Take a Live Beat w/ Charli XCX, Vampire Weekend, Sabrina Carpenter, and More

On 10/9/24, INFOGRAPHICS ARE BACK, BABY!!! So ignore that itty bitty scroll bar, cuz today we're taking our pretty words with a side of pretty pictures 😎.

Oct 09, 2024

To my dear, beautiful Take a Beaters, I owe you an apology... It has been three weeks since I last visited your inboxes. For those keeping count, that is 3x longer than a “weekly newsletter” should be taking to arrive…

But speaking of keeping count, I can proudly report that while I may have been deserting my newsletter duties, it was only because I was so deeply committed to consuming CULTURE — across the last month, I have attended:

9 concerts
8 movies/1 film festival (NYFF)
2 musicals

As well as accommodating,

2 visits from my sister (❤️)
1 work trip (not ❤️)

And while that was (mostly) a beautiful burden to bear, I ALSO missed YOU, because how am I supposed to properly exorcise all my obsessive opinions about these fantastic pieces of art when they are coming at me so quickly?!

But alas, what’s done is done, and all I can do now is…

Take a Live Beat

What Makes a Good Concert?

Have you ever seen one of your all time favs live and been disappointed? (Lookin’ at you, CHVRCHES and Counting Crows.) And on the flip side, have you ever seen someone you’ve either never heard of or don’t particularly care for live and been blown away? (Lookin’ at you, Girl in Red and Japanese Breakfast).

As a concert lover, these weird incongruities fascinate me because it means there’s a whole swath of artists whose shows I would never seek out who would blow me away live, and I’ll likely never know who those artists are!

So what are the things that make someone a great live performer? There’s the vocals, the visuals, charisma, movement or lack thereof… all swirling together in mysterious ways to make a performance some degree of compelling.

All this to say, each of the 11 artists I saw across 8 concerts in the last month’s time brought a unique concoction of all of the above to the stage, with varying degrees of success, and maybe they can give us some insight into what makes for an enthralling live performance…

Technical Evaluation

Let’s start with the basics. The things that are tangible enough to be given numerical ratings on television contests and to be taught in classes.

Also note that a blue outline denotes a rock-leaning act, and pink denotes a pop-forward act, delineated just in case there are scientific discoveries to glean from that (rough, under-analyzed) dichotomy.

Vocals X Dancing

Vocals nor dancing alone have ever been enough for an artist to reach girlie status in my book. I do not count among my girlies Mariah, Whitney, nor Adele, and, well, dancing doesn’t enhance the auditory experience, even if it does enhance Tinashe’s music videos.

So it’s worth noting that while Charli XCX is hanging out over in the rusty pipes section, for her/to me, it just doesn’t fucking matter (for many reasons that will be discussed below). Her backing track was full blast, direct from Spotify for all I care, and her mic was taking any vocals she did provide and bending them into the exact shape of that backing track anyways, so all that mattered was that it was Charli who was holding the mic, igniting levels of ferality in me never before seen.

On the other side we have the golden pipes of Sweeping Promises’ Lira Monday, bursting with gorgeous shrieks and growls, also inducing ferality — so as long as ferality is achieved, does it matter the vocal method?

Stage Production X Instrumentation

The stuff that costs money.

I’ve never seen more musical mastery per band member than at Vampire Weekend’s twin shows at MSG. They were truly a marvel to behold, the kind of shit that makes your eyes glisten as you observe members of your own species create true and near unbelievable beauty.

Also at MSG, Charli XCX and Troye Sivan took a different approach with their iconic Sweat Tour, no live instrument in sight, just pounding speakers and probably some nose drugs (bumpin’ that), just like the clubs they love to inhabit.

Intangibles Evaluation

With a concert, the tangibles are really just a means to an experiential end, anyways.

Sex X Cuteness

Has there ever been anything less sexy than Vampire Weekend? Three Columbia grads who don’t let you forget they graduated from Columbia, singing words like “balalaika”, “oxford comma”, and “ephedrine”, waxing poetic about privilege and the concept of time.

Meanwhile, on the same stage just a couple weeks earlier, Troye Sivan is performing fellatio on a precariously placed microphone and being humped into the stage by one of his sweaty backup dancers, all while caressing us with his sensual voice. It played.

Vibe X Fun

Sorry girl! Nilufer Yanya, I need you to get a sound engineer and a VIBE. (Still enjoyed it; I love good music.)

Thank you girl! Beabadoobee is perched right in the middle, because she somehow crafted a perfectly balanced show, sending us back out into the world just happy to have been invited for as long as she would have us.

FUCK ME UP GIRL! I could’ve partied with Charli XCX until the wee hours of morning, daring my body to give out far before my spirit, only leaving if I’m getting wheeled out of the stadium, everything left in section 119.

But Like, Do They Got It?

But it’s also really just a question of… do they got it?

Let me tell you, Beabadoobee and Charli XCX HAVE IT.

Beabadoobee’s show seemed like just another fun item on a perfect, fulfilling Saturday agenda, like catching up with friends at her favorite bar or cozying up with a glass of wine in front of her favorite show. The stage was her natural habitat, her microphone and her (many) guitars just an extension of her own being. Her nursery rhyme-esque pop songs mystified the crowd with their beautiful intimacy. Then her ‘90s rock jams electrified that same crowd into blissful liberation.

Beabadoobee, you’ll always be famous.

With the Sweat Tour stop at MSG, Charli XCX revealed to me that the corporeal form is, in fact, a burden. During “Sympathy is a Knife”, my vocal cords failed when faced with my innate need to shout my whole being into the chorus. When Lorde joined Charli on stage for “Girl so confusing feat Lorde”, I needed the ability to pause time itself so that I could fully comprehend the bliss overtaking me. And when Charli and Troye closed out the show with their newest collaboration “Talk talk feat Troye Sivan”, their literal platform rising to meet the adoration of their fans, I was also ready to ascend, physically and otherwise.

Charli XCX, you’ll always be famous.