Kiss 108’s annual holiday blowout Jingle Ball is a warts-and-all celebration of pop radio — the noisy ads, the hyped-up hosts, the soaring hooks that draw in listeners by the boatload. The 2017 edition of the show — a tidy nine-act, 3½-hour affair — reflected the youthful, yet less R&B-focused version of pop proffered by the station, offering vocal showcases from a couple of seasoned veterans as well as one certified smash currently residing in the Hot 100’s upper echelons.
Social-media-fueled boy band Why Don’t We was, shrewdly, first on the bill, a move that got their devotees in their seats for the night’s exceedingly prompt 6 p.m. start. “Girl Meets World” alum Sabrina Carpenter’s all-in performance of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and the coy vocal she offered up on the glitchy “First Love” allowed her to flaunt her range in a short time; Max, a vocalist from New York with scattered Nickelodeon credits, was a fireball of soul-pop energy. Berklee alum Charlie Puth let his falsetto fly on the mournful “See You Again.”
Camila Cabello, formerly of the girl-power-forward group Fifth Harmony, offered an emotional set that crested with her slinky postcard “Havana,” the Hot 100’s current No. 3; later in the show her ex-bandmates had an oddly paced set where barn-burning self-esteem-boosters like the manic “Worth It” and the reggae-tinged “Down” were bookended by some of the night’s few quiet moments. Halsey’s reworking of her formerly ubiquitous Chainsmokers collaboration “Closer” into an overly serious piano ballad took some of the air out of the night, although her set recovered when Fifth Harmony’s Lauren Jauregui appeared with the shape-shifting singer on the sumptuous yet wistful “Strangers.”
Kelly Clarkson’s set blended songs from her recent R&B-tinged album “Meaning of Life” (and her blissful new holiday song “Christmas Eve”) with catalog cuts like the lightly funky “Miss Independent” and the guaranteed crowd-pleaser “Since U Been Gone”; she gave a master class in pop vocals, as well as a spirited monologue about the rapture that was occasioned by her and her band’s in-ear monitors blipping out. Fall Out Boy closed the show with a torrid set that showed off their progress from emo-pop standard-bearers to pop alchemists, with newer material like the sultry “Hold Me Tight or Don’t” allowing frontman Patrick Stump to flaunt his own formidable instrument.
Kiss 108 Jingle Ball
With Fall Out Boy, Fifth Harmony, Halsey, Kelly Clarkson, Charlie Puth, Camila Cabello, Max, Sabrina Carpenter, and Why Don’t We
At TD Garden, Sunday
Maura Johnston can be reached at maura@maura.com.