Award-winning musician Chlöe Bailey may have started a new trend for artists whose new album eras are seemingly short of live performances. During the weekend, a clip went viral from the singer's Tik Tok livestream, in which she answers someone's question about why she had not been performing. A day later, on Saturday, September 21, the singer performed five songs from her second studio album (Trouble in Paradise, August 9, 2024) live on Instagram at a beach in St. Lucia.
During the original Tik Tok live from September 9, 2024, Bailey had said this about the lack of performances: "Trust me, I would be performing if I could. The thing is money goes into performances...you have to get budgets approved and things like that. If I could, I'd be performing everywhere."
Here are a few takeaways here from suchabop! about the matter. One, it is good that Chloe has not given up on the project. And two, it's relieving to see a recording artist and/or their team take matters into their own hands! As a music-head and industry enthusiast, it was always a wonder why artists who weren't given many opportunities to perform their own material didn't utilize their large followings and platforms like YouTube to give a performance instead of waiting on an award show, late night show, festival or tour.
I'm sure there are other factors, perhaps politics involved, but Chlöe proved that not only is this in fact possible for artists, and something more of them should consider--but doing the show in real-time presents a whole 'nother level of cool. Hear me out. While the inclusion of Chlöe , Coco Jones, Keke Palmer, Summer Walker, Tinashe, Teyana Taylor, Victoria Monét and Marsha Ambrosius for the Usher tribute at this past summer's 24th annual BET Awards was commendable, many of those ladies had newly-released and/or forthcoming projects.
The performance aspect of artists' album rollouts have unfortunately declined (maybe now this will change). Gone are the days where you got to see a singer or rapper perform their single on multiple shows on television from the likes of Good Morning America and the Today show to TRL and 106 and Park. Nowadays, the main type of promotion for artists are interviews--interviews are great--but the performance piece needs to make a comeback. Performances can bring new fans, they can make you fall in love with a song, they can even inspire--most importantly, the artist should not just be promoted, but their (surprise), art, too. What a concept!
Clearly, I can go on and on about this topic, but I'll end with this sidenote: Many of us music fans also are more likely to pay attention and support when we can tell the artist is passionate about their work and doing just about all they can to spread the word about it.
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