TD Garden is a sea of lime green and knee-high boots. The sold-out show, following performances at other impressive venues like Madison Square Garden, leaves the stadium buzzing with anticipation.
SWEAT marks a major milestone in both Troye Sivan and Charli XCX’s careers, as it is both artists’ largest headlining arena tour thus far. At the time of the tour announcement in April, there was concern online about its success. Even though Sivan’s 2023 dance-pop record “Something to Give Each Other” garnered mainstream attention, racking in a nomination for the Australian Music Prize and two Grammy nominations for the album’s lead single “Rush,” many worried that the record’s success wasn’t enough to fill large arenas in North America. Similar concern surrounded Charli. In April 2024, she was viewed as an experimental artist with a specific niche and a largely international audience. Of course, no one knew what was coming. Just a few months later, as “brat” summer set in, the SWEAT tour took its place as the most exciting collaboration of the year.
Sivan’s dancers — a group he affectionately calls “Troye’s Boys” — are illuminated and positioned in a line as they dance to “Got Me Started,” which samples “Shooting Stars,” the 2009 electronic song by Bag Raiders. The segment acts as a transition into the show, setting the stage for what is to be an incredibly engaging, well-planned production; more akin to a party than a concert. The 110-minute show transitioned between Sivan’s highly choreographed acts and Charli’s rave-like performances. While Sivan’s portion of the setlist was largely representative of his discography, Charli’s was, not unexpectedly, “brat”-heavy. A few older hits made it into the show, along with the pair’s 2018 collaboration “1999.”
After Sivan performs hits “What’s the Time Where You Are?” and “My My My!” a four-sided lime green curtain drops around the stage, “brat” printed in its signature Arial font on each side. When it drops again, it reveals Charli XCX with her hand on her hip. The arena explodes into deafening screams. Charli brings out Shygirl, the tour’s opener, to kick off the party with a remix of “365” before she dives into other tracks that defined “brat” summer.
Charli’s style of performing makes the arena feel like an intimate venue. It’s just her – no band, no dancers, no props. That aspect of her performance captures the essence of “brat” well. It’s cool, but not showy. It’s a little bit messy, a little bit gritty and very unapologetic. During “Von dutch,” she swings on metal bars that make up an industrial tunnel-like structure underneath the stage. She engages with the camera, gets up close to the lens, then pushes it away to let it spiral off. The screen flips between multiple perspectives and it feels like the audience is watching a music video unfold in real time.
The show continued to evolve as Sivan showcased his storytelling abilities. Sivan sits on a silky white bed as he sings “In My Room,” a collaboration with Spanish singer and guitarist Guitarricadelafuente. He gazes out at the audience, which is lit up by thousands of flashlights. The stage design creates a familiar teenage bedroom setting as Sivan delivers an impressive vocal performance of his 2020 song “Rager teenager!” He does a good job of incorporating these softer tracks while aligning them to the party-girl frequency of the SWEAT tour.
“Are you guys ready to bring back my sexy f***ing dancers?” he asks before the crowd erupts.
Charli gets vulnerable with the crowd in the intro to “Sympathy is a knife.” Her voice heavily distorted, she says: “The thing about being a brat is, you know, sometimes you aren’t really feeling yourself, sometimes you just feel really angry, sometimes you feel really insecure. Tonight, I just want to scream, and I like doing it to this song.”
Part of what makes “brat” so captivating is Charli’s vulnerability on the album. “Sympathy is a knife” reflects on her insecurities and the complicated reality of being a female artist. Without that monologue, you wouldn’t have been able to guess that Charli wasn’t feeling herself, because right after, she is licking the stage as a camera films from below during “Guess.” A few tracks later, in the intro to “Girl, so confusing,” Charli breaks out in another confession to the audience, acknowledging her wardrobe malfunctions on stage and how it can be hard to be a “bad girl” all the time.
Sivan echoes this vulnerability in his performance of “One of Your Girls,” which is about his experiences of hooking up with straight-identifying guys and sacrificing his self-worth in the process. While onstage with his dancers, who are wearing nothing but black tights and stiletto heels, Sivan sings, “Give me a call if you ever get desperate / I’ll be like one of your girls.”
Near the end of the show, the pair show some love to their older tracks, with Charli singing hits “Speed Drive,” “Vroom Vroom” and “Track 10.” Sivan’s “STUD,” off his “In A Dream” EP, spotlights his incredible dancers. In proper encore fashion, “I Love It” gets the crowd jumping like it’s 2012. And the party isn’t over until Sivan performs “Rush.” As the intro plays, Troye’s Boys suspend him in the air in a classic frat boy keg stand. His dynamic performance transports the crowd to a party in Australia on a night much later than this one. It’s hot, it’s fun and it’s definitely sweaty–complete with an on-stage make out session between Sivan and dancer Mauro van de Kerkhof.
Charli and Troye joined on stage to close out the show with their collaboration on the “Talk talk” remix, which is confirmed to appear on Charli’s remix album, “Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat,” coming out Friday, Oct. 11. What started as a cold, heavily air-conditioned arena ended with a satisfying dampness hanging in the air. The two successfully left Boston sweating.
