{alltv} Live Review: Emily Osment in T.O.

TORONTO - By the time Emily Osment took to the stage Wednesday night at Toronto's Queen Elizabeth Theatre as the SodaPop tour headliner most of her loyal teenaged female fans stood patiently.

However a few youngsters - obviously up way past their bedtime - were content to sit back, hopefully stay awake and avoid another earthquake.

Regardless, Osment, 18, and her four-piece group delivered a sweet and relatively short set of Disney-designed, radio-friendly power pop a la Miley Cyrus and that Jonas Brothers cartel.

The performer, also known for her television and film career, started with the chipper I Hate The Homecoming Queen from last year's debut EP All The Right Wrongs. Wearing a black sleeveless dress and glad-handing fans, Osment quickly went into The Cycle with similar results.

"Thank you so much," she said before encouraging fans to play instruments and become "the future of music."

Although she took to the stage a bit later than scheduled, fans might have been lucky to see Osment at all after telling the audience her tour bus broke down prior to arriving. There was no word on whether Osment felt the earthquake or the upcoming G20 Summit was responsible.

From there the performer moved through material focused on power pop such as the roots-tinged Average Girl and Fight Or Flight, the latter perhaps reminding fans of oldies acts like No Doubt. One highlight however was All The Way Up, a dance-based ditty that had Osment donning glasses whose rims lit up.

Perhaps the highlight -- despite more crowd-pleasers that came such as Let's Be Friends -- was What About Me which had fans singing and clapping along to.

And while Osment was the icing on this six-tiered bill, fans had plenty to cheer about earlier in the night with five supporting acts. None made more of a mark however than The New Cities, another power punk-tinged pop group who definitely had the crowd literally and figuratively hopping. Songs such as Hypertronic Superstar, Leaders Of The Misled and The Cure-ish Dead End Countdown energized both young and younger.

Meanwhile local teen heartthrob Jesse Labelle made a homecoming of sorts with his performance, although noting that he felt butterflies early on. Labelle however managed to work his way through safe, radio-friendly, John Mayer-ish tunes such as Australia, Perfect Accident, I Wanna Run and Easier.

Elsewhere, early openers WOW mixed boy band efforts with dance moves and Alyssa Reid reworked Justin Bieber's One Less Lonely Girl into her own song named One More Lonely Boy. And Danny Fernandes worked the crowd up with Auto-Tune numbers such as Fantasy, Private Dancer and Addicted.

Regardless of the rather formulaic teeny bopper bill, the artists should be commended for reportedly performing at a local sick kids hospital earlier in the day. And by purchasing "SodaPop Balls," fans were able to go to a meet-and-greet after the show with proceeds from the balls going to UNICEF to assist those affected by the earthquake earlier this year in Haiti.