Jacob Sartorius performed at The Pageant with Hayden Summerall and Zach Clayton on Feb. 10. As a 15-year-old who became famous on the mediocre app Musical.ly, it’s impressive that Sartorious is now traveling the country singing mostly original music for crazed tween girls. But with an ego bigger than his YouTube following (2.8 million subscribers) and music with no meaning, his show lacked bigtime.
THE PRESHOW:
HAYDEN SUMMERALL
When people make fun of Jacob Sartorious, the first criticism is usually the fact that he’s only like 12 years old. Well, that’s false, though he may still act like his tween-aged self that first made him famous. Hayden Summerall, one of the opening acts, on the other hand, is actually 12 years old. We didn’t know that before he ran onstage to hundreds of girls screaming for him to sing. His comments to get the crowd pumped up caught us off guard when his voice nearly matched the pitch of the tiny child screaming behind us, but we figured he had to be older to be performing on a national tour. Right? No. We googled his age when he started his song “Smiles For You” and awkwardly touched hands with people in the front row. He never really smiled, despite the song name, and he stuck with rocking back and forth with his hand clutching his stomach for at least 20 seconds before going and touching some more hands. Really, he was just the epitome of an awkward middle schooler. Finally, after three horrible songs, one of which being a cover of Lukas Graham’s “Mama Said,” he wrapped it up. But of course, before leaving the stage, he pulled out his phone to take a Snapchat video with the crowd at an angle that left out all of the empty seats at the top of the theater. He walked off stage still on his phone. Classy.
ZACH CLAYTON
Next came Zach Clayton. After hearing the off-key voice of Summerall butcher each one of his songs, it was refreshing to see a 17-year-old run onstage, already performing better than the act before. (Didn’t take much, though, considering Summerall looked like he kind of had to pee the whole time.) Clayton was significantly better at dancing, too. He often resorted to the “Hey, ho!” wave back and forth no matter the tempo of the song, but the crowd was more concerned with capturing his high-energy stage presence on their Snapchat than his choreography. Though there was one move he could’ve gone without. We call it the “Grab my crotch for 75 percent of the set to prove my masculinity lost by singing like a chipmunk.” We had thought that at 17, he ought to be more mature and have better music compared to Summerall. Right? Wrong again. One of his songs, for example, was called “Insta Bae,” and no, we’re not kidding. We’d rather get haircuts to match his weirdly parted buzzcut monstrosity than listen to another one of his songs ever again. To be fair, he met most standards for what a prepubescent girl wants from an internet-sensation-gone-popstar, but the buzzcut, man. Don’t be singing about your Insta bae when you look like you’re trying to copy 2006 Eminem. Oh, wait.
Just as we were starting to get used to Clayton’s chipmunk-like energy and voice to match, the screen behind him displaying a “Zach Clayton” logo flashed to one reading “Bad Zach” that had a pair of devil horns protruding from it. As the girls who were screaming before settled down under the glaring red lights and fog, Clayton explained that recently, he had taken on a different persona. He said he had wanted to change his style a little bit to stray from his happy YouTuber vibe, and then it started. The devil horns in his logo were definitely telling. All of a sudden, the red lights were interrupted by flashing white ones as he began to rap. It was then that both of our hands instinctively went to our foreheads and we simultaneously looked at each other and asked, “What is going on?” The mother clutching a young boy next to us held him even tighter and she was looking around in horror as pure trash leaked out of the speakers. When we finally overcame our initial shock, we began to hear the lyrics. The song was titled “Off White” and we think the most telling lines are “All of my chicks (off white)/ Man look at my skin (off white).” We are not making this up, we promise. For a concert that advertised for young girls in love with the young Jacob Sartorious and other innocent teenagers, it wasn’t the most appropriate song choice. Especially since he not so sneakily used what some would consider a sexist phrase by talking about the hose in his garden. Probably unable to comprehend what they were hearing only a minute after screaming the words to “Kick It With Me” and “Insta Bae,” the girls around us continued screaming. Though we think it might have been from terror instead of excitement. Just like Summerall earlier, Bad Zach ended his set by asking for a “Snapchat vid real quick” that was again artfully tilted downward to hide the empty seats surrounding him as he yelled a drawn out “Ayyyyyyyyyyy.”
jacob sartorius
Before we came to this concert, we didn’t even know there would be two other awful “musicians” performing, so you can imagine how shocked and concerned we felt after taking a wild ride we didn’t even sign up for. By this time, 6:13 pm, our expectations were pretty high after the crowd chanted “Jacob” for a solid 15 minutes total throughout the first two acts. But once again, those expectations were shattered.
First of all, we were quite offended when he didn’t even sing his most popular song “Sweatshirt.” Instead, he stood there strumming the guitar halfheartedly and told the crowd to sing it themselves. Obviously for a mosh pit of screaming children, this was easy, but we were disappointed. Though not as disappointed as we were when he didn’t sing or even play his best bop “Bingo.” Seriously, give it a listen. It did make sense that he wanted to stray away from his less grown-up songs, considering “Sweatshirt” was released years before his voice dropped and “Bingo” is a song about having a girl follow you back on social media and hanging out after school. He attempted to up his maturity by stealing other musicians’ riffs (compare “Hang Me Out To Dry” to Khalid’s “Young Dumb & Broke” and “Popular Girls” to Drake’s “Fake Love”) and grinding on thin air. In front of hundreds of tween girls. We can’t be the only ones who see the problem with that.
Other than the occasional inappropriate dance move, Sartorious wasn’t the best at pumping up the audience. He asked “Who’s ready to party?” about 23 times and then would ask everyone to put their hands up, then wave them when the “beat drops.” None of his songs have a beat drop worthy of a crowd-wide dance party, but then again, none of his songs really have a beat drop. Props for imagination.
About halfway through the concert, he finally introduced his band. We can’t remember the drummer’s name, but Drew Chafee was Sartorious’ keyboardist and guitarist. And he was amazing. He totally upstaged Sartorious when he plugged in his electric guitar, went to stand front and center and executed a fantastic guitar solo in the middle of the song. When the show took a break and he ran back onto grab his water bottle, the whole crowd began shouting “Drew!” the same way they had for Jacob. We’re pretty sure even the smallest children in the audience understood how much talent Chafee was wasting being a band member for Sartorious. Especially with his long blond hair and laidback attitude, he seriously looked like he just strolled out of Walk the Moon or something. In our opinion, he was the true star of the show. Drew, if you’re reading this, you deserve better. And we love you.
Finally, after a riveting 45 minute show that ended promptly at 7:14 pm, Sartorious naturally asked for a Snapchat video with the crowd. This time he jumped around so much that the audience blurred and you couldn’t really tell that the place wasn’t filled. Then, he ran to the side without looking back, told us to have a good night and was gone. Sorry for this unsatisfactory ending, but now you understand how we felt.
