The Best Concerts of 2025, So Far

Beyoncé concentrated the scope of the “Renaissance” tour for her “Cowboy Carter” revue, but only in locale. Instead of canvassing the globe like she did two years ago, she staged more shows in fewer markets including Paris, Houston and Chicago. But it was in Los Angeles where she set the precedent for the tour that followed. At Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium, she debuted her now-signature triangle-shaped backdrop and unveiled the meticulous production, a three-hour exploration of the Americana and country themes that permeated her AOTY-winning eighth album. Beyoncé consistently makes perfection look easy, and at her tour opener, she did just that, performing nearly the entirety of the record with a few splashes of catalog cuts. Like with the “Renaissance” tour, she brought “Cowboy Carter” songs to life with a specific vision, as minimalist as it often scanned. And yet, that’s the power of Beyoncé: bells and whistles are fun and all, but she’s enough to keep a live experience charged. —Steven J. Horowitz

A combo tour by two of the most vital artists working in the hip-hop/R&B realm is inevitably going to be both long and not long enough — when both artists can easily play two-hour-plus sets on their own, obviously you’re not going to hear every song you’d like. But Lamar and SZA both delivered in diminished circumstances (which were diminished even more by light rain and 55-ish degree temperatures), with the former bringing his full-size GNX car and a battery of dancers, and the latter bringing several props from her insect-themed latest tour and her own crew. Both leaned heavily on their latest albums but brought out classics like “King Kunta,” “Humble,” “DNA,” “Money Trees” and “Alright” (Lamar); “Love Galore,” “The Weekend,” “Broken Clocks” and even her song covered by Rihanna, “Consideration” (SZA); and of course several numbers performed together. Stadium shows are tough for any artist, but this formidable double bill delivered. —Jem Aswad

For years, Rhiannon Giddens has been on a not-quite-one-woman crusade to educate the world about the Black roots of her primary instrument, the banjo, which came to America via the slave trade. This and her other socially conscious messages are generally serious, but she has a sense of levity to go with the gravity, too. And so it was that the souvenir T-shirt she had on sale at the Hollywood Bowl merch booth bore a pointed and (IYKYK) hilarious message: “The Banjo: woke since the 1600s.” It’s also an instrument that’s been funny since at least the 1960s, and so her all-star Bowl blowout had Steve Martin as one of the featured guests, interrupting his own expert picking with some comedic material about how the banjo has been a source of shame for some white people, as the instrument least likely to get you laid. But the predominant theme of the lengthy evening remained the reclamation of string-band music as a source of pride for Black people. Besides Giddens’ own headlining set, there was a deeply stirring reunion of her roots supergroup Our Native Daughters, with moving turns by Allison Russell, Amythyst Kiah and Leyla McCalla. The takeaway song of the night was the evening’s title track, Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” with slightly altered lyrics about who did and didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but also just a basic, universal sentiment of unease most of us can relate to right now. Giddens’ carefully curated, historic mini-festival couldn’t have served as a finer American Tonic for what ails us. —Chris Willman

It arrived at noon, with no advance warning: “PAUL McCARTNEY ROCKS THE BOWERY 5:00 Doors
6:30 Showtime; Tickets on sale now only at Bowery Ballroom box office. First come, first served.” Yes, the ex-Beatle, who normally headlines arenas if not stadiums, would perform at one of New York’s most intimate venues that night. And for the 575-odd people who crammed into the building, it was a night worth screaming over. At 6:44 p.m. on the nose, the band — led by McCartney — walked onstage and launched straight into “A Hard Day’s Night,” soaring through a two-hour-ish career-spanning set, from 1963 (“From Me to You”) to his 1970s solo hits and even last year’s “final” Beatles song, “Now and Then.” In between were big crowd singalongs on “Hey Jude” and “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da,” romps through “Get Back,” “Jet” and “Got to Get You Into My Life”; deeper cuts like “Letting Go” and “Mrs. Vandebilt”; acoustic songs like “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and a solo “Blackbird.” McCartney was in strong voice — stronger than he was on “Saturday Night Live” 50 th anniversary show later in the week — and kept up a steady stream of banter with the audience throughout the show. “This has been a blast — we’ve looved it,” he said as the band left the stage, speaking for every lucky person in the room. —Jem Aswad

As we publish this mid-year assessment in early July, Lady Gaga is just about to debut her 2025 world tour at a Las Vegas arena. And from many indications, it appears that tour will be quite different from what Gaga did at Coachella just three months ago, even though it’s all part of M’Lady’s “Mayhem” album cycle. Knowing in advance that this would be the case is part of why her appearance at the desert festival — livestreamed to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fans and curious lookie-loos — was such a kick: Unlike nearly everything else at the festival, it was bespoke to Coachella, and bespoke on a grand scale. Other headliners and down-bill attractions were content to trot out their touring set as if Indio were just another night on their itinerary, phoning it in, at least conceptually. But Gaga used all those ramps across the vast field and an apparently bottomless production budget to give us something that felt like it existed at the intersection of old Hollywood, the art-world avant garde and rock ‘n’ roll. You could look for symbolism and meaning in the extravagance of one arresting setpiece after another, from the exoskelton imagery to her performing on crutches at one point to her being menaced by red-clad zombies in a sandbox/graveyard. Or, you could take it all as just trumped-up good fun, which certainly describes the “Mayhem” album itself. In one moment at Coachella, a segment that at first seemed inscrutable turned out to be a live chess game; by the final stretch, the whole thing seemed like a checkmate. —Chris Willman

As Dead & Company returned to Sin City for a second residency, the question on the minds of many fans was, of course, what, if anything, had been updated for 2025 after a groundbreaking run in the world’s most advanced concert venue the summer before? The answer was: just enough to still make Sphere seem as fresh as it ought to, without reinventing the orb. The video design of the ’25 show still followed much the same template as ’24, with the same spectacular bookends (from Haight-Ashbury to deep space and back again) and a return of some of those favorite visualizer setpieces … but with maybe 30-40% new eye candy, as of opening night. So, in other words, a refresh, but far from a total reset. Of course, the visuals vary to some degree from night to night, if not nearly as completely as how much the setlist itself differs, but on a given evening, you might be privy to a fun, giant-sized reenactment of the Grateful Dead’s “Mars Hotel” album cover, or a skeletal Uncle Sam’s motorcycle trip to the Vegas Strip. But the core of the show remains the American beauty of the band’s music. That goes for John Mayer’s graceful, alternating duels with Bob Weir and pianist Jeff Chimenti, and it goes for percussionist Mickey Hart’s nightly drum solo (pictured above), which now, with mind- and butt-bending haptics in the seats, counts as one of the greatest live experiences you could have, even apart from the rest of the show. So will the group’s Golden Gate Park shows in August feel like a comedown without Sphere’s 64,000 LED panels? Here’s betting the thrill will not fade away. —Chris Willman

Lucy Dacus has a voice that just feels like home, in some comforting and abiding way, even when she’s addressing uncomfortable truths. And so it makes sense that the set design for her “Forever Is a Feeling Tour” has some elegantly homey aspects to it, from the giant throw rug she sings from to the actual couch that is brought out for a more acoustic segment of the show. Behind Dacus and her band is a backdrop of picture frames that sometimes displayed ambitious art pieces, as if we were in a gallery, and sometimes endearing illustrations of the musicians, as if we were just in her living room. Naturally, Dacus played a lot of her prior solo material, plus her most masterful Boygenius contribution, “True Blue.” But it was the unabashedly open-to-love moments from her latest album that left the most touching impression. If hearing her sing “I love you, and every day that I knew and didn’t say” doesn’t melt your heart, you must’ve checked it at the door. Extra points at the show we caught in Nashville for using that couch segment to bring out fellow indie-pop queer icon Joy Oladokun for “Bullseye,” a duet that really did hit it. —Chris WIllman

Tyler Childers made remarks more than once during his sold-out Hollywood Bowl debut that it was surprising that so many southern Californians would turn out to see a Kentucky hillbilly, or words to that effect. By now, certainly he and his booking agent are not really surprised at his drawing power anywhere in the nation, but maybe some of the rest of us still can be a little bit shocked, in the best way, at how much a mass audience has taken to what could easily have been envisioned as niche music in the wider expanse of popular entertainment. The amount of hotties in cowboy hats and boots in the Bowl audience evidenced some overlap with the same crowd that would turn out for a Zach Bryan (or even Luke Bryan) show. And there’s hardly any shame, or inaccuracy, in calling this a country music concert, even if he’s barely been played on a country station in his life — the straight country bits were just wildly entertaining exercises in high-minded shit-kicking. But it was quickly apparent why he holds such appeal for fans of singer-songwriters (elder-statesman opener Robert Earl Keen gave him a cosign as one of the best writers working today) and/or jam bands (there was a full-on jazz bass solo within the first 15 minutes). Things really took a turn during the closing minutes of the Bowl show, when he was joined by SOMA for a Hare Krishna devotional chant, followed by one of his most famous songs, “Long Violent History” — which, amazingly, he’d never done in concert before. Accompanying this closer on the big screens was a readout of the famous anti-fascist poem “First They Came” by German pastor Martin Niemöller; though it might’ve gone over some of the audience’s heads, this was clearly meant to be his way of bringing up the protests happening that week. God bless him: He’s one complicated holler-dweller. —Chris Willman

The brutalist design of the just-unveiled new Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been controversial, to say the least. But for an opening attraction, the museum’s overseers could not have picked anything less polarizing than Kamasi Washington‘s three-night stand in the still-empty gallery spaces, an epic-scale performance by more than a hundred musicians that came off as the symphonic-jazz equivalent of a home run. The new David Geffen Galleries, which will not open for art exhibition purposes until April 2026, encompass 110,000 square feet, and nearly all of that endless expanse was filled with the sound of music during Washington’s 90-minute sets. There were 10 different staging areas for different groups of musicians from one end of the amoeba-shaped structure to the other, all performing elements of “Harmony of Difference,” an existing suite that the saxophonist-composer expanded for this hyper-unusual live premiere. Attendees were encouraged to walk around and hear overlapping variations on the same pieces being simultaneously performed by a choir, two string sections, a woodwinds section, a brass section and four other full jazz septets on top of the one that included the composer himself. A stunt? Absolutely. A stunt that happened to work as a gorgeous, experiential tapestry? That, too. An hour and a half wasn’t really enough to sample 10 different equally involving ensembles, to our full satisfaction; no wonder we worked up such a sweat revisiting every station and getting all our steps in. —Chris Willman

Part of what makes the Weeknd such an enduring force is that he has a sound that’s specifically his own — line up the parade of hits he’s had over the past decade and you won’t find much variance. (That’s a compliment, by the way.) The Weeknd is such a gifted performer that he absorbs every sound and song into his orbit, accentuated by the theatrics he stages around it. At one of the four stops on his “After Hours Til Dawn” show, which has been going since 2022, he created a demonic world rife with blasts of fire, shrouded dancers and a larger-than-life golden statue that centered the whole show. At the start of his career, the Weeknd was subsumed in mystery, his identity largely kept a secret. Years later, seeing him in plain sight as he led a maximalist spectacle only proved that showmanship can captivate at any scale. —Steven J. Horowitz

Halsey’s just-completed outing, dubbed the “For My Last Trick” Tour, was one of this year’s most impressive pop road shows — a must-see for veteran tour-watchers, even if you don’t think you care about Halsey (although you should), just for its high level of creative ambition and innovation. But it was really two tours in one, joined at the hip. The first half of the show was a highly stylized succession of Broadway-style setpieces, with drastic changes in scenery, costuming and choreography from one production number to the next, plus lots of filmed content, in the tradition of the most elaborately theatrical tours by Taylor Swift or Madonna. But in the second half, Halsey delivered a straight-up rock ‘n’ roll show, offering highly charged versions of her greatest hits with a smoking band, no dancers and hardly anything in the way of unnecessary unadornment. It was that drastically bifurcated… and that successful in giving you what you want from Halsey, whether that means an elaborately designed conceptual show or a back-to-basics, club-worthy concert or — as it turned out here, happily — a canny combination of both. —Chris Willman

By the time Ivan Cornejo signed his first major-label record deal with Interscope at the age of 19, (the result of a bidding war), .the música mexicana artist and Southern California native was already known as a defining voice for Gen Z Latinos, thanks to his emotive songwriting and unique blend of regional Mexican and alternative rock music. When he appeared at the Kia Forum for two nights to play material from his Billboard 200-charting (No. 17) “Mirada” album, Cornejo signaled some of influences with a pre-concert playlist that included Billie Eilish, the Marias and Tame Impala, along with nostalgic classics like Bobby Pulido’s 1995 hit “Desvelado.” You wouldn’t necessarily identify Cornejo as a rock star, but there are certainly commonalities. He left a lot of room for solos and power chords from the electric guitar, which is at the core of his three-album catalog. You can easily recognize a song is his by the twangy inflection of his voice. A defining quality of the best música mexicana artists is their ability to sing clean register breaks with a whining tone and with great force — Cornejo is no different. The night went without long speeches but he did take the time to address his L.A. fans directly, emphasizing the importance of community and to “stay strong during these rough times.” —Thania Garcia

Not to make this into some kind of AARP tract, but: Are there any figures in American music more inspirational than these two? It was true when they were still mere sprouts of, like, 64 and 72, but all the more so now that they are seriously defying gravity at 84 (for Dylan) and 92 (for Nelson). They played the Hollywood Bowl as a stop on their Outlaw Music Festival tour, just as they had the summer before, and it was just as important to go and pay beer-y respects as it was the summer before. If you live in a city the Outlaw Festival is visiting, the best way to think of it is having half of a living Mount Rushmore coming to you. (I’m not even sure who counts as the other half, at this point; perhaps we can just carve the two of them into the mountain twice.) But they are not up there just as the objects of your national-monument tourist gaze: They are embracing the spirit of each night’s moment in an accomplished and downright frisky way that most younger achievers can only aspire toward. (Although, to give credit where it’s due, most of the younger acts they’ve picked as openers, like Billy Strings and Sierra Hull at the Bowl, seem like the type of kids who can and will absorb these lessons.) Dylan is still rearranging his classics, but in a fashion that seems particularly crowd-pleasing now — you’ll enjoy that your favorite song of his suddenly sounds more like a Dire Straits or Johnny Cash classic. Willie doesn’t mess with the material much, of course, but that doesn’t make his ability to pull off transcendent acoustic guitar solos any less absorbing. —Chris Willman

They don’t really make folk heroes any more — as in, you know, heroes who play folk music. So, despite occasional promises of another Great Folk Scare, Jesse Welles is close to being a one-man phenomenon right now. And he’s up to the task, judging from this galvanizing show at the Troubadour, where the venerable club name really fit for once. He performed the first three-quarters of this tour stop stop solo-acoustic, then was joined by two musicians to form an electric power trio for the last fourth, before going it alone again for the encore, and what was clear was that we need both Jesses. By now you probably at least know that he’s become an online sensation for his topical songs, like a Dylan who never felt trapped by the pressure to keep speaking to the moment. And his words pour out in torrents — how does he get through a gig like the Troubadour’s without a prompter for those thousands of quickly spun lines? Biting irony meets better brain chemistry in Welles, one of the most exciting additions to the pantheon of obvious career artists who are just getting started. —Chris WIllman

Chappell Roan made Elton John an honorary member of the “Pink Pony Club,” placing a fringe-laden, pink cowboy hat upon his head as she dueted with the legend on her signature song as well as one of his own classics at his annual Oscar night party in West Hollywood, practically kitty-corner from the nightspot that inspired her signature song. Although Roan’s hour-long set with her all-female band included the most popular staples of her nascent catalog, it was clear early on that she’d be celebrating the occasion with some value-added Elton content — starting with an earnest solo rendition of his classic “Your Song.” Later, she called John himself up from his table to the stage, where they traded vocals as he played piano on “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” before rounding the night out with a version of “Pink Pony Club” that had Elton enthusiastically joining in on vocals. Her rapt adoration as she gazed at him was touching, if not as sweet as the giddy glee that took over Elton when he got that hat. Seeing the music world’s eldest and youngest gay heroes consummate a kind of love affair on stage was a treat. —Chris WIllman

He was “Traveling Alone” and loving it, at least in the sense that Jason Isbell was hitting the road as a solo artist for a first-time national acoustic tour, reflecting the formal solitude of “Foxes in the Snow,” his first true solo record. Or maybe the reflection went the other way, since Isbell had said he booked these tour dates last year and then the idea of recording a full record with no band was an outgrowth of that impulse. Whichever came first, the chicken or the egg, the album and tour arriving in tandem made for a terrific chicken-omelette dinner. Some fans or critics have made the point of saying “Foxes in the Snow” is Isbell’s “Nebraska” equivalent, but one crucial difference is how much finger-picking goodness this expert lead guitarist brings to his acoustic playing, versus the more elementary strumming of a Springsteen. So een if you’re a fan of the 400 Unit sound (as presumably every extant devotee of his is), this solo tour felt like optimal Isbell, with the clarity of music and lyrics that the honed-down, zoned-in solo format allowed. —Chris WIllman

Rachel Chinouriri is on the cusp of a mainstream breakthrough, yet the first of two Los Angeles stops on her “All I Ever Asked For Was a North American Tour” suggested she’s already arrived. The British singer-songwriter commanded the crowd in ways that artists far beyond her years can do, invoking screams and whoops during tracks like “Never Need Me” and “The Hills” but just as quickly bringing down the mood so confessional fare like “Robbed” and “So My Darling” could resonate. The South London native has a creative versatility that never feels disjointed; she’s the whole experience, and she makes it worth the while. —Steven J. Horowitz

“You know, Ronnie Hawkins used to say, ‘If this show business thing doesn’t work out, by the time I’m 80, I’m gonna look for another line of work’,” said T Bone Burnett, getting chatty with an audience in the back room at McCabe’s Guitar Shop, where he was doing a sold-out six-show run. “I’m getting close to 80,” Burnett (who’s 78) continued, zeroing in on his punchline. “And I thought, ‘You know what I’d be great at, is being an influencer.’ Don’t you think? Like, I’m gonna influence the fuck out of you tonight,” he promised. The crowd at McCabe’s could consider itself properly influenced. For his first tour in 19 years, Burnett picked places to play that count as proper listening rooms, even if the size of the venues didn’t provide the supply to meet the demand that’s built up to see the singer/songwriter/producer after all these years out of the headliner spotlight. With guitarist Colin Linden, fiddler-mandolinist David Mansfield and bassist Dennis Crouch in tow, Burnett strung us along with repartee and wisdom in a parlor performance that just happened to feature the greatest string band in the world. —Chris Willman

Allison Russell ended up delaying her tour behind her sophomore solo album, 2013’s “The Returner,” in order to take on a role that was offered her as Persephone in Broadway’s “Hadestown.” If anything from 2023 merits returning to again and again, it’s that collection of material, the determined spiritual resilience of which arguably feels more necessary in today’s climate than it did even half-a-year ago. In the parlance of Van Morrison, an Allison Russell show is a true “did ye get healed?” experience. Just as much as it’s a concert, her performance feels like an activation… in the old-school, spiritual sense. There was a bonus to the delayed gratification of this tour: She brought “Hadestown” with her — not so much literally, although she did close the show with a cover of that production’s heart-rending denouement, “We Raise Her Cups.” It’s in the sense of how much she seems to have grown physically as a performer through her short but sure turn on Broadway. Taking a rooting interest in Russell almost feels bigger than investing in just one artist, when she represents the best of what music could be and sometimes is, with that stunning voice as a trigger for righteous anger, empathy, self-understanding and forgiveness. —Chris Willman

So, you say you like melodies? A bit of manna from a more euphonious heaven arrived this spring in the form of “What the World Needs Now: The Burt Bacharach Songbook Live in Concert,” a multi-artist outing whose generous setlists were, fortunately, as long-winded as the tour’s title. It was solidly cast, with Todd Rundgren as perhaps the only true marquee attraction but plenty of other voices who do the catalog just as much justice. And it was especially solidly anchored, with Bacharach’s longtime music director/conductor, Rob Shirakbari, making sure that everything sounded exactly as you’d hope, even with a fairly modest lineup of nine players and/or singers on most nights. Rundgren’s vaunted Philly-soul side was appropriate for the many ballads he fronted. But two leading ladies were also especially well-cast, in that Wendy Moten sounded like she was Dionne Warwick, almost as much as Tori Holub was a live ringer for Karen Carpenter. Every great pop composer should get a tribute this expert and adoring, even if very few in history would deserve it this much. —Chris Willman

Downtown L.A.’s Novo transformed into a portal of opulence for Argentine singer-songwriter Nathy Peluso, who made the most of this space, and very clearly demanded more of it. In a nearly two-hour showcase, Peluso nimbly maneuvered from genre to genre, with no limit on the number of twists: poignant power ballads, razor-sharp raps and salsa sequences with elements of Brazilian funk, EDM and bachata scattered throughout. The setlist reflected the best of her catalog but placed a shining light on “Grasa,” Peluso’s 16-song LP that won three Latin Grammys last year. Peluso airly pranced across the stage during the salsa portions of the evening for songs like “Mafiosa,” “Puro Veneno” and “La Presa,” with the latter featuring a theatrical delivery from Peluso calling out to la policia and dancing against a makeshift cage. Peluso followed these red-hot moments with emotional shifts. Before you know it, she’s on the floor, her body sloped across the carpeted steps of her stage design. And all throughout, her vocals never flounder — her vibrato is as honeyed and robust as it is on the floor as when she’s standing upright, nor does it tremble when her hips sway to “Erotika,” a lavish and erotic salsa reminiscent of the genre’s ’90s classics. For Peluso, who sings and dances and acts with a palpable swagger, it seemed she was completely engrossed in a colorful world of her own making, and was overjoyed by having us watch. —Thania Garcia

“We’re all holding up pretty good, huh?” asked Charlotte Caffey early into the Go-Go’s’ performance Wednesday night at the Roxy, where the full, founding fivesome was playing a public show together for the first time in more than seven years. It was unclear whether she was just referring to the band members, or to the more collective us, which included a good amount of O.G. fans. But the short answer either way was: Good God, yes! That certainly went for the band, sounding as good as they ever have, and went for the part of the audience that’s been along for the ride, too. To hear vintage girl-power anthems like “Skidmarks on My Heart” and “How Much More” performed this muscularly at this late date was to feel… upheld. (And not just because the packed-beyond-capacity crowd at the way-oversold Roxy didn’t allow an inch of space for slouching.) This was the start of a practice run for their Coachella shows, but the best possible way to recapture the glory was by leaving a skid mark in WeHo on the way to Indio. —Chris Willman

“Longevity was never a major concern of ours,” said Bob Weir, getting a big chuckle out of the audienceas he accepted an award, along with other members of the Grateful Dead or their family members, at MusiCares‘ annual Persons of the Year charity gala. Be careful what you don’t wish for: Weir is still out there 60 years later slugging it out — happily, as far as anyone can tell — with the offshoot group Dead & Company, whose mini-set climaxed this black-tie-optional evening downtown. Their performance followed tribute segments by artists as varied as Noah Kahan, Billy Strings, Vampire Weekend, the War on Drugs and Maren Morris, in front of a house band assembled by Don Was. Many of these were memorable, but John Mayer turned in what was easily the night’s most riveting performance — a nearly 12-minute version of “Terrapin Station,” performed in acoustic trio format on the B-stage, with the kind of solos that further proved that Mayer was the best and only pick to fill Jerry Garcia’s shoes in any fashion. —Chris Willman

Are we in a golden age for acoustic music? You’d just about have to think so, if you saw Jason Isbell’s solo tour this spring, or the outing from Welch and Rawlings. More than six months into touring behind their excellent 2024 joint effort, “Woodland,” their Wiltern show was a reminder not just of what an influence they’ve surely been on someone like Isbell, but how they remain the unshakable queen and king of folk or folk-adjacent music. Of course, while Isbell and some of their other contemporaries might dip their toes in and out of a purely acoustic mode, Welch and Rawlings have been keeping it quiet for close to 30 years now. Every once in a while, they threaten to go electric, but thankfully, it never quite seems to completely take. The mystery in the timeless tales they tell generally does work best on a lower boil, even as nothing electrifies quite like Rawlings’ 1935 Epiphone, when he really lets his fingers do the amplifying. For an encore, the L.A. audience got a pretty rare bonus: their fantastic version of the Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” which turned the dynamic duo from clear Deadheads into Fed-heads for a few minutes,. —Chris WIllman

There comes a time in nearly every veteran performer’s life when they consider the question: Would it be all right to give the audience what they want… i.e., the early, funny stuff? (Or early, furious stuff, in Costello’s case?) Actually, most musicians give in to that pretty early in their careers, but Costello has been far more idiosyncratic than most. He has, however, focused in recent years on reviving some of his and the Attractions’ flashpoint material in concert, so he was really just formalizing that — and yes, heading out on the road without worrying about supporting a new album — when he dubbed this 2025 tour “Radio Soul!: The Early Songs of Elvis Costello.” Keeping the setlists mostly limited to a revolving door’s worth of songs from his 1977-86 period still gave Costello plenty of breadth to play with. He was able, for instance, to revive a version of “Deportees Club,” from the undervalued “Goodbye Cruel World” album, as a bittersweet implicit tribute to all those currently getting kicked out of the U.S…. even as he found some guitar funk to make a hit like “Everyday I Write the Book” rock more than the original did. Steve Nieve still brings the keyboard wit, Pete Thomas still brings the raw drumming power and not-so-recent conscript Davey Faragher is as ever a bassist for all Elvis-ian seasons. On the night we caught them in L.A., Trump had just bombed Iran, and no commentary was necessary other for Costello to offer a very rare show-opening “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding” (don’t worry, he also still closed the concert with it, too), followed by “Waiting for the End of the World.” So, even limiting himself to his feisty early days, rock’s most brilliant songwriter has a song for every occasion. And it doesn’t hurt when every occasion is as dystopian as it is now. —Chris Willman

Jon Batiste is renowned as a band leader; that kind of goes without saying when that was his literal job description for years on the Colbert show. But, as strong as he is in that role, he might be even better as a one-man band. He has done a handful of solo shows in what are normally symphonic settings in support of his 2024 album “Beethoven Blues (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 1),” and this was the musical polymath at his very best, with no backing band to funk up the proceedings, and not even allowing himself any between-song commentary to let his force-of-personality take over. (Not to worry, his frequent grin still does some audience gladhanding.) His epic opening number, “Symphony No. 5 Stomp,” lasts less than two minutes on record, but was expanded out to about 10 times that in concert — a tour de force of classical, jazz and even discordant sounds melded together in such exhaustingly improvisational fashion that it felt like a concert unto itself. It did go on — and he did bust out the melodica, as well as the human voice, for some of his trademark material — but we’ll never forget how he flipped a lid on Ludwig. —Chris Willman

When titans of music meet on stage, it tends to be pretty scripted, or at least rehearsed. And the meeting of Twain and Carlile at the latter’s annual Girls Just Wanna Weekend festival in Mexico was planned out, up to a point, with Shania bringing Brandi out midway through her headlining set for a mutual lovefest that included harmonizing on “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and “From This Moment On.” But what is undervalued about Twain is just how loose she can be as a performer, which usually evidences itself only in her interplay with audience members. Having one of her own musical heroines join her on stage, Twain was determined not to waste This Moment, and she clearly was in no hurry to get back to the more rote parts of the show. She asked if Carlile had ever sung “I Will Always Love You” before (the answer was yes, with Dolly Parton, but never mind that), then pulled her into a spontaneous duet of one of history’s greatest songs. They ended with “Party for Two,” which is not one of history’s greatest songs, but sure seemed like it at the time, with this nearly all-women festival celebrating the sight and sound of two female icons getting their pop-country freak on together. Leave it to an only part-time control freak like Shana to know when a left turn will work wonders. —Chris Willman

From Post Malone to Lana Del Rey, sometimes it can seem like the whole world is going Americana, if not country. Yola is headed the opposite direction, and that’s actually pretty wonderful. The Bristol-born singer made a huge impact in 2019 with the decidedly Americana-leaning album “Walk Through Fire,” but she hasn’t been singing any of the material from that on her current tour, instead focusing on a mixture of material from the followup, 2021’s “Stand for Myself,” and the entirety of the recent EP, “My Way,” which introduces a more marked change of direction. Moreover, the nightly covers really show where her heart’s at: Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love,” Yarbrough & People’s “Don’t Stop the Music,” Rene & Angela’s “I’ll Be Good,” Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy”… In short, the European import who was introduced to us skewing toward American roots music is making it clear that some of her truest roots are in R&B. That cuts down on the novelty factor a little, which is no great sacrifice when it comes to one of the greatest voices in all of music putting her energies toward the styles where she feels most at home. And where she can — as she definitely did at the El Rey — find the most proper setting for her inner and outer Tina. On top of that, nobody’s a more entertaining between-song storyteller than this earthy and erudite Brit. —Chris Willman

“Let’s go to WeHo in the meantime” doesn’t have the same ring to it, but legendary singer-songwriter and longtime Tennessean resident John Hiatt returned to his old haunts in L.A. to be serenaded by a parade of boldface admirers at the Americana Music Association’s annual Grammy eve salute to a legend. The combination of classic material and an A-list of artists from multiple generations would have been enough to melt anyone’s icy blue heart. At this late date, you might think you don’t need to hear one more person cover his “Have a Little Faith in Me,” but that would have been before you heard Michael McDonald do a spectacular version of it as this event that made it seem brand new again; his gospel rendition really did turn it into a faith-based ballad. Other highlights included turns by I’m With Her, Little Feat, Cedric Burnside, Joe Henry, Robbie Fulks, Joe Bonamassa, Tom Morello (yes, he solos with his teeth even when he’s covering Hiatt, if you were wondering), Shemekia Copeland, Maggie Rose, Lyle Lovett, Milk Carton Kids, Los Lobos, Brandy Clark (pictured above) and more. You could call it a murderer’s row that the AMA is able to round up for these L.A. tribute shows each Grammy season, or you could say that, in this case, they brought the family. —Chris Willman

In some ways, among musicians whose catalogs are not chock-full of universally recognizable hits, Jill Sobule‘s catalog is exceptionally well-suited for a tribute show. The late singer-songwriter’s songs are universally clever, vivid, high-concept, direct, usually (but not always) funny and instantly relatable. The truth of just how instantly her material comes across in any setting was born out when McCabe’s produced the first in a series of nationwide celebrations of her music legacy, just one month after her tragic passing. (A second, equally good L.A. tribute was held at Largo a month after this one with an entirely different cast.) A superb lineup included Dan Navarro, Willie Aron, Cindy Lee Berryhill, Steve Postell, Amy Engelhardt, Perla Batalla, Jesse Lynn Madera, Lisa Loeb and Tom Morello. But among the biggest standouts were Kay Hanley and Michelle Lewis, who covered Sobule’s last song — which managed to be one of her most notorious — “JD Vance Is a Cunt,” and Margaret Cho, who found just the proper mixture of comedy and pathos in the classic unrequited-love lament “Mexican Wrestler.” Which is not to say that the real star of the night sang at all; that would have to be “I Kissed a Girl” video star Fabio, who sweetly came out just to say that his heart, like all of ours, was broken. —Chris Willman