SAN JOSE, Calif. — Demi Lovato’s It’s Not That Deep Tour is just not that good.

It’s not necessarily that bad either. But it’s certainly forgettable — a tour with very little to say and even less to offer beyond 90 minutes of decent distraction.

So, yeah, what some 8,500 fans witnessed on Monday night (May 11) at Chase Center in San Francisco was — as advertised — not that deep. And that’s OK, since we certainly have enough serious matters to draw our attention these days.

But it’s not OK that her show is simply lacks originality, with dance-pop scene after dance-pop scene that feels like it was rescued from Britney’s trash heap. There were 22 songs and easily twice as many clichés in a show that ran a little over 90 minutes but somehow managed to feel much longer.

What saved the concert from being bad was — no surprise here — Lovato’s voice, which continues to be one of the strongest in all of contemporary pop music.

Lovato, of course, has pursued many different musical genres, vibes and personas during a professional career that dates back to appearing on the children’s TV series “Barney & Friends” early in the 21st century.

Yet, where she’s at now — in terms of all those things — is arguably the most ill-fitting of the bunch. Having done some decent work with her previous two rock-oriented albums, Lovato dove into the EDM-fueled dance-pop realm with pretty iffy results on 2025’s “It’s Not That Deep.” The problem is that the often-dizzying club-heavy techno arrangements, besides coming across as both plastic and commonplace, detract from her greatest strength — which, again, is her voice.

Taking the stage just after 9 p.m., Lovato boogied alongside her six dancers, sans a band, to prerecorded tracks as she opened the set with a trio of mediocre one-word titles off the new album — “Fast,” “Kiss” and “Frequency” — all of which somehow managed to sound even more cold, distant and less interesting than they do on the record.

The visuals were equally unimpressive, with a stage design that wasn’t quite a cardboard cutout but also didn’t feel that far off from one either, with her team sparing all expenses to create something that looked like an urban-industrial scene from a Roger Corman movie. The special effects came courtesy of a video screen, as opposed to any sort of 3D experience, with images of snowfall and later fireworks proving to be very weak substitutes for the real thing.

The whole thing just felt very cheap and dated, like Lovato had picked up the visuals from Lady Gaga’s garage sale.

Thankfully, that opening dance-pop segment — one of the show’s four acts (plus encore), all of which were unremarkable and all but indistinguishable from one another — eventually ended and Lovato opened the next with a dramatic vocal showcase of “Heart Attack” delivered from the top of the stage set. That powerful piece from 2013’s “Demi,” the album where the singer managed to strike her most convincing and enjoyable balance of dance-pop and Top 40 sounds, strongly connected with the crowd.

The 33-year-old New Mexico native had some luck with upping the dance-pop quotient on “Confident” — a song that has always come across as Lovato’s best Spears impersonation — but, in general, the newer, synth-y versions of the older songs fell flat.

Lovato made the wise decision to play it straight with “Skyscraper,” the powerhouse vocal ballad that highlights 2011’s “Unbroken,” and the result was the best moment of the night.

She’d make a few attempts to engage with the crowd, some of which felt about as authentic as the stage set she was performing in front of. Yet, it was easy to hear the joy in her voice as she spoke about husband Jordan Lutes, aka Juno Award-nominated Canadian artist Jutes.

“This is my first tour married,” exclaimed Lovato, mentioning that Jutes was currently on tour in Europe. ” I have such an incredible husband … I miss him so much.”

The show meandered to a close, with each dance-pop number evoking thoughts along the lines of “Haven’t I see/heard this all before?”

Yet, the cliche-rich dance routines and generic dance grooves would get interrupted every so often by a nice vocal showcase — such as on “Ghost” (perhaps the only track that is really worth hearing more than once from the new album) and “Stone Cold” (from 2015’s “Confident”) — which was enough to keep the show from falling below a solid “C” rating.

After closing the main set in lackluster fashion with “Really Don’t Care,” Lovato kicked off an encore with more dance-pop mediocrity, delivered this time with sunglasses on, with “Sorry for Myself” followed by crowd favorite “Cool for the Summer.”

Demi Lovato setlist:

1. “Fast”

2. “Kiss”

3. “Frequency”

4. “Heart Attack”

5. “Tell Me You Love Me”

6. “Confident”

7. “Low Rise Jeans”

8. “Fantasy”

9. “Solo”

10. “Skyscraper”

11. “Give Your Heart a Break”

12. “Say It”

13. “Little Bit”

14. “Ghost”

15. “Here All Night”

16. “Joshua Tree”

17. “Happy Ending”

18. “Let You Go”

19. “Stone Cold”

20. “Sorry Not Sorry”

21. “Really Don’t Care”

Encore:

22. “Sorry to Myself”

23. “Cool for the Summer”

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