Metro Weekly

Editor’s Choice: Fletcher at the 9:30 Club

You can only imagine the sparks that will fly among fans catching Fletcher live for the first time since her last tour in 2019.

Fletcher - Photo: Kristen Jan Wong
Fletcher – Photo: Kristen Jan Wong

The young pop artist who records and performs using just her last name has churned out one sharply produced, stunningly dramatic song after another. For the most part, they all register as perfectly attuned to her age and our era, further stamped by a lyrical style, rich in wordplay, as confessional as it is evasive — and oh so very clever.

As the years, and EPs, have gone by, everything’s only gotten better — everything, that is, except Fletcher’s personal life, at least when it comes to sex and love, or when it comes to the portion of it she conveys in song.

Her 2020 EP THE S(EX) TAPES was as bitter and brooding and brilliant as the best of Halsey or Tove Lo, to cite two of her more established queer contemporaries.

Then, last fall, she returned with something else entirely: “girls girls girls,” the kind of song we didn’t know we needed, and the kind of song we only wish Katy Perry might have launched her career with instead of a certain gay-baiting breakthrough.

Over a sauntering and seductive groove that only reinforces everything that’s right about Fletcher’s assured, affirming cover and wrong about Perry’s bratty, teasing original, Fletcher shares her story of sparks flying after kissing a girl, before adding the kicker, with a sultry, twanging coo, “I told my mom it’s not a phase.”

She ends the song with a quick laugh and the ultimate takeaway. “I kissed a girl, no surprises: I really, really liked it.”

You can only imagine the sparks that will fly among a crowd of fans at the 9:30 Club, catching Fletcher live for the first time since her last tour in 2019. Also adding to the celebratory mood for Fletcher: the fact that the D.C. show is scheduled one day after her birthday, thus becoming her first as a 28-year-old. 

Sunday, March 20. Doors at 7 p.m. The 9:30 Club is at 815 V St. NW. Tickets are $22. Call 202-265-0930 or visit www.930.com.

To see more upcoming Fletcher tour dates, click here.

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