Demi Lovato and Ludacris light up the stage before Fourth of July fireworks on the Ben Franklin Parkway

The Wawa Welcome America July 4 concert returned to the Ben Franklin Parkway on Tuesday night, a year after the annual event was cut short after two police officers were injured by bullets fired outside the grounds.

This year’s bill boasted the biggest names the pre-fireworks show has drawn since before the pandemic, with Disney-star-turned-pop-rock-singer Demi Lovato headlining and rapper-movie star Ludacris opening. Philly music director Adam Blackstone was also on the bill.

This year’s show had its own difficulties. Shortly after 5:30 p.m., the event was “on pause” due to a threat of severe weather, and attendees were urged to evacuate the Parkway. Many did, but many stayed as occasional rain drizzled down and gray skies lingered over head.

Just as the crowd was beginning to get frustrated or wonder if it was best to go home, the site reopened shortly before 8 p.m.

Lovato hit the the stage, located on the City Hall side of the Parkway Oval backed by a hard-rocking, all-female band.

By that time, it was 10 p.m., half an hour after the explosions in the sky had been scheduled to begin.

While fireworks fans waited patiently, Lovatics — as the singer’s155 million Instagram followers call themselves — were entertained with a 50-minute set of rebel attitude and a message of empowerment.

Opening with “Confident” from the 2015 album of the same name, Lovato declared: “I make my own choice, b-, I run this show. … No, you can’t make me behave.”

With a hard-hitting band not concerned with subtlety and plenty of vocal peer, Lovato emphasized recent pop-punky material, with many songs from the 2022 album with an expletive in its title. Others, like the unapologetic “Sorry Not Sorry” from 2017′s “Tell Me You Love Me,” were delivered with more muscle than present in their recorded versions.

Things did slow down and soften up a bit with “Skyscraper” and “Give Your Heart a Break” before turning up the volume again with “Heart Attack” and Lovato’s seasonally appropriate signature song “Cool for the Summer.” And then, it was 10:50 p.m. and time for fireworks.

Despite the lengthy weather delay that had fans waiting outside the gates for over two hours, the music got going only an hour behind schedule. Ludacris, who was scheduled to follow Adam Blackstone, instead switched places and came on first. (Rumor had it that the rapper, born Christopher Bridges, had a plane to catch to his hometown of Atlanta for a late-night show.)

The half-hour show Luda put on was the work of a highly skilled professional entertainer getting what might have been a grumpy crowd immediately into the swing of things. That started with his DJ signaling the wait was over by spinning Rick Ross and Migos records.

Then, in a brief interview shown on the video screens before taking the stage, he promised there was no place he’d rather be than the City of Brotherly Love.

The Fast & Furious franchise star somewhat counterintuitively opened with his ode to his hometown, “Welcome to Atlanta,” before getting back to catering to the Philly crowd with his 2001 hit “Area Codes,” showing his local telephonic knowledge by stating his belief that all the best women in the world reside in the 215 and 267 area codes.

The rapper’s fast-paced set was packed with a parade of hits from his hip-hop heyday in the first century’s first decade, with two from 2010 getting a big reaction: “Baby,” an early Justin Bieber hit that Luda was featured on, and another credited to DJ Khaled, in which Ludacris went into full pandering mode, telling Philly sports fans he heard it was the city’s favorite anthem: “All I Do Is Win.”

“It’s good to be home,” Adam Blackstone said, taking the stage following Ludacris. “Did Luda blaze or what?”

The artist who grew up in Trenton and Willingboro has a long history working with big name acts like Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake and was Rihanna’s music director at the Super Bowl half-time show this year.

Last year, he released his Grammy-nominated solo debut album, Legacy. On Tuesday, after his big band, the Legacy Project, rendered a sensitive, jazz instrumental version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” he dug into tracks from the album, starting with a percolating take on Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.”

Blackstone can handle himself behind a microphone, but he’s more of a musician than a singer, and he did well to bring on Kevin Ross to handle lead vocals on a trio of jazzy-R&B covers: Grover Washington’s “Just The Two Of Us,” Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do For Love,” and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody.”

And Blackstone had one more trick up his sleeve. That was to bring out WanMor, the vocal group consisting of the four teenage sons of Wanya Morris of Boyz II Men. The quartet showed that they inherited the a cappella gene, and then brought down the house with a kinetic cover of their father’s band’s “Motownphilly.”