The Chainsmokers are bringing the Pop playlist to town, delivering a straightforward, lazy show | City 2023

The Chainsmokers gave the audience what they wanted. And the public doesn’t want much. In a show that alternates between other artists’ pop rock snippets and their electronic hits, the New York duo put on a straightforward and lazy show.

The duo kicked off 2016 with “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Closer”, respectively, which are the songs played at the beginning and end of the show on The Town, this Thursday (7).

Since then, the talent of DJ-producers Andrew Taggart and Alex Pal for creating tight arrangements has become evident. With freshness and a hard face, they’ve moved from festivals and electronic marches to larger spaces, such as the main stage of their younger sister event, “Rock in Rio”.

According to them, the idea has always been to “blur the line between styles like indie, pop, dance music and hip-hop”. The sound is still that mix, just a little simpler.

They mainly mix EDM, ultra-commercial electronic music, with rock of the 90s and 2000s (Panic! at the Disco, The White Stripes, Red Hot Californication, Coldplay in the British pop era). The lyrics still depict, for the most part, the “perrengues” of Topzera’s young Americans (and all over the world, by the way).

The first hit made fun of selfies, but later they began to list the road trips, bad trips, and other trips of the American upper class. What about the song that starts with “We were in Paris to get away from your parents”?

The formula works, making the audience feel like they’re in a playlist (or a party), but the show falls a little short of what the band delivers on their albums and singles. The moment when the three go to a structure in the middle of the stage and drum, vibrate and make a sound seems more pleasant to them than to the audience.

Perhaps The Chainsmokers is just that: a mediocre duo, without much new to offer. It’s a sleek electronic pop show, but far from the same technological arsenal as Alok, who performed in the first weekend of the festival.

On stage, Andrew takes the mic and sings (a little bad). In the background, Alex is attacked by DJ. A drummer accompanies them. Shortly after the release of their debut album, in 2017, they released excerpts from rehearsals with the band, explaining that they could go beyond the format as “a duo of push-play, hyper-interacting, jump-jumping and turning down the volume to generic rave” duos. They were not.

Video clips: City 2023 – Day 3