On the evening of April 14th, Danish pop sensation MØ (pronounced “mer) brought her Motordrome tour to New York City’s Webster Hall for a sold-out performance. The tour, which only features a handful of North American stops, is to support her recently released third album of the same name. Joining her on tour was rap/pop singer, TeZATalks.
Hailing from O‘ahu by way of Seattle, the Motordrome tour was TeZATalk’s first-ever headline tour. You definitely wouldn’t know that based on her high-energy performance on Thursday evening. As I watched her performance, what stood out to me the most was when TeZATalks took a moment to be vulnerable with the crowd. “Everyone raise their pinky!” Fans in the crowd turned to each other, looking around to see how many people would raise their pinkies, “Come on, nobody is too cool for this, not even myself!” she said.
After a moment of hesitation, every pinky in the room was raised. TeZa continued talking before performing her song “The World,” “I want us to all make a promise to each other tonight that no matter how hard life gets, we remain human. We must be human to each other!” As TeZa wrapped her set, she jumped down to the front of the crowd and grabbed a fan’s hand along the barricade. Singing the song’s final words, “It’s okay to say you’re human,” chills were sent up my spine. It was such a vulnerable moment within such a massive venue. Just as she wrapped, TeZA began to walk off-stage — but not without reminding us of our extraordinary moment earlier in the set. “Nobody forget that promise we made to each other!”
Roughly 30 minutes had passed, and the stage was set for MØ’s performance. A motorcycle statue was placed in the corner of stage left, a nod to her recent album. 9:15 had come and gone, and MØ had still not taken the stage. Fans were itching with anticipation, and chants for MØ began to arise throughout the venue. Finally, the lights went dark, and MØ arrived, kicking off her set with “Youth Is Lost.”
This was my first time seeing MØ perform live, so I went into this performance with zero expectations. However, I was blown away. For the first time since pre-Covid live music performances, MØ jumped into the photo pit during “Nostalgia” and sang to fans along the barricade. She threw herself over the barricade and embraced the audience with a smile stretched from ear to ear. It had been years since I witnessed an artist engage with their fans in a close and intimate way, but I enjoyed every moment.
MØ’s performance was undoubtedly one for the books. Her setlist was chock-full of a diverse range of songs spanning across her entire discography. Of course, this included her 2015 hit “Lean On” with Diplo and DJ Snake, which got the crowd going absolutely mental. MØ concluded the night with my three favorite songs back to back: “New Moon,” “Kindness,” and “Live to Survive,” — the latter of which she sang while crowd-surfing through the audience.
While the Motordrome North American tour has concluded, I genuinely hope that MØ returns to the states for a larger nationwide tour. The whole of North America deserves to experience the validated hype behind MØ — she is a tried-and-true performer who knows what she is doing and knows how to grab and hold on to the attention of a crowd. Her performance truly blew me away that evening!
TeZATalks
