Em Beihold’s rising star took her by surprise and later tonight, she’ll tell us the story. Despite her shock, she has gone on to tour with an impressive array of artists like Lewis Capaldi, King Princess, and the Jonas Brothers. A lifelong musician, Beihold didn’t believe she could make a career out of music, but now, almost through with her first headlining tour, Beihold is steadily building up her budding fandom. In Atlanta, on a chilly Monday Night, she visits Terminal West, a humble venue with a capacity of 625.
The night’s opener, Will Linley, a boyish pop artist hailing from Cape Town, South Africa is a natural charmer and a flirt with the romantic and sensitive songs to back it up. Before “Gracie”, a song in which he ruminates over the identity of his future wife, Linley called out a fan in the front row—”the girl in the green shirt”—and asked for her name, Mary. Then, he slipped her name in towards the end of the song, singing “Mary / I know that you’d be the one to save me”.
For someone on his first-ever U.S. tour, he showed off a surprisingly convincing southern accent. Before heading off the stage, he plugged his upcoming single “Blame” with a live debut before it officially releases on April 5th. Then he headed off, leaving us waiting for the main act.
As the lights lowered, an extended introduction to “Roller Coasters Make Me Sad” played over the speakers. Beihold’s guitarist and drummer took their places and then, Beihold pranced in, heading straight into the first verse with an infectious energy.
Bantering back and forth with the audience, she joked that the next song, “12345”, was for the “anxiety girlies.” Mental health is a common theme in the 24-year-old’s music. She openly shares her struggles surrounding it through her songs, which her listeners tend to connect most immediately to. As a part of her advocacy efforts, she noted that each ticket sale from the tour contributes $1 to Active Minds, a non-profit leading efforts to take mental health seriously, especially for students.
Beihold’s relatability stems from her earnestness. In each song, she offers a fresh perspective on the realistic struggles of being a young adult in the modern age. She builds on this with each track on the setlist. In “Too Precious” she embraces her introverted tendencies, poking fun at the expectation of what it means to be “cool” at her age.
Before playing “Groundhog Day”, an undeniably relatable track, she tells the audience that this is the track that launched her career. She says she’d resigned herself to working as a production assistant for the Voice—”that’s like music-adjacent right?”—after being rejected by reality TV talent shows and her college’s a cappella group. And when “Groundhog Day” was embraced by audiences, it landed her a record deal from Republic Records. On the stage, she opted to play her keyboard as she sang it.
Then, she graced audiences with a live performance of an unreleased track, “Extraordinary”. Driving home her relatable persona, the song explores the constant pressure to be and do great things in your life, the thoughts that lead to those late nights when you realize you’ll never be the president or that 12-year-old competing in the Olympics. She contemplated with the audience “I don’t know why I’m so consumed by how history sees me.” She muses in the chorus “Optimism / tricked me / and it made me believe / that the only way to be / is extraordinary”.
After the Los Angeles native sang “City of Angels” about all the fakers in L.A., she invited her friend/merch coordinator, Leah, to the stage to back her up as she sang “Until I Found You”, a nostalgic song in which she joined crooner Stephen Sanchez, launching the song into the viral stratosphere, gaining 1 billion streams on TikTok and just short a billion on Spotify.
She played yet another unreleased track, “Shiny New Things”, focusing on the rush to embrace new trends as quickly as possible in the current digital landscape. The next three songs—”Goo”, “Pedestal”, and “Spiderman”—all focused on romantic escapades gone wrong, with the middle one being the mandatory ukulele moment.
“Lottery”, which Beihold named as her favorite, was a highlight of the show, exemplary of her down-to-earth nature, and the third unreleased track of the night. In “Lottery” she is grateful that she hasn’t been endowed with egregious amounts of money and the ails that accompany it.
As we headed to the end of the set, Beihold embraced the most energetic songs of her discography. Yet, the subject matter isn’t necessarily happy. “Egg in the Backseat” stemming from a childhood nickname, is a bouncy, upbeat track that gets the crowd jumping as she says of her crush, “I think you’re a bad Idea / you’re a bad idea”.
Second to last she plays “Maybe Life is Good”. Of the song, she noted: it was written at a time in which everything was bleak and miserable and she used this song as a tool to get better. She says “I named the tour after this song because I wanted this to be a safe space.”
Then finally, the night wrapped up with “Numb Little Bug”, one of her best-known tracks, which takes a humorous yet candid take on anhedonic depression and taking medications to get better. It’s another early single that gained her the following she has. The top comment on its music video reads “It’s fascinating how one song can really make you say ‘thank God it’s not only me.’”
Her malleability as an artist is evident. As the audience files out, I noted many parents here with younger daughters in tow, wearing pink tour merch. Even still, there is no shortage of teens and younger adults in the mix. Empathetic as she is talented, Beihold was a vibrant artist on the stage.
Buket is a graduate of the University of Georgia (Music Business Alum) and the current Editor-in-Chief of Vinyl Mag. She believes that a sincere lover of music can find something to like in just about any song. She loves to write to escape the grueling drudgery of capitalism. She is currently based in Georgia, but might soon be coming to a music festival near you.