The Best Concerts of 2023: Taylor Swift, U2, Beyon
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Everyone feels it: It can feel like a chore getting to a show. We all know the routine: dealing with the online ticket queues for bigger concerts, navigating the extra fees at checkout for shows large and small, and then, once you’ve experienced that thrill of victory, remembering that you will, in fact, have to leave the house. But what jubilation when you’ve run the final gauntlet and settled into a show that, for two hours or so, feels life-changing. (Make that about six and a half, if you were catching all the opening acts on the Eras Tour.) If the ability to make you instantly forget a $50 parking charge isn’t testament to the power of music, nothing is.
More from Variety
Here’s a personal selection of 25 of the most galvanizing shows of 2023:
Taylor Swift at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona (March 17-18)
If there’s anything this tour proved, it’s that spoilers really don’t spoil much of anything, when it comes to Taylor Swift. How many fans didn’t have the setlist committed to memory before the tour hit their town? How many hadn’t already watched at least one fan-shot illicit version before catching it in the flesh? Yet, if there’s anything that any of us who caught the opening stand in the Phoenix area in March can lord over anyone else, it’s that first-time, one-time thrill of figuring out just what the hell the Eras Tour was actually going to be, since next to nothing had been revealed in advance. Forty-four songs, at a curfew-defying three-hours-plus? Bruce Springsteen might super-size his bare-bones performances, but theatrics-heavy pop superstars don’t, or didn’t, till 2023. Nor did going through an entire catalog, album by album, over the course of a single show really occur to much of anyone — classic rocker or popper — till Swift set the new standard for how to handle the breadth of a career. She established she’s already lived a full musical lifetime over the last 17 years as all the old Taylors come to the phone in this set, from country-pop teen Tay to the Swift who makes every performance number a mini-Broadway musical. The only comparable phenomenon was Beatlemania, but, heretical as it sounds to say, Swift’s accomplishment is almost diminished by comparing the 35-minute sets the Fabs did back in the day to the endless series of hat tricks she pulled off on this run. (Read Variety‘s original opening-night review here, and review of the U.S. tour’s closing night in L.A. here.)
Brandi Carlile, Joni Mitchell and More at the ‘Joni Jam’ at the Gorge in Washington (June 9-11)
The “Joni Jam” that took place on the middle of three Brandi Carlile-led nights at the Gorge could reasonably be called a worship service, with an choir led by the host singing Joni Mitchell’s hymns back to her. Those covers — from Annie Lennox, Sarah McLachlan, Lucius and others — would have been reason enough to make a spiritual pilgrimage to the middle of Washington state. But then there was the matter of Mitchell’s own hard-fought resurrection as a performer, after a 2015 aneurysm had threatened to sideline her forever, doing solo turns or delectable duets as the giant outdoor stage turned into a slightly formalized version of one of her private house parties. On the nights before and after this Joni-fest, Carlile did her own rarities-filled “friends and family” set, welcomed opening acts Marcus Mumford and Allison Russell, and devoted an evening to Tanya Tucker opening for her own supergroup, the Highwomen, bringing together some of the greatest country music of the 1970s and 2020s. The magic caravan reconvened four months later at the Hollywood Bowl for a follow-up Joni Jam, just as strong. But it may be the nights with the ladies of the canyon in Washington that interstate Joni and Brandi devotees cherish most. (Read Variety‘s original reviews of the Gorge weekend here and here, and of the Hollywood Bowl show here.)
U2 at Sphere in Las Vegas (Sept. 29)
Spectacle is underrated. Although that sentiment may not jibe with rock ‘n’ roll orthodoxy, it was difficult to walk away from U2’s opening night in the thunderdome feeling any other way. The just-over-two-hour show marks the apotheosis of a bigger-is-better ethos that has recurred throughout the band’s career — and which, now that they’re in their 60s, they’re not about to give up for the sake of some sort of unbecoming false modesty. “Who spiked your drink?” Bono asked the crowd early on opening night. It was a rhetorical question, but one answer is: Willie Williams did. He has been U2’s creative director for 40 years and (with the help of some other directors, who also contributed original setpieces for the giant screen) he’s outdone himself with a series of tableaus that blow your mind, then give it a helpful mid-show rest, then return for further sensory overload at the end. It’s to the band’s great credit that their 2023 version of the “Achtung Baby” track “Acrobat,” performed sans any spectacular visuals whatsoever, is as much of a highlight as the Attack of the 366-Foot Wall stuff. These surfaces feels like they should be measured in square miles, not square feet, but U2 does not feel dwarfed in their glow (Read Variety‘s original review of U2’s opening night here.)
Beyoncé in ‘Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé’ in movie theaters (December)
When “only in theaters” follows “only in stadiums.” This might seem like a cheat for a Best Concerts list, to count the captured-for-posterity version released on the big screen, as first happened with the Eras Tour and then Beyoncé’s. Is there any way the movie version could be as good as, or even better than, the live thing? With “Renaissance,” there’s an argument to be made — maybe a specious argument, but an argument — that it’s the real apogee of the tour and not just an afterthought. For one thing, if you’re a fan, you want all the costuming from the tour, not just the limited selection at any given tour stop. On Taylor Swift’s tour, she would mostly wear variations on the same outfits each night, but Bey went with wholesale-different looks at various points over the months, reaching some peaks of abstract couture that put the alien in “Alien Superstar.” At first it seems irritating when the film’s editors bounce back and forth between costumes during the same number; eventually it seems completely necessary. Another advantage of the film is seeing the evolution of Ivy Blue’s nightly cameo, though she’s as magnetic as an amateur at the beginning as she is as a seasoned pro at the end. The other off-stage subplots aren’t always as riveting as what’s on-stage. But when the film is offering a closeup view of the oft-magnificent combination of fashion and choreography, there’s not much reason to be sorry you’re in a cozy AMC instead of SoFi’s upper deck.
Elvis Costello in ‘100 Songs and More’ at the Gramercy Theatre in New York (Feb. 9-22)
No major singer-songwriter in history has ever pulled off what Elvis Costello did at the Gramercy across 10 mind-boggling nights in February, when he performed 250 distinct songs, with virtually no repeats. (“Peace, Love and Understanding” was the exception to that rule, getting reprised as the finale each night, albeit in 10 different arrangements.) Yes, there’ve been other impressive career-spanning stunts before, from bands including Phish and Sparks, but nothing prior that had a singular figure of this stature not just rifling through a 45-year catalog but reinterpreting it, alone or with guests, rearranging tunes and grouping them together for thematic purposes. The results, in the six out of 10 shows we witnessed, were staggeringly great. The first night had Costello by himself, only playing songs he wrote before “My Aim is True” came out in ’77; another show had a hastily assembled Irish-Americana band accompanying him on songs having to do with immigration or travel; a full theatrical cast came in on a different night to finish the show with a condensed workshop version of a Broadway musical he’s been working on… et cetera. Hovering over the whole thing in spirit was collaborator Burt Bacharach, who died the night before the run opened, occasioning a wealth of more Bacharach-David covers than planned. The official billing of the run — “100 Songs and More” — was an almost comically serious example of “underpromise and overdeliver,” as Costello did exactly two and a half times the amount of promised material. The breadth of it was, for lack of a more original alliteration, beyond belief. (Read Variety‘s original review here.)
Boygenius at the Hollywood Bowl (Oct. 31)
For a Halloween show at L.A.’s most storied venue, the trio Boygenius played dress-up, twice over. First coming out as the three members of the Trinity. Later, they borrowed each other’s Nudie-style jackets and sang lead vocals on each other’s solo songs. When the answers to “What do you want to be?” are (a) deities and (b) fellow bandmates, you’re in good hands for Halloween. This was the fourth time through the SoCal area for Boygenius during 2023, and we caught them earlier in the year, at the intimate Pomona Fox tour warmup that preceded a bigger Coachella bow, and as part of the Re:SET festival that passed through Pasadena. But the Bowl was destined to be their show of shows, even if they didn’t enlist much in the way of guest stars — just Dave Grohl, drumming furiously early on in “Satanist,” which was all the cameo any one show needs. (Well, Phoebe Bridgers’ dog, Maxine, also cameo-ed, dressed up as the lamb of God.) It felt like a kind of culmination of not just their own extraordinary year but of a whole history of Southern California rock (never mind that Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, unlike Bridgers, are not natives). Explosive guitar noise and snark were the entry points for a set that eventually settled into the most gorgeous two- and three-part harmonies this side or any side of Laurel Canyon. (Read Variety‘s original review of the show here.)
Allison Russell at the El Rey Theatre in L.A. (Nov. 1)
Russell’s star power is obvious, as she’s risen to popular and critical acclaim with her first two solo albums, 2021’s “Outside Child” and this year’s “The Returner.” But she’s determined to have some moon power, too, reflecting that light back on her contemporaries. And so her 2023 tour was as much about her band of female players, the Rainbow Coalition, as she could make it. Russell set that ensemble as the tour’s opening act, and then, for her headlining sets, joined them in a semi-circle, sometimes standing rear-and-center, sometimes stepping forward into the more traditional spotlight. Nothing could have better accentuated to the spirit of community she fosters in and out of her music. On this particular night at L.A.’s El Rey, the band was additionally joined by Wendy and Lisa, effortlessly fleshing out the arrangements as if they’d been along for the whole tour. Russell has joy in her group with a capital J — Joy Clark — and also a small J. It’s hard to imagine how, as secular gigs go, we could possibly get more of a joyful noise in a single show, short of the Staple Singers somehow bridging the heavenly divide to do a reunion gig.
Willie Nelson and Friends at ‘Long Story Short: Willie 90’ at the Hollywood Bowl (April 29-30)
“Thanks for coming to my dad’s birthday party,” said Micah Nelson, a few songs into the first evening of a two-night tribute to Willie Nelson at the Hollywood Bowl, a show that did fall right on the icon’s 90th. “Welcome to the after-birth party,” Micah quipped at the beginning of night 2. Six hours of music spread across the two nights — with almost no repeats in the setlist — felt highly warranted, given Willie’s catalog and Rolodex. One of the few tunes repeated both Saturday and Sunday was Lukas Nelson’s nearly soundalike version of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” but it is one of the dozen greatest songs ever written. Among non-relations, Dave Matthews had the most soulful solo rearrangement, with an amazing “Funny How Time Slips Away.” But the duets created some of the most beautiful or poignant moments, from Norah Jones’ and Allison Russell’s haunting “Seven Spanish Angels” to Rosanne Cash’s nurturing support of Kris Kristofferson during “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again).” That’s not to mention the climactic moments both evenings that involved the birthday boy himself: When Willie Nelson and Keith Richards team up to sing that they’re gonna “Live Forever,” you believe them. (Read Variety‘s original reviews of the shows here and here.)
SZA at the Forum in Inglewood (March 22)
SZA proved one of the delights of 2022 — due to her very late-breaking album, last December’s “SOS” — and 2023, with an arena tour that made good on all the pent-up waiting after five years of suspense. No one would accuse her two albums or this tour of being low-energy, but the contemplative image that fronted the “SOS” cover carried over to a similar bit of staging in her shows, with the singer in a gown so poufy it was clear she wasn’t going anywhere, even though she was perched at the end of a diving board… an apt metaphor for someone reporting in right from the edge of her most fraught and contrary emotions. The production design headed even deeper into symbolism when she sang the new album’s “Special” from a raft that floated around the Forum, lit from afar by the beacon of a lighthouse she never quite arrived at. “I used to be special, but you made me hate me,” SZA sang, hardly sounding like a reigning queen of her scene… but purging in the midst of aerial adoration may be the best revenge. Why kill your ex when you can slay 18,000 people?
Laufey with the LA Philharmonic at the Ford in L.A. (Sept. 16)
Laufey’s ascendency to major-league pop artist is one of the most heartening musical phenomena of the last couple of years… or should be, to anyone who has any particular affection for the sounds and songwriting styles of the Great American Songbook years. As schooled as she is in the golden eras of 20th century popular music, though, Laufey is writing her own great American songbook, or at least getting a very creditable start on one. Performing with the LA Philharmonic as her backing band at the Ford, Laufey did do three covers from the classic era — “I Wish You Love,” “Misty” and “The Nearness of You” — but the other 18 were her own, virtually all of them feeling completely of a piece with the stuff of Hoagy Carmichael. Or of Astrud Gilberto, given that her big breakout song in 2023, “From the Start,” was a bossa nova. These references may have mean much to the very young crowds that hang on her every word (and sing and shout along with a lot of them); they may recognize that there’s something nostalgic to what Laufey does, but they’re thinking of her torch songs as relatable bedroom-pop. Laufey’s just your normal all-Icelandic-Asian-American girl with a flawless alto and a virtuoso’s ability to switch it up between piano, electric guitar and cello, while never breaking a sweat in front of the west coast’s preeminent symphony. What’s not relatable about that? (Read Variety‘s original review of the show here.)
Doja Cat at Crypto.com Arena in L.A. (Nov. 2)
The biggest diva tours of 2023 — those by Taylor Swift and Beyonce — were in a race to see how many costume and production design changes could be packed into one show. Doja Cat, though, took a maverick path, not surprisingly. The singer stuck with just two costuming choices in the performance… and a single dominant color; unlike Swift, Doja Cat spends her entire show in her red era. Or “Scarlet,” to take an obvious cue from the title of both the tour and her latest album. The set was dominated by the performance of 15 of 17 songs on “Scarlet.” That extreme emphasis on just-released material is a pretty gutsy move, even before considering that Doja Cat is going to spend nearly the entire evening wearing a single literally gutsy costume — a skin-tight bodysuit that’s a stylized representation of a body’s crimson internal musculature — while bathed primarily in red (or an orange-red) light. Doja Cat is too savvy and certainly too visually attuned an artist to pick such basic core elements and then let them linger in any kind of monotony. This tour, produced with Silent House, is a successful exercise in how to pick a vibe and mostly stick with it, resisting the trend toward revolving-door variety and flat-out maximalism. She spends the set doing a great deal of physically expressive movement in that fleshless-looking costume, with a lot of interestingly choreographed dancers and the occasional prop — or combination prop/dancer, like the giant eye that follows her at one point, trailing an optic nerve. In a show that literally uses viscera as part of the costume design, the Scarlet Tour is every bit as viscerally captivating as it means to be. And the setlist’s gradual shift from hard-ass hip-hop to a more seductive R&B effectively mirrors the arc of the album she’s celebrating. (Read Variety‘s original review of the show here.)
The Manhattan Transfer at Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. (Dec. 15)
After a 50-year run (rounding down just a little, actually), the Manhattan Transfer opted to call it a night with an international anniversary tour that turned into a farewell tour, capped by one final evening at L.A.’s home of the Philharmonic, Walt Disney Concert Hall. For the occasion, the vocal quartet augmented its usual crackerjack backing trio with the addition of the Diva Jazz Orchestra on about half the selections. But the Transfer are really a symphony of voices in their own right. So getting bonus sax and trombone solos on the jazzier numbers felt like a lusciously decadent dessert on top of what the regular lineup has been offering every night on the road for decades. The closest recent comparison would be Elton John, who also decided to go out while still in top form as a performer. The Transfer would run an arguably even greater risk if they went on indefinitely; lowering the keys for a solo act due to age is different than doing it for everyone in a vocal quartet. So you can understand why they might want to wrap things up while still at full harmonic prowess — but the Disney Hall show was so good, so unassailable, all you could think was: too soon. Their takes on “vocalese” made that technique of turning jazz instrumentals into vocal showcases seem like an alien language few will ever be privileged or accomplished enough to learn. Individually, Cheryl Bentyne’s high notes on “Cantaloop” and Janis Siegel’s eternally girlish tone on “The Boy From New York City” led into “Birdland,” an epic finale whose tone felt even more suspenseful than usual, knowing its jubilant climax is not scheduled to have any epilogues. If anyone ever wanted to take a lesson on how to go out on a high, this was it.
Lauryn Hill and the Fugees at the Forum in Inglewood (Nov. 5)
A Ms. Lauryn Hill show is never going to be one for fans who are sissies about little things like bedtimes. The set times were even more uncertain on this tour, given that there was a nightly Fugees reunion set to squeeze in amid what she’d normally do as a solo attraction. But sleeplessness on a school night was very much rewarded on this second of two shows Hill and the Fugees did on a swing through SoCal, at the Forum (the first having been across town at Crypto.com Arena). Hill admitted that she was a little rough of voice, and compared her tonality to Mavis Staples’ — a contextual reset that maybe helped the audience embrace the idea that we were getting a woman’s vocal take on “Miseducation,” not a debutante’s. There’s a regality to Hill’s presence on stage, of course, so at the Forum show, it was disarming and charming to see her step back a little from her usual sense of total control as a parade of guests took to the stage, some foreseen, some apparently surprising to her. Hill looked flattered to have Nas came by for three songs in her preliminary set, before Lil Wayne and Cypress Hill took turns in the Fugees’ part of the show. All this, and the sun wasn’t even up by the time the show ended.
Hozier at the Santa Barbara Bowl (Oct. 28)
Don’t hate Hozier just because a significant portion of the population has decided he’s the ideal man. Sometimes we just need someone in this world who writes deeply hooky songs that compel people, with justification, to wave their arms in an amphitheater or arena… who is conversant in philosophy, literature and poetry, and lets those things bleed into his thoughtful lyrics… who has a sense of humor about venturing into areas that might seem pretentious with anyone else… who has the chops to be a guitar hero, but instead just peels off a perfect one here and there as a bonus… and who all the girls want to sleep with, and all the boys want to be (and also sleep with). Taking all this appeal into account, there’s no great mystery why his 2023 tour was an instant sellout, even without any recent major hits, and a 2024 add-on is headed toward the same full houses. At his SoCal shows this fall, Hozier made fans feel he was taking them into the mystic, but the music never lost sight of an earthy core. Another thing you can’t blame him for: how much the concerts feel like church, even if he never meant the title of his original signature to be quite that spiritual.
Jack White at the Belasco in L.A. (January 13)
No one in rock ‘n’ roll puts on more consistently thrilling shows nowadays than White, and his surprise gig at downtown’s Belasco, a one-night surprise epilogue to an already completed tour, was even more exhilarating than most. Maybe it didn’t hurt that he was thinking of it as a “family and friends” concert that had everyone from Doja Cat to Conan O’Brien to members of Metallica looking on from the wings. Maybe having a side-stage contingent like that provides some extra motivation, if you’re considering doing a 55-minute encore? The cliché would be to say that, two and a half hours in, White had left it all on the stage, except that he never really betrays any hint of exhaustibility on stage… always leaving the sense that he’s still got more in him, even after 23 almost entirely intense numbers. (Read Variety‘s original review here.)
Nick Cave at the Orpheum in L.A. (Oct. 27)
Cave has toured in different configurations, of course — most recently with sometimes creative partner Warren Ellis — but this year’s outing was billed as a solo tour, notwithstanding the presence of Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood on bass. It was interesting how much distance Greenwood put between himself and the boss on stage, in a “don’t worry, I’ve got my in-ears; forget that I’m here” kind of way. Cave probably doesn’t demand that level of modesty and respect from a sideman, but you can see why he gets it, as one of rock’s most commanding presences, with or without a loud noise in tow. In the tour that culminated with three shows at L.A.’s Orpheum, Cave was as funny and giving in his commentary between songs as he was grave and intense when his hands would take to the keys again. This is not his image, so I could see that some people didn’t get that he was exercising his sense of humor when I went on Twitter and posted a passing joke that figures into his stage patter every night, saying that the next song “requires some audience participation: We sing the song, and you shut the fuck up.” (It’s worth noting that this instruction to the audience for “Carnage” came right after a song in which he did invite the crowd to participate, the more whimsical “Balcony Man.”) I’d almost go so far as to call Cave’s stage presence on this tour delightful, if that just didn’t seem like the wrong word to apply — at all — for a fellow who spends so much of a show reaching into his gut. Whether he’s being playful or playing the designated mourner, he does pull you “Into My Arms.”
Olivia Rodrigo at the Theatre at Ace Hotel (Oct. 9)
Rodrigo doesn’t kick off her U.S. tour until early 2024. But she’ll have a challenge in having any of those arena gigs be as satisfying as the storytelling one-off she did with producer/co-writer Dan Nigro in downtown L.A. for an AmEx-sponsored livestream. Nigro was a great foil for Rodrigo, on stage as he is in the studio, as she shared anecdotes behind the writing and recording of her excellent “Guts” album. With Nigro alternating between acoustic guitar and piano, the pair were joined by three backup singers and an additional acoustic guitarist/keyboardist for a set that encompassed the new songs “Vampire,” “Lacy,” “Ballad of a Home Schooled Girl,” “The Grudge,” “Teenage Dream,” “Get Him Back” and “All American Bitch,” with the previous album’s “Traitor” as a show-ending bonus. Rodrigo is not one to actually spill her guts about her private life in front of a 1,600-strong audience, even with her creative partner there to help put her guard down. But talking about process is enough, when it’s resulted in an album as strong as this one. And the loveliness of the acoustic treatments — not just on well-suited ballads like “Lacy” but the album’s hardest-rocking numbers — half-made you wish she’d do the whole ’24 tour in this stripped-down, conversational format. Bad idea, right? (Read Variety‘s original account of the performance here.)
‘Love Rising’ Benefit at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville (March 20)
At Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, a cast of mostly locally based stars, including Maren Morris, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, Yola, Sheryl Crow, Allison Russell, Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell — plus one key out-of-towner, the Irishman Hozier — joined up with a host of Tennessee drag artists to protest state legislation aimed at cross-dressing performers, trans youth and same-sex marriage. The four-hour “Love Rising” benefit filled the hall with fans and LGBTQ+ community members and their allies and found a bigger international audience being livestreamed via the Veeps platform. No one received more of a hero’s welcome than Morris, who’d recently gone out on a limb by standing up for trans youth and their families in a headline-making online debate with fellow country star Jason Aldean’s wife, Brittany Aldean, while most mainstream stars held their tongues. She looked sharp in formal black-tie half-drag (a recurring theme among a lot of folks playing Nashville this year), performing “The Middle” while drag queen Alexia Noelle Paris accompanied her in an interpretive dance. But the most affecting moment might have been Joy Oladokun previewing a new number, “Somehow,” dedicated to anyone else growing up non-white and queer in middle America, as she did. (Read Variety‘s original review here.)
Peter Gabriel at the Forum in Inglewood (Oct. 13)
Gabriel hadn’t toured since 2012, so you might expect that fans could be a little impatient at the singer wanting to go digging in fresh dirt at these 2023 shows with 11 songs a night from an album he hadn’t even released yet, “i/o.” (He had released most of the songs individually as streaming tracks by the time the tour hit Los Angeles, but it was still safe to say they were largely unfamiliar.) But thinking that wouldn’t fly would be underestimating Gabriel’s audience, which seemed perfectly content to follow where he would lead, with some faith that “Sledgehammer” and “Solsbury Hill” would be there as the first- and second-act closers. It helped that he started out the shows on the most personal note possible, appearing alone at the beginning, in very chatty form, before bringing out trusty sidekick Tony Levin, then the other players, to perform some of the early songs as if they were doing a world-music hootenanny — before things finally got as big and spectacular as you’d expect from the early ’70s’ master of rock theatrics. Poignant material like the new “And Still,” about his mother’s passing, was ultimately juxtaposed with crowd-pleasers like “Big Time,” adding up to something that felt as much like a complete worldview as a concert.
Brandy Clark at the Troubadour in West Hollywood (Nov. 4)
Is Clark one of our best songwriters… or one of our best singers? Can she be both? Her media fan club has focused so much on her writing prowess — understandably — that we’ve sometimes forgotten to remember to mention her pure vocal strength. There was a cure for any such oversight when Clark took to the road this year, thanks to two mid-set covers she included in her shows in pointing to her influences — K.T. Oslin’s “80s Ladies” and the Trisha Yearwood hit “The Song Remembers When.” The tour also included a couple of key songs she co-wrote but hasn’t been associated with as a singer, the “Shucked” song “Walls” (from her Tony-nominated Broadway score) and the Miranda Lambert country smash “Mama’s Broken Heart.” With those songs resetting the dial a bit to help form a more holistic view of Clark’s strengths, you could marvel afresh at the delicacy of her delivery of a couple of the past year’s most emotionally devastating songs, “Buried” and “Dear Insecurity,” or the actorly slyness of a “Pray to Jesus.” And hearing her sing the heartbreakingly self-deprecating “Who You Thought I Was,” you realize she’s not who we thought she was — she’s even better.
Missy Elliott at Yaamava’ Theater in Highland (May 19)
If you’re seeing this and wondering why Missy Elliott didn’t come to your city, you’re hardly alone. She didn’t come to any cities this year, bar three: Las Vegas, for the Lovers & Friends festival in May; the Essence Music Festival, in July; and, somewhat mysteriously, a 2500-seat resort/casino in out-of-the-way Highland, Calif. Shouldn’t a legend who’s celebrating her newfound status as a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee be doing a long, major tour? But Elliott works on her own very intermittent schedule, not according to anyone else’s timetable. All we know from her Yaamava’ Resort & Casino gig is that Elliott remains in top form, for someone who rarely performs; you would have thought she’s been rehearsing this band and these dancers constantly and this was just another night on a long, adrenaline-driven road trip. She presented herself as the full package: looking great, sounding great, energized by the crowd and buoyed by her own natural bon vivant-ancy, on top of the production values you’d expect from a show built to travel. Let’s hope she ramps this up into a real tour, sooner rather than later. Even though we’re no longer in a down period for female hip-hop artists, actual royalty is still very much needed in our midst. (Read Variety‘s original review here.)
‘Nuggets’ Tribute at the Alex Theatre in Glendale (May 19)
In 1972, the famous “Nuggets” compilation album waxed nostalgic for the garage-rock of the mid-1960s. Just over 50 years later, we’re nostalgic from a very long distance, for that nostalgia that was wistful from a very short one. It’s not just about the songs that were anthologized on the original double-LP, though; it’s about a whole punk-rock, back-to-rock-basics movement that the album played at least some part in kick-starting, which we still feel the effects of today. Fortunately, the man who compiled “Nuggets” a half-century-plus ago is still around today, and ready, willing and eager to rock: Lenny Kaye, host of a tribute show that went down in L.A. under the beneficial auspices of the Wild Honey charity. (A new five-LP limited edition of “Nuggets” was also released by Warner just prior to the show, for Record Store day; find a stray copy if you still can.) This three-and-a-half show had a bit of starpower driving it, with Susanna Hoffs singing on two numbers, one of them in collaboration with accordionist “Weird Al” Yankovic. Mostly it was cult artists in the service of cult music that changed the world, or at least changed rock ‘n’ roll, with great turns from Peter Case, Wayne Kramer, Peter Buck, the Fleshtones’ Peter Zaremba and dozens of others. All the better when a bunch of original “Nugget”-eers pushing 75 or 80 made their way back into the limelight to go “Pushin’ Too Hard.” There’s a lesson for us all here: Those who forget the past are destined to not rock nearly hard enough. (Read Variety‘s original review here.)
Zach Bryan at Crypto.com Arena in L.A. (Aug. 23)
Zach Bryan has a fair amount of Bruce Springsteen in him. But not just any single model of Bruce. His concert dates are such immediate sellouts these days, and his connection with his audience such a phenomenon, it can feel at times like he’s veering toward having his own personal “Born in the USA” moment. And there was little at his Crypto.com Arena show in late summer to make you think that isn’t still in his grasp. But when, days after that concert, he digitally released a new album — titled just “Zach Bryan” — it felt like he might be making his “Nebraska” more than he’s going for broke and trying to grab the brass ring. He’s marching to the beat of his own Boss, and it’s not always the one you expect. I’m not sure who, if anyone, he was emulating or being influenced by when he came up with the unique stage design for his tour, though. In-the-round tours are a dime a dozen, but Bryan uses his like it’s a boxing ring, almost, with standing microphones set up for him to sing into on all four sides of the stage — and he’ll bounce around between them in the course of a single song. It’s part of his populism. Why, he must think, should he leave any quadrant of an arena audience feel like they’re not directly getting played to for more than two or three minutes at a time? Even his guests got the message about how to work all segments of the audience, as Maggie Rogers did when she joined Bryan for stints in the middle and end of the L.A. concert. (Read Variety‘s original review of the show here.)
Sparks at the Hollywood Bowl (July 16)
Landing a first headlining slot at the Hollywood Bowl is a cherished milestone for any major musical acts who claim Los Angeles as their home base. This year, the Bowl debut honor for cherished locals went to the Mael brothers, who only had to wait 52 years for their own crowning gig. What’s five decades among friends and family … everybody loves a slow build, right? Ron and Russell Mael’s mom brought them to see the Beatles at the venue in 1965, and that was “probably some good education,” as Russell said near the beginning of the show. Mom was likely not around, but they did have the closest thing they’ve probably had lately to a surrogate parent, director Edgar Wright, whose documentary “The Sparks Brothers” kind of nurtured them across a finish line. (The show-closing photo seen above is courtesy of Wright’s backstage camera.) The 2023 tour included some rarities — like “Beaver O’Lindy,” from their second album, “A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing,” a song they never even played live when it first came out in ’72 — and five tracks from the new “The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte.” The five decades in-between was a lot of ground to condense, but they did a reasonably effective job of rifling through the catalog, hitting mid-career favorites like 1994’s “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way’.” If you’re making your Bowl debut half a centennial into a career, that’s pretty clear evidence you’ve been doing it your way all along. (Read Variety‘s review of the original show here.)
The War and Treaty at the Troubadour in West Hollywood (March 26)
Find yourself a partner who looks at you like Tanya Trotter looks at Michael Trotter Jr., or vice versa. The pure joy exuded by the husband and wife who make up the duo the War and Treaty is so infectious, they could double-handedly restore anyone’s faith in marriage. They so happen to also be restoring a lot of people’s faith in music as they show up on awards shows and make other quick-hit TV appearances, a slow build that’s been rewarded with a best new artist Grammy nomination after a lot of years in the business. Amazingly, they’d never topped a bill in SoCal before, even though these Nashville favorites actually have four albums out. The latest, “Lover’s Game,” was issued by a mainstream country label, but don’t let a couple of authentically twangy moments dissuade you if that’s not your thing, because this is their most satisfying genre-crosser to date. The only real genre classification that counts is shared wailing.
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