Hammersmith Apollo, W6

Nelly Furtado arrived in town with a big show to promote her third and best album yet. Loose has rejuvenated the career of the Portuguese-Canadian singer, selling more than four million copies since its release in the summer. The album was produced, for the most part, by the R’n’B beatmaster Timbaland, who gave a propulsive rhythmic edge to a collection of songs bursting with energy, wit and glamour. At 28, and surfing such a wave of renewed momentum, Furtado has got everything going for her. So how exactly did she manage to make such a hash of this performance?

It started promisingly with footage of a helicopter arriving projected on to a screen suspended in mid-air, as a black scrim fell to reveal a white, three-tiered stage. The musicians looked dapper in black, and some dancers were huffing and puffing at the front. But where was Furtado? Wearing a nondescript, mauve dress, and embedded among the band at the back of the highest tier, she did not look like the star of the show as she set off with Say It Right, a song from the new album, yet somehow lacking the spark and spontaneity of the recorded version. The strange “crunk” reworking of her 2001 hit Turn Off the Light, which followed, was an ambitious move, but one that rendered the song virtually unrecognisable until it reached the chorus. A similar fate befell her other big hit, I’m Like a Bird, which was stripped of its melody and given a funky hip-hop overhaul.

Furtado led the dancers and the band — often from behind — through a mishmash of theatrical set pieces that never quite struck the right note. Not a great dancer herself, she gave the professionals too much rope, notably during Wait For You, which ended with two of them writhing about like dying snakes on the floor. The nadir came during Showtime, when Furtado, in a long black dress, gave a screeching, yet curiously charisma-free impression of a torch singer, while one of the female dancers mounted the back of her male partner as if scrambling up a wall.

An “unplugged” sequence produced a turgid version of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy, followed by the ballad Try, which sounded a little more heartfelt. And things picked up with a sturdy rendition of All Good Things (Come to an End), a noticeably superior song, written for her by Chris Martin.

But despite all the hustle and bustle, Furtado never sounded confident or convincing and especially not when she started shrieking “England! England!” at the end of Forca, the official anthem for the 2004 European Football Championship in Portugal.

She finally hit her stride, albeit much too late, with the fabulously rhythmic No Hay Igual and an encore of her recent UK No 1 hit Maneater. Kicking off her massively high-heeled shoes, she looked comfortable for the first time, as she threw herself into the song with an enthusiasm that, for once, seemed unforced.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010