On Sept. 22, 2023, I was able to see one of my favorite artists, Boywithuke, live in Chicago at the House of Blues. The concert was simply fantastic.
Boywithuke has a fun stage presence. He moved all over the stage and was very good at getting the audience to have fun as well.
“The live performance was beautiful… [it had a] smaller crowd,[a] better view, [and a] great performance,” said Sebastian Simkins, an OHS sophomore who also went to the concert.
Another aspect of the concert that was really cool was the lighting and the background. The lighting in the House of Blues was really cool and they designed it to change with every song played and it worked really well and fit the vibes of each song.
“It was more bright LEDs, the environment was just better [than other concerts I’ve been to],” Simkins said.
The backgrounds he used were also super cool and not something I’ve seen before. For each of the songs he performed there was an animation loop that played behind him on stage. All of the animations were fun and vibrant and fit thematically with each song he played. It gave his performance more life and made everything feel more energetic.
The concert wasn’t perfect, however, and there were some mildly frustrating moments. The opening act, Apollo, wasn’t very good, which was disappointing. I liked Apollo’s music before the concert, but there were a lot of sync issues that occurred. There were times where he was just behind the backing track and had to play catch-up. It wasn’t too bad but it was definitely the worst part of the concert for me.
The intermission between Apollo’s and Boywithuke’s performance was also a little long for my taste. It took about an hour for Boywithuke to show up on stage and it got to the point where I was getting frustrated with the wait.
Boywithuke is a Korean-American singer/songwriter who started to garner attention on TIkTok for making short songs on his ukulele. With the release of “Toxic” on Oct. 29, 2021, his fanbase started to grow exponentially. Since then, “Toxic” has remained his most popular song, sitting at over 607 million streams on Spotify as of Oct. 2, 2023.
Boywithuke had been opening for AJR on their “OK Orchestra” tour for most of 2022 before going on tour with Naethan Apollo in June, 2023, another singer that got attention for his unique voice and love songs like “From me, to you” off of TikTok.
Boywithuke has been garnering more and more popularity as of late but I still think more people should give his music a chance. I know I didn’t give him a chance right away as I was hesitant since he got popular off of TIktok but I am very glad I started listening to him more as he is one of my favorite artists currently.
Boywithuke also just released his fourth studio album titled “Lucid dreams” which I am planning on doing a review on later this month.
“[Boywithuke] sounded great, [and] has a great voice,” said Simkins. “The live performance was beautiful.”
Hello my name is Ryker Stevenson and this is my second year on 42fifty. I am a senior and currently participate in chess club and co-captain for scholastic bowl. I am happy to be back and to serve the publication again as the Arts and Entertainment Section Editor.
