Well over 10,000 fans swarmed into Dallas’ American Airlines Center the evening of Oct. 9 like chartreuse-colored moths to flame, holding radioactive green drinks and sporting their most outrageous concert outfits in preparation for DFW’s biggest, brattiest performance of the season. The sold-out stadium shrieked with delight for opener Shygirl and milled with excitement awaiting the co-headlining acts: Charli XCX and Troye Sivan on the Southern leg of their “Sweat” tour, promoting Charli’s album “Brat” and its upcoming remixed sequel.
Concertgoers came for both Charli and Sivan, but the British hyperpop princess clearly led the fashion direction among fans. The audience was awash in “Brat green” — the neon shade on Brat’s album cover — in everything from hair extensions to tote bags to strobing LEDs sewn into fur jackets, as well as countless imperfect shades of green attempting to fit in. Imitations of Charli’s iconic black heeled thigh-high boots were unmissable when fans filtered into the arena, later echoed in Charli’s own performance outfits. As smoke billowed across the stage and the enormous stadium lights flashed to introduce the headliners, it seemed that Charli’s magnetic star power would devour the night whole.
However, Sivan stole the show.
Coming onto stage first with an artfully messy hairstyle and a crew of dancers that flipped him like a cheerleader into the air, Sivan intoxicated fans with the earnest and sweetly sexual energy of “Got Me Started,” “What’s the Time Where You Are?” and “My My My!”. The balance between his self-confident sensuality and the approachable, Australian-casual way he addressed the crowd made him captivatingly charming, like he was presenting his authentic self to connect with friends instead of a manufactured celebrity persona to appeal to fans. The audience craved everything he was willing to share; he could have paused the show to talk, banter and tell stories, and the whole stadium would’ve savored each second.
After his first few songs, Sivan asked the audience, “Any gay people here tonight?” to which loud cheers responded, and followed it up with “Anyone getting fucked tonight?” Whenhe was met with even more cheering, he playfully remarked how jealous he was. For attendees unfamiliar with Sivan’s cultural presence and discography, the exchange established him as an openly queer artist whose love songs are about men, a perfect parallel to the importance Charli’s “Brat” has taken on among sapphic fans. As the show progressed, Sivan’s dancers kissed his neck, made out with him and held him close, creating deliciously sexy — and occasionally gentle — choreographies that riled up the crowd and made sure no one could forget the queer love inherent in each lyric.
If Sivan’s presence was spellbinding, then Charli’s was electrifying. After minutes of building anticipation, swelling music and flashing lights, she emerged from within four ceiling-height neon green curtains emblazoned with “brat” and arranged like the walls of a box, opening her set with her album’s closer, “365,” performed alongside Shygirl. Charli and Shygirl complemented each other perfectly, from their voices to their appearances: Shygirl wore a long, platinum blonde wig the same length and let-down style as Charli’s crimped black hair. “365” moved into “360” and then crowd favorite “Von dutch,” and her older songs like “Speed Drive” and “Vroom Vroom” shook the stadium just as hard as her “Brat” performances did. Her set list was cover-heavy, including Lorde’s version of “Girl, so confusing” and Sivan’s feature of “Talk talk” in the encore, but stayed true to the experimental, feminine and self-assured style her fans adore.
Taking turns performing, Charli and Sivan repeatedly shouted each other out and danced together in between asking the audience to sing, jump and wave their phone flashlights along with the music. Charli asked whether everyone was attending with their best friend and insisted all the best friend pairs dance together as she began “Girl, so confusing,” a song about her friendship and miscommunications with singer songwriter Lorde. The encore blazed even hotter than the main performance — Sivan’s heady rendition of “Rush” and Charli’s prissy performance of Icona Pop’s “I Love It” earned a near-unanimous singalong, even from concertgoers who didn’t initially know the lyrics.
The concert’s visual effects, engineered through a complex system of lights, fog, platforms, cages and screens, ripped the already-incredible musical experience out of the stadium and turned it into a movie, creating stunning cinematography that elevated every little movement of the performers on stage. Concertgoers became part of larger-than-life music videos when Charli paraded down the catwalk, her black hair and shades ruthlessly stark against white spotlights to render her a monochrome angel, or when just enough light met Sivan’s skin to carve a Greek statue out of his musculature and face. Charli, especially, used the surreal blend of reality and exaggeration to incredible effect: each of her outfits was perfectly tailored to how the lights and cameras presented her, from the black-and-white plaid dress that seemed to strobe along with the mind-melting LEDs to the baby tee and shorts combination that drew attention to her beautifully-lit skin — and “Brat” underwear.
For three and a half hours, the Sweat tour swept Dallas up in an adrenaline-filled, magical atmosphere where Sivan and Charli were not just performers or celebrities, but the very heartbeats racing within the chests of their thousands of attending fans. Each word, each song, each piece of practiced choreography held enough weight to change lives. And when those thousands of fans trickled out of the stadium following the encore’s close, they left united as family, all out of breath from dancing and clad in matching shades of green.