Designer Insights

Demi Lovato’s “Neon Lights” tour, named after the single on last year’s album release, Demi, is the artist’s third headlining concert tour, and the most elaborate yet. High-tech touches include an app from Wham City Lights that links handheld smartphones with the overall lighting design, pulsing to the beat of the tour’s title song. A tightly woven interplay of high-res video, faux low-res “neon” elements, lighting and special effects adds up to an enormous number of cues per song, and timecode helps keep everything in synch. Yet despite all the visual flourishes, reviewers have praised the production for not overshadowing the main attraction: a remarkable, multi-faceted talent who’s still just 21 years old.

Tool’s lead vocalist, Maynard James Keenan, not only shuns the spotlight, he often performs in random positions — facing the wings or upstage wall, for example — instead of looking out to the audience. There’s a bit more light illuminating the other band members, but the visuals accompanying a live Tool concert are designed to support of the music and its overall vibe, not serve up a larger-than-life display of performing band members. Tool’s guitarist, Adam Jones, plays a key role in the creation of the band’s visuals, for both its music videos and the video seen during the band’s live shows. The band members do not appear in the music videos, either. Instead, the viewer sees a mélange of abstract and representational forms that help serve as each show’s narrative while emerging as their own form art.

Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz tour, in support of her fourth album of the same name, is riding the momentum of the artist’s swing back from acting to music. The tour is not only showcasing Cyrus’ ability to belt out a tune, it’s completing the wrecking-ball-like annihilation of her previous child-idol Hannah Montana persona. (The artist’s twerking spectacle at the MTV VMAs in August, 2013, where Cyrus sang the Bangerz single, “We Can’t Stop,” generated 306,100 tweets per minute.) The album, featuring pop songs with country and Hip Hop influences, was released Oct. 4, and after the completion of a 39-date North American tour (Feb. 14-April 25), the tour has a 22-date run through Europe (May 2-June 15).

The Visual Team Keeps Pace with Beyonce’s Creative Output

As the lead singer of Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé Knowles had already enjoyed considerable success before launching a solo album, Dangerously in Love, more than a decade ago (while Destiny’s Child was in hiatus, in in 2003). By the time Destiny’s Child disbanded, in 2006, the trio sold 60 million albums worldwide. Combining her solo and collaborative efforts, Beyoncé, now 32 years old, has 46 Grammy nominations to her credit and 17 wins.

Pearl Jam toured North America in 2013 with shows that followed the July release of “Mind Your Manners,” the lead single off the band’s 10th studio album, Lightning Bolt (the album debuted a few months later, in mid-October, 2013). As with any big-name act with songs that have achieved iconic status, audiences have come to expect a huge “wow” factor in terms of a complex interplay of visual elements tightly synched with the music. But for Pearl Jam, that mandate was offset with the band’s directive to focus on the music, and not the “stuff” surrounding it.

Fleetwood Mac’s 2013 Live tour, marking the 35^th anniversary of the release of Rumours, combined the talents of original band members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie — the “Fleetwood” and “Mac” namesakes for the band’s formation in 1967 — with those of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who joined the band in 1975.

The Pet Shop Boys duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, (vocals, keyboards, occasional guitar) and Chris Lowe (keyboards, occasional vocals) may not be boys anymore — they’re in their mid- and late-50s — but the electronic pop duo have continued their ability to top the charts through the decades. Their 2013 Electric tour supports the July 2013 album release of the same name — the band’s 12^th. The album was both a popular and critical success, with U.K. chart results besting any of the duo’s albums since the release of Very in 1993. Since the duo first hit the big time in the mid-1980s, they have sold more than 50 million records.

Australian country music singer Keith Urban embarked on his “Light the Fuse” tour, in support of Fuse, his eighth studio album. The tour launched in Cincinnati, OH on July 18 and ran through Oct. 5 in West Palm Beach, FL on its first North American leg. Urban has two more North America tour legs mapped out for Oct. 18-Dec. 8, 2013 and Jan. 9-Feb. 1, 2014. The album’s lead single, “Little Bit of Everything,” debuted in mid-May and the full album was released on Sept. 10.

Although his backing band, The Hooligans, have also achieved a measure of popular and critical acclaim, Bruno Mars, who will be performing at the 2014 Super Bowl Halftime Show, could also probably do pretty well just by cloning himself. Along with a three-octave voice versatile enough to handle a variety of musical genres (not to mention vocal impressions to cover for glitches on Pandora.com), Mars plays electric and acoustic guitar along with the drums.

Justin Bieber’s Believe Tour, which began a year ago and runs through December, has the 19-year-old Canadian and his vast entourage flying around the world with more than 150 shows in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Central and South America, Asia, the Middle East, South Africa and Australia.

Apart from the look of the show’s opening, where Justin Bieber makes a winged entrance, tour director/production designer Tom Marzullo created the show visuals with little more than a one-word directive from Bieber and manager Scooter Braun — to make it “epic.”

The Rolling Stones’ 50 & Counting tour, marking a half century since the band performed their first shows in late 1962, also marks the last time the band can tour with a set design dreamed up by Mark Fisher, whose creativity could be seen in the design for every one of the band’s major touring sets since 1989. Fisher, the 66-year-old founder and managing director of Stufish, passed away June 25, a day after the Stones’ final show on the North American leg of the tour. He died in London after a long illness.

Lindsey Stirling, 26, combines violin performances with dance and performance art, with live shows picking up the momentum generated by her YouTube channel (lindseystomp.com) and her appearances during the 2010 season of America’s Got Talent as the “Hip Hop Violinist.” Along with hip hop, Stirling performs genres ranging from classical music to dubstep. A major goal for LD Joel Reiff, who worked with lighting director Allison Siegel, was to meet the visual expectations set by the artist’s music video performances, seen online since lindseystomp.com got underway in 2007.