When I was younger, I went to so many concerts. I was music-obsessed. It was in my dreams, it fueled my storytelling, the lyrics gave me ideas to chew on and beliefs to consider. I felt untethered if I was going someplace and didn’t have my music with me on whatever the portable music device of the time was. And to think there was a time before people really even had portable music devices, beyond a transistor radio.

I go to fewer concerts now. Once you’ve done something hundreds of times the luster dulls: You realize that standing on a concrete floor for hours waiting for the short glorious window in which your band is on stage is not necessarily worth the exchange. You also realize around that time how close people will stand to you, and that you don’t really like it because a lot of them are much taller, brawnier men who are going to do rough things when they dance, eventually. You also realize that a start time for a main act of 11pm — and of course they don’t really come on until 11:15 at least — is too goddamned late, especially when you’ve been standing on that concrete floor unable to use the toilet (’cause you’d lose your spot) or get more than a square foot of space for hours.

This is how you become a fuddy-duddy oldster, and I am truly in that spot. I can afford good seats. I can afford seats for acts that go on closer to 9pm. I am fortunate and privileged and all that — and I know it.

But sometimes an act decides to tour, and not only are they worth checking out (because you love their music and sense they’re going to be big one day), but they are the 7pm show, in Brooklyn, and the tickets are only $16. This was how I found myself at Baby’s All Right, a bar/stage near DUMBO on Tuesday night, getting my groove on to an act you might just want to check out: The 19-year-old British singer Flowerovlove. (That’s not a typo.)

I stumbled on her TikTok feed again and again (because I loved it from the minute I heard her soft-voiced, synthpop dance confections), and immediately started digging a little deeper. I didn’t find out a whole lot else — I think her name is actually Joyce — but I did discover that she’d be doing her first US tour in Brooklyn in November, so I snagged the ticket for myself and decided to brave the concrete floor, the tightly-packed people, and the delayed start time. Because of course she didn’t go on at 7pm!

And what was nearly as fascinating about her show was the whole ethos of the audience around me. I might not have been the oldest person in the room, but I was close. Once the doors opened, I considered watching the show from the back of the room, but then shrugged and decided to dive in, heading to the front where I was either the second or third row in the center. May as well enjoy the whole package.

The young women in front of me were adorable: Flowerovlove’s visual style owes a lot to “Hit Me One More Time” Britney Spears-era, a time of too-short school uniform skirts and knotted-waist shirts (which these days the kids call “preppy”). (I know, I know. It’s not, but they can own it now, it’s all good.) We occasionally talked about where we’d first found this music (TikTok, natch); during the quieter waiting around times I observed one young woman in the front row (who’d lamented she had class the next day but didn’t care if she was tired) writing an essay on her phone, sliding the windows between her essay and ChatGPT. The young woman next to her said it was her first concert ever. They were adorable. We admired the blinged-up microphone stand. The guy directly next to me — 6-foot, easily, who manipulated two camera videos throughout the show — wasn’t disagreeable, but had a way of inching over into my area.

But before the show could begin, we had to watch an opening act by a local singer who brought a drummer on stage with her … and no other musicians. She sang to backing tracks for the entirety of her set. I’m just old enough to really not think that’s cool: Play a damn instrument yourself, at the very least. Backing tracks! Feh.

At last, Flowerovlove emerged from a side door. She took a few songs to really warm up, but eventually things were golden. Still, it was a very different concert than the ones I used to attend in a lot of ways. She’s a pop singer and a TikTok star, so she’s going to lean into those strengths. There was a whole lot of discussion with the audience — first, her pink strapless dress kept threatening to slip off (she admitted it was a bad fashion choice) so she went with a striped sweater (oy, how steaming she must have been in it!) after admitting it was something she’d slept in. As she warmed up she got more comfortable with the enthusiastic crowd, and paused from time to time to invite audience members on stage to sing with her and do a little dance for her song “Breaking News” (it apparently is called the Jarlette dance move, and I’ve seen it done a whole lot on TT videos for the song). It felt communal and friendly in a way so many shows simply aren’t.

(BTW, if you click on the link I just inserted, you’ll see me with my blond braided head bopping along in the video.)

The folks in my immediate area got their own stage time, including Ms. First Timer (Claudia, I think was her name). Flower promised us an encore … if we asked for one. (So there was a lot of “encore!” chanting.) She returned, made her exit, and after an hour we were cast back out of her pink neon blinged-up pop world. We could stop standing on the concrete floor, we could (well, some of us could) stand outside where she’d promised to hand out some swag. Of course, she’s new in this career, new to touring, still playing small venues. All of these things are possible in a way that they aren’t for, say, Taylor Swift. But while I worried new-gen concerts by TT stars would feel somehow too commercial, too immediately “look at me,” too all-about-the-marketing, none of those things bothered me. Things aren’t better, and aren’t worse. A concert is a form of mass magic: You pull in a whole room of strangers with a deep affection for sounds and words and you let them bop around together. The fact that young people still come out to see live shows in tiny venues with challenging, uh, user experiences just proves how powerful the whole effect is.

It’s a different way of absorbing music. The marketing — which we used to sneer at; how dare our bands accept sponsorships, or sell their songs to commercials — is simply baked in to the finished product, and somehow — at least in this case — the product was just fine. The kid was all right. In fact, she was delightful.

If you haven’t heard Flowerovlove, now it’s your time. While you can still get in on the ground floor — even if that floor is concrete. It’s worth it!

xo,

R

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