Picked out by a spotlight, Gwen Stefani appears in the audience to deafening squeals, and you think, surely this is a star. When she leaves at the end of the show, wearing a Scotland football shirt with "Gwen 1" on the back, the crowd noise is overwhelming. This tour seems to mark the end of her solo foray into dance and R&B - she promises her next album will be with her old band, No Doubt - and so has something of the celebratory air of a wrap party, but there is still something missing. Somehow, in the midst of all the feverish collaboration that created Stefani's two multi-platinum solo albums, no one noticed the lack of really decent songs.
She opens with The Sweet Escape, which could have come straight from Madonna's True Blue album. It is perfectly efficient, but has no edges. Yummy, a Neptunes collaboration, is much better - "This sounds like disco Tetris," sings Stefani, marvellously, over skeletal rhythms. Unfortunately, it was the one good thing the Neptunes had to offer her, though the limp Orange County Girl is at least accompanied by a nostalgic photomontage that includes a sweet snap of a teenage Stefani in a Madness T-shirt.
She has an odd, gluey voice that she struggles to control in more mid-paced material like Early Winter, where it spreads gloopily into the song, gumming it up. Despite this, Stefani genuinely appears to be having a great time, a naturally beautiful woman at ease among fellow musicians.
What certainly cannot be faulted is the styling: as befits someone with her own clothing line, she and her dancers look fabulous. The Harajuku Girls, four Japanese dancers who have become Stefani's solo trademark, are a tough, tomboyish presence who always win out in tussles with the boy dancers. Unlike Madonna's shows, in which the choreography is often straining for meaning, Stefani offers pure Broadway pizazz.
She finishes with What You Waiting For, her one truly great moment, the loopily magnificent first single that promised so much. Galvanised, she bounds around the stage and you have to wonder why she can't see how much better it is than the cutesy plastic balladry and half-cocked R&B that makes up the rest of the set. Listening to Stefani's hits, you realise how little there is to them, what little effort they make to be real songs: Rich Girl and Wind It Up are just a sample, a hook and a beat; all sparkly tinsel but no substance. As the lights fade, Stefani's twinkling presence disappears in the backstage gloom. With or without songs, she at least knows how to glitter.
· At MEN Arena, Manchester, tonight. Box office: 0844-847 8000. Then touring.
