Standing in a sold-out concert venue, usually you would expect to see the people attending to look similar to you. I went to a Kehlani show in Mountain View, and I anticipated seeing the stadium full of Gen Z students wearing the same oversized leather jackets and knee-high boots — I’m not judging, since I’m partially guilty of this.
Words can’t explain the feeling you get when you’re able to scream lyrics to a song you’ve been listening to on Spotify since 2019. Hearing “Nights Like This” in person was such a euphoric experience that I’ve been waiting for basically seven years.
However, when the openers were performing, I looked around, and it was actually the complete opposite of what I was expecting. On my left were women in their late 30s, screaming, singing all of the words to each other. In the rows in front of me, I saw a little girl standing on a stadium chair to get a better view because she was too short to see.
Being able to see a diverse group of people at all different stages of their lives gathered in one place to watch and listen to the same artist served as a reminder that music isn’t judgmental about how old you are.
Kehlani’s music explores the themes of self-growth and love, including the bad and good sides. Through this, she is able to create a mutual bond with her whole audience that might’ve gone through the same/similar story. I feel like the classic songs about self-discovery are commonly tied to a younger audience and to be a rite of passage.
Nevertheless, being in the large 20,000-person stadium, in real time, it proved that wrong.
Seeing people of all ages sing their hearts out to “Unlearn”, “Folded” and “Shoulda Never” showed me that regardless of age, being human and being emotionally vulnerable gives us all a commonality that doesn’t have to be said out loud. It’s easy not to think too much about the importance of music, as some view it as background noise or to drop nonchalant hints on our Instagram stories. But attending live music concerts proves that there are more layers to the artist than what the media portrays.
There’s a sense of comfort knowing that the feelings you once thought were only happening to you, such as regret or grief, are being experienced by someone either decades younger or older than you in real time. Using music as a way to understand and humble ourselves serves as an interpreter for our emotions that we can’t fully explain to others.