The band starts playing the opening chords for “Fight Fire with Fire” while a giant torch rises from the center of the stage. Just as I start singing the first verse, an enormous flame erupts from the middle of the huge beacon, casting an eerie glow over the stage. The crowd goes wild; they always love all the dramatic staging stuff my tech guys do on tour. There are fireworks, crazy video displays, this huge torch and even a male model who rides onto stage on a white horse to literally sweep me off my feet during “Prince Charming,” one of my biggest hits. The Boston Herald, the L.A. Times and the New York Post have all compared my stage show to Madonna’s most recent over-the-top tour, and the Chicago Tribune even said that mine was more exciting.

Good thing, because it’s almost $120 a ticket for the cheapest seat to see me play. That’s why I begged Mom, Sarah and Mariska to see if we could tape an ABC concert special after this tour for people who couldn’t afford to come. But as usual, I was outvoted. “You’re so much more elite than broadcast television,” Mom had cooed, apparently forgetting that Madonna herself had recently done a broadcast concert. No matter how famous I am, I seriously doubt that at sixteen, I can afford to be more elite than Madonna.

I launch into the “Fight Fire with Fire” chorus, tossing my waist-length curly red hair around the way my award-winning choreographer Lance Mojave taught me. I can almost hear his irritatingly squeaky voice in my head: Oh yeah, work it girl. My hair is my signature. It’s the one thing everyone associates with me first. My mom once hired someone to do a focus group, and 82 percent of Americans checked the box marked “waist-length red hair” when asked to say what they thought of first when they thought of Star Beck. So cutting it is totally out of the question. According to my mom, at least. She promptly nixed my plans when I begged for a bob in July.

By the time the show ends, I’m out of breath, exhilarated and starving. We do two encores, ending with the peppy, upbeat, Latin-flavored hit, “Your Love Is the Air I Breathe,” a number-one single off my third album. It’s the most complicated dance number of the whole show, and I’m backed up by two dozen dancers in brightly colored flamenco outfits. Fireworks explode all around us as I sing the last words. Then, with one final wave to the roaring crowd, I run offstage, while my band continues playing until the curtains go down.