Descending into Mary’s Underground, I was brought back to my last time there in July 2024, in which I was incredibly drunk and hysterically crying in that ‘messy 20-something’ way our generation tends to do. It is safe to say that I did not expect to be greeted with a swarm of preteens and their discernibly interested parents and guardians. Yet that’s exactly what awaited me in this underground bar, a nine-year-old girl on the shoulders of her mum and a legion of fans chanting “Lyric” while singing along to the pop girl pre-show playlist.
They were all awaiting the arrival of 21-year-old Queenslander Lyric, performing at her biggest solo headliner show in Sydney in support of her latest EP Nostalgia. Lyric started with her most well-known song, ‘Gravity’ — a synthy, celestial, possessive love song, which was met with the swarm of people around the front of the stage singing/chanting along to every word.
The audience was feverish for more, and more Lyric delivered. My friend Anna and I were not deeply familiar with Lyric before this concert, but when Lyric asked the audience if they’d seen her live before, more than half the audience roared. She has fans. A legion of them.
Whilst certain songs like ‘Wine Stain’ carried with them a TikTok-like young-adult-fantasy-novel vibe in their depictions of love and drugs (“the red on his shirt is not a wine stain”), others snuck past the melodrama right to some base human emotions. The title track of the new EP, ‘Nostalgia Is My Enemy’, was a grounded exploration of the notion that life used to be better, that we lose some core sense of joy as we get older. A joy that we must aim to find again. Crowd favourite ‘Lunar Eclipse’ struck a similar tone, a numerically inclined lovey-dovey encapsulation of the magic of a blossoming love.
Frustratingly, my favourite performances of the night were of unreleased songs. With ‘Make a Move’ and its tiny bell dings and whimsical song verses, I am eagerly waiting for the moment I can use that song as a background for a happy little Instagram story of my lunch. As for ‘Homesick’, with its heart-tuggingly simple epithet “you can be homesick from people too”, I await the day I can use that song as a background for my sad little Instagram story of a cloudy sky.
I made a joke to Anna about the audience being mostly teenage girls, and she went quietly serious for a moment. She said “One Direction, Taylor Swift, The Beatles, they all had audiences of teenage girls. Imagine we see this show and we realise that we didn’t appreciate her when we had the chance.”
And she’s right. Teenage girls control the music industry. Having the grip on this demographic that Lyric does, with their devotion and raw emotion and needing to buy two concert tickets so their fathers can come along, is a surefire way to create a built in audience. It is a promising sign for the future for this young Aussie talent.
I will say this, young ones. It is not concert etiquette to leave your flash on on your video recording, especially when you are recording oneself. There were several songs where I felt as if Lyric was [lunar] eclipsed by the phone light of the gen Alpha in front of me, and I felt old complaining that I was unable to see.
Film the concert, sure, but you don’t need to film yourself enjoying the concert, especially with flash. Besides, Lyric didn’t need the assistance from your phone: her talent and stage presence shone enough on their own.
