is true that Horan is exponentially more famous than Morris — 39.3 million Twitter followers to her 541,600; 21.6 million to her 760,000 on Instagram. And it's true that this tour was booked and announced long before The Middle became a hit. But it's also not clear how much this really matters. On a perfect Saturday night in September, the crowd was at 8,200, less than half of capacity, with the Amphitheatre's lawn roped off and empty. One Direction at Wembley, this was not. You have to wonder if a strong country bill topped by Morris would've drawn better.

Maren Morris performed at Tampa’s MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre on Sept. 22, 2018. (Jay Cridlin | Times)
Maren Morris performed at Tampa’s MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre on Sept. 22, 2018. (Jay Cridlin | Times)

Morris was, at least, graceful about her placement, thanking Horan for being a pop artist willing to take a chance on a country singer. She tailored her tour appropriately, leaning into her pop-rock inclinations, probably more so than if she was still working the country circuit. Her gestures were bigger, her swagger through the roof as she crunched each note out of her body. The soul in her voice, riding each lyric till the end of the line, brought a breezy little seaside R&B lilt to How It's Done and smoky blues and gospel to Once and My Church.

Decontextualized from a country setting, upbeat songs like the Diddy-referencing Rich and hula-girl hip-shaker '80s Mercedes sounded more like the pop songs the really are, a fact driven home by her solid cover of Beyonce's Halo. And when she closed her barely 40-minute set with The Middle ("This song has changed my life this year"), the audience heartily backing her up on the chorus, it felt like this really was her night, her moment. Given how Nashville too often nurtures its up-and-coming women, she might be better off on pop tours going forward.

Niall Horan performed at Tampa’s MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre on Sept. 22, 2018. (Jay Cridlin | Times)

You'd think Horan, hailing from the world's most popular boy band, would be primed to chew scenery in the spotlight. Not the case. On his all-grown-up solo debut Flicker, he pulls from an inviting, if at times bland, sonic palette: Strokes of Fleetwood Mac and Dire Straits, swaths of Gary Barlow and James Blunt, shades of Ben Howard and Damien Rice, and one overwhelming splash of John Mayer. And it all came across in his relatively understated set.

This being one of the final gigs of a nearly 80-show tour, Horan apologized for his voice, which he said felt a bit dodgy. Didn't come across that way, though; his tender, gentle pipes sounded warm and heartfelt on subdued songs like Paper Houses, Flicker and the melancholy So Long. If anything, Horan's voice felt almost too intimate for an amphitheater stage – take away the squeals of recognition for each and stray shrieks of "I LOVE YOU NIALL!" and it'd make for a charming night at the theater.

Niall Horan performed at Tampa’s MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre on Sept. 22, 2018. (Jay Cridlin | Times)

The smartest thing about Horan's approach is that it sounds like a continuation of what One Direction was doing when they went on hiatus in 2015. The two 1D songs Horan played, Fool's Gold and Drag Me Down, fit right into Horan's guy-with-guitar aesthetic, which is something those fans can grow into with ease. Horan seems to be counting on it, the way he peppered his set with bona fide Dad Rock covers like Bruce Springsteen's Dancing In the Dark and the Eagles' Life in the Fast Lane. Coincidentally or not, those might've been the two songs where he seemed to be having the most fun.

Niall Horan performed at Tampa’s MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre on Sept. 22, 2018. (Jay Cridlin | Times)

A little credit should go to Horan's sharp band, especially guitarist Jake Curran, whose solo tones ranged from the likes of Glen Campbell to the War on Drugs. He and the rest of the band did their best Fleetwood Mac on the glistening reverie of Since We're Alone, and injected some pub-rock blood into Finally Free and On My Own. The team helped Horan closed strong with loping hit Slow Hands and the rousing Mirrors, although that last one probably tried a little too hard to hit Coldplay or Mumford and Sons territory.

Would Horan's set have been stronger if he'd been able to close with a huge chart-topping hit like, oh, say, The Middle? Yeah, for sure. But how many artists have songs like that? Certainly not anyone headlining amphitheaters this summer. Maybe in 2019, it'll happen. One can hope.

— Jay Cridlin