By: Katherine Llave
As an avid fan of Lyn Lapid since 2021, I had long awaited the chance to see her after missing out on her 2022 tour for her first EP, “The Outsider.” This year, when she announced the tour for her new EP, “To Love in the 21st Century,” I finally got the opportunity to live out that dream.
Lyn Lapid, like many other aspiring young artists, got her start on Tiktok and Youtube. I started following her Youtube channel after watching her cover of the Steven Universe song “Here Comes a Thought,” and falling in love with her soothing and melodic voice. She released the song “Producer Man” in 2020, which gained massive success on Tiktok. It was followed by “Itsy Bitsy” in 2021, which was also widely popular to her growing fanbase.
Her stardom only continued to skyrocket from there. With her charming humor and GenZ relatability, she marketed her music through sharing relatable moments and showing off her immense vocal and musical talent through her indie pop sound.
Part of being in her fan base includes being active on her Discord server, a lesson I learned only after her first tour, when I learned that Discord server members had been given an exclusive presale code– which meant a head start on tickets. In this new era of musical artistry, growing one’s fan base through social media or platforms like Discord are key ways of connecting with fans and knowing who your audience is. This connection helps the community of… Gremlyns? Lynions? …Whatever you want to call them (the name hasn’t been fully decided, so I’ll probably switch between the two) to stay close together and share their love of Lyn Lapid.
Waiting two and a half months to see Lyn was no easy feat, but my mounting pile of schoolwork and the release of her EP kept me busy. On June 28th, the big day had finally arrived. Lyn had told us to wear green (her favorite color), and I was going to hold myself–and my friends– to that request. It was a brisk night, and although it had been pretty hot in LA that day, things were cooling off a bit… until we stepped into the venue.
If you’re going to the Roxy Theater, you should know… it gets pretty hot in there. And I mean really hot. Once I stepped in, I knew that going with long sleeves was a bad idea. We were crammed like a pack of green crayons in a Crayola box. To distract myself from the heat, I bought two bottles of iced water: one to drink, and one to hold to my face. After a while of waiting in the humid mustiness of the crowd, the lights finally dimmed, and the opening act– Stephanie Poetri– came onstage.
Stephanie Poetri was a delight to see live. Although I wasn’t very familiar with her songs, she did a great job at warming up the audience, especially with her random but very nostalgic choice to sing “Fireflies” by Owl City. Singing that song along with a few hundred other people that night was something I could not have imagined myself doing, but somewhere the child inside of me brimmed with joy at the opportunity.
I also liked her song “Honeymoon,” a sweet and sappy romance song that left me levitating with her angelic vocals and light pop beat. She talked about her set design for a bit, saying she had made a crochet flower garland to hang around her laptop. It was a nice decorative piece that complimented her sound well. She ended with her hit song “I Love You 3000,” based on the line from Avengers: Endgame, which uses plenty of superhero references to map out a proposal– a pretty cute concept for a love song if you ask me.
About a half hour after Stephanie Poetri’s set had ended, the moment finally came… the lights began to shine at the stage, and Lyn’s band came out to play her intro. During the intro sequence, I struggled to get a good view of the stage, as I had arrived too late and was standing near the back (Note: if you’re 4’11” never be late to a standing concert). However, as the intro began to play, a fellow concert-goer asked, “Want to stand in front of me?” I immediately and gratefully accepted– just in time to see Lyn run out from the curtain and greet us. Honestly, that moment made my night and I’m grateful for that fan who was looking out for their fellow Gremlyn.
Lyn opened with her upbeat, in-your-face banger of a song “Pager,” which emphatically tells any doubters that she doesn’t really care what they think, and that they could just “send it to her pager”– otherwise telling them they’re old news. Her set flowed with the same dynamic charm and liveliness that she had established with her audience online, even stopping at a few points to note that we were all drenched in sweat and slightly dehydrated. She had to ask a couple of times if someone needed water, because the heat in the room was a bit too much to handle.
Despite the heat, Lyn’s energy was boundless. She would make heart hand gestures back and forth with the audience, point out excited fans, and riff off whatever weird chants we threw her way— some fans even barked at some point, and she later wrote in an Instagram post: “thank u for barking at us u are strangely the only show on any tour that always seems to bark at us.”
Her storytelling during the show paired well with our chaotic energy. Just before she performed “Like You Want Me To,” she told us a story to explain the context: the song stems from her experience with a three-month-long “situationship” that ultimately ended in a “ghosting.” Many fans loudly expressed their empathy with her story, having experienced similar relationships online.
To pair with the dreamy and hopeless romantic sound of her music, Lyn Lapid created a set design for the stage that, she explained, was a recreation of her first date. Along the front edge of the stage were some tall grasses and wildflowers, and her microphone stand had a garland of vines and flowers wrapped around it. Tying in perfectly with her “To Love in the 21st Century” theme, this staging was a romantic, earthy, and melodramatic scene fit for any fan wishing to be the main character in a coming of age love story– the dream of every Lynion.
One of my absolute favorite parts of the concert was Lyn’s band– composed of her bassist, Kayla, her guitarist, Ezra, and her drummer, Tyler. From the get-go, her band elevated her songs to another level. I thought her official recordings were already top-notch, but hearing the band translate these songs into a live performance infused a whole new impactful energy into her music.
One of my favorite songs to hear live was “The Outsider,” which was intensified by the drum solo and instrumentals towards the end. I’ve been to concerts where the live song sounded similar to the recording with a few ad-libs by the singer, but I appreciated how Lyn and her team had incorporated so many live instrumentals into this set, changing the experience for each and every song. “Do U Really” was charged with a more funky attitude from the instrumentals, and with the help of audience participation for background vocals, it was a treat to both hear and participate in.
In an homage to her earlier days, Lyn even performed some covers that had landed her on the indie pop map– including “When She Loved Me” by Sarah Mclachlan, and “Love Like You,” the ending song for Steven Universe. She performed these songs acoustically with a ukulele, referencing her humble beginnings and calling back those sweet covers for her long-time Gremlyns. As a fan of the show, I especially swooned at “Love Like You,” and reminisced on her “Here Comes a Thought” cover that initially captivated me years ago. During this song, Lyn, Kayla, and Ezra did a little swaying dance that was adorable and showed just how much Lyn and her band clicked.
Lyn also covered Katy Perry’s “The One That Got Away”— to which many fans were screaming every lyric. In my experience, covering a Katy Perry song is bound to cause excitement and nostalgia for earlier, preteen days, especially among the young women in the audience.
The anguished and lovesick screams, however, couldn’t hold a candle to the performance of Lyn’s “The Alternative,” whose bridge and final chorus had every hopeless romantic in the room scream singing about how “Love is a risk, what’s the alternative?” a dilemma of love that transcends all times. During the climactic ending to the song, Lyn turned around and dramatically posed back to back with Kayla as she belted the chorus, signifying the plight of a true hopeless romantic. It was this moment that solidified “The Alternative” as one of her top songs in my book.
As the night came to a close, the energy from the audience only continued to grow as Lyn brought out “ok with it,” and, although I was singing, “It’s the end, and I’m ok with it,” I was not in fact ok with the night coming to an end. This was a bittersweet moment of realizing it’s the end, much like the song discusses, but instead of the end of relationships and friendships, it was the end of a beautiful and electrifying night. Her following song “Comatose” brought out even more energy from the band and audience, rather than putting us to sleep.
As the extended instrumentals and flashing lights pulsated throughout the venue, I felt more awake and pumped up than ever before. Of course, “In My Mind” had to be towards the end of the setlist, but as popular as the song is, the iconic pause during the second chorus was not remembered by many fans (of course I remembered it though). It’s an ongoing joke for Lyn to see which show remembers that pause, and unfortunately for us, the LA show did not pass the test. Still, the song was as iconic as ever, celebrating how far Lyn has come with her many other successful releases following this hit.
Finally, “Poster Boy” ended the night in an explosion of hope, excitement, and possibility. From the rainbow of flashing colors to the “It’s you and I” chant throughout the song and at the final chorus, it was one of the most beautiful moments of a live show that I have ever witnessed. Even as a religious video recorder, I put my phone down to just jump around and have fun during this song, feeling the zany energy ricocheting from Lyn to the audience. The song encapsulates what “To Love in the 21st Century” is about— a tangled mess of fleeting passion, the borderline delusional fantasizing about a stranger, and the hope that the one you’ve fallen for is the one you stick with for life.
By the end of the night, my voice was sore from screaming and singing, a sure sign of a successful concert experience. My friends and I were all covered in sweat, and although I relished the feeling of being in Lyn’s presence, I was also dying to get outside for some fresh air.
When the show was over, a flood of green spilled out onto the streets of Los Angeles. The box of crayons now roamed through the world once again, but now, the world seemed brighter. I was reminded of the lyrics from her song, “tlit21c”: “Nobody told me how lonely it feels to be young in the 21st century.” That night, for a small moment, I was far from lonely.
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