Charlie Seliger, Sophomore
Stephen Sanchez, Tiktok-darling-turned-50s-pop-rocker, is new on the scene. Many only know him from his 2021 hit, “Until I Found You.” Nevertheless, on December 1st, the line for his show at Boston’s Roadrunner curved thrice around the venue. Mostly young people composed it, along with intermittent elderly women who clutched their tickets with brittle hands. What makes Sanchez’s emulation of the ’50s successful enough to attract Elvis’s original fans? After a night in his presence, I conclude that his popularity can be attributed to nostalgia, dazzling showmanship, and sincerity.
Beginning the show, stage lights pulsated, fog seemed to pour from the heavens, and a soft, evocative track played. A voice boomed through the speakers, inviting us back in time as a pilot might welcome passengers aboard. The eager crowd then came as close as can be to seeing Elvis in 2023. Each arm swing or hip gyration seemed to have been plucked from the past, and in the style of a true ’50s rocker, Sanchez was always in motion. His crooning voice held a familiar warm tone; if Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra had somehow managed to procreate, Sanchez would be the result. He dominated the stage in saddle shoes and a silk button-down shirt, hair masterfully slicked back. Shrouded in lingering mist, he may as well have emerged from a vault.
The troubadour soared through his newest album, “Angel Face,” frequently flaunting his falsetto. Yet somehow his tremulous voice wasn’t the highlight of the performance—instead, his energy. Merely listening to his music cannot begin to suggest the life he brought to the stage. He bounded to and fro, jammed with his accompaniment, and occasionally flung himself to the floor. Often I could barely hear him over cathartic cheers. Even the MIT student I’d been trying to edge past stopped canoodling with his girlfriend long enough to whoop enthusiastically, and near the front, a woman lost consciousness. Sanchez easily drove the audience to a frenzy.
Without seeing his show, one could assume he’s simply taking advantage of a musical epoch. Yet what makes his music so endearingly vintage doesn’t appear to be the result of research or calculation, but the candor behind each lovestruck lyric. He seems to feel each word, so his audience feels too.
Sanchez, currently small enough to still ogle at the crowd in amazement, will undoubtedly grow in popularity. If he subsequently strays to another era, I can only hope he embodies it with as much passion, legitimacy, and pizzazz as he has the late ’50s.