Darling, I love you

How Tyler, The Creator restored my faith in big-sized concerts

In Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome last week, Tyler, The Creator restored my faith in big-sized concerts and also in the imaginative possibilities of American culture.

I was there for the first of two nights at the concert venue on the outskirts of the city, the latest stop on his CHROMAKOPIA: The World Tour which began early February in Minnesota and comes to an end on September 4 in Perth.

In spite of more or less swearing off seeing artists in cavernous venues, I’d said yes to an invitation from a beloved friend mostly because, for the past decade-and-a-half, Tyler, The Creator has delivered a slate of albums that are a masterclass in artistic growth taking place outside the music industrial complex and last year’s CHROMAKOPIA is, in many ways, a pinnacle of that. There was another reason too. Thanks to her work, Roxanne and I have also seen Arcade Fire and Sigur Rós together and they were elevating nights out. This time around, I am emerging from a year of intense medical treatment that’s kept me mostly at home and I knew that a night together would be a dose of sonic-fueled medicine.

Actually, it was in the Ziggo Dome that I’d started thinking about whether big concerts as a pop culture experience - hours spent in digital queues hoping the ticket gods will smile on you, sell-out signs in record time, expensive merchandise and endless photos and videos to show you were there - were something that I still wanted to be part of.

The thoughts first came to me at Lana Del Rey’s 2023 concert - her first in the Netherlands in a decade - in the wake of the release of Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd (which might just be my most loved in her unrelentingly superior catalogue). Throughout the hour and a half set, the thrill of seeing this brilliant artist and songwriter in person was undeniable. And when she performed “Summertime Sadness” off 2012’s Born To Die, the reminder that standing before us was the person who wrote, with Rick Nowels, one of this century’s most perfect pop songs was overwhelming. But here’s the thing: in spite of her 61 million listeners (on Spotify alone) and the multiple top 10 global hits, Del Rey’s music yearns to be played and experienced in an intimate setting and, as much as I could appreciate the female power in the many dancers who were part of her live performance that night, they felt … unnecessary? Distracting? Extra (as my kids might say)? Maybe experiencing Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour would have convinced me that the full-on spectacle of dancers and costume and set changes and more, more, more makes it worthwhile but, alas, we had tickets to the only concert on the tour that was cancelled (you can read about it here) so that was just not to be. And really, Swift has colonised and won the space of the grandest gestures; Del Rey, meanwhile, has had to rise to the challenge that her disconsolate, defiant, restlessly self aware, and bruised music has thrust upon her.

But I digress. What was instantly striking about CHROMAKOPIA, even before Tyler appeared for the first time, was the effectiveness of a single image (a shipping container) and colour (emerald green) that he has been using since announcing the album late last year. Aside from just a handful of lighting changes (burnt brown, fiery orange, deep purple among them) there was little to disrupt this aesthetic which dominated the main stage and was threaded through the night.

Lil Yachty was performing on a small stage situated about two thirds down the length of the Ziggo Dome’s floor when we arrived so we knew that that Tyler would move there but, honestly, that was the only part we could have anticipated: in a saturated media world, where you feel like everything has been done and you’ve seen just about everything, what was most distinctive, what made it such a thrilling experience, was how unpredictable the show was.

Even if you’d seen the set list of earlier shows, the embodied experience of being in the audience that night came with a sense of how unusually original it all felt - and that had everything to do with Tyler’s performance. And it really was his performance because - fittingly for an artist who has consistently demonstrated his singularity in sound and style - he is alone for the full 90 minutes: there is no band, there are no vocal collaborators, and there are no dancers.

Tyler dances, of course, in the same military-style uniform, wig and mask that are embedded in the album art and music videos, and, in its absence of slickness, in its feeling of skidding just on the edge of amateur, it is glorious to watch. Actually he begins by marching in place before working his way through CHROMAKOPIA’s opening sequence - “St. Chroma”, “Rah Tah Tah”, “Noid”, “Darling, I”, “I Killed You” and “Judge Judy”, the last one performed while he is seated on the edge of the stage, his feet dangling like a kid perched on a school wall.

“Noid”, an expression of paranoia brought on by celebrity worship, was especially potent to watch for anyone with roots in or connections to Africa as the vocals of Paul Ngozi - sampled from "Nizakupanga Ngozi" by Zambian band Ngozi Family from their 1977 album 45,000 Volts - rang out. My only (very minor) disappointment was the exclusion of “Hey Jane” from the faithful-to-the-tracklisting opening but maybe the introspective, affecting rumination on an unplanned pregnancy (that skillfully switches between both “Jane” and Tyler’s perspectives) was too assailable to make an appearance in the high-energy opening.

Tyler’s repertoire has never been about the hits; his albums require work on the part of the listener, something the audience in the Ziggo Dome demonstrated they had done in plentiful amounts. But if CHROMAKOPIA does have a chart topper it’s the staccato “Sticky” - on the album featuring GloRilla, Sexyy Red & Lil Wayne - and it gets a workout on a ramp that descends from the ceiling, forming a bridge to the small stage. As Tyler dances his way across it, he moves from side to side, singing to the crowds on the floor and in the stands. Alongside the captivating, angular lighting, it added to the experience of being close up to Tyler that was further enhanced by the generous number of screens around the dome which were most often split, showing both performance and small, mystically ephemeral details (a foot, a costume detail, a replica - or maybe the real thing? - of one of Tyler’s Grammy Awards).

The last song on the ramp was “Take Your Mask Off”, and Tyler literally does that, shedding his costume and changing into his own GOLF le FLEUR* clothing for the rest of the show. Much of it takes place on the small stage, now revealed as a living room where Tyler can pull off his shoes for a while, rest a little and pluck and then drop the needle on, or perform selections from, his own records - IGOR, CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST: The Estate Sale, Goblin, Wolf - from a crate of vinyls. It’s intimate and personal to the audience (he talks about hanging out at an Amsterdam street market and eating stroopwafels) and is a bountiful set-up to the finale that sees Tyler back on the main stage, ending a memorable performance with a flourish.

So, does this show really warrant finding faith anew in American culture? Tyler is no spokesperson for a generation - God knows we don't need one of those - but he is an artist from America of thoughtful and penetrating awareness and mad skill. Is the music meaningful? At least to him, yes. And you feel there’s purpose in what he does.

I leave you with this, dear reader.

Is there a better birthday present for someone who has loved and listened to music her whole life (as some of you might know, my dad Owen was a music journalist so I don’t say that lightly) than to see Patti Smith - whom I wrote about here - play live? And in the kind of sized venue that, until seeing Tyler, The Creator, I really only wanted to keep seeing artists play in?

This is exactly what happened to me last year on July 9 - my birthday - when, along with friends and family, I saw Smith at Paradiso’s 1500-capacity Grote Zaal. A ferocious storm had passed over Amsterdam just before she took to the stage and it was hot and humid in the venue but the show - the second time I have seen her live - was breathtaking, a visceral experience, full of special moments. One of them was Smith’s cover of “Summertime Sadness”, sung for her late husband Fred “Sonic” Smith as you can hear in the clip below, filmed on July 10, her second night in Amsterdam. Smith’s performance was more than just a confirmation of Lana Del Rey’s composing brilliance: it brought the 39-year-old and her songs right into the heart of the space where we long to see her, intimate, unadorned, emotional, nothing but great songwriting on display.