Holding Hands with Julia Michaels
By: Melissa Croft
The crowd in Marathon Music Works on Wednesday night looks like a Nashville starter pack. The room is filled with singer-songwriters and creatives. There is a quiet buzz as UK native, Rhys Lewis. gets the crowd ready for Julia Michaels. His voice is calm and melodic.
The laid-back energy in the room switches to a rumbling excitement as Michaels’ stage set-up begins. Fans clad in casual jean jackets and sneakers begin to cheer as inflatable daisies and a sign appears that reads:
Judgment Free Zone
Encouraged:
✓ Singing
✓ Dancing
✓Jumping
✓ Feeling
✓ Laughing
In anticipation, girls in wire-framed glasses and men with countless tattoos move closer to the stage. The fans know every single word and belt them out alongside Michaels as she begins her show with “Heaven,” a track she recorded for the movie adaptation of 50 Shades Freed.
Michaels’ fans include high schoolers; working adults; same-sex couples; men and women from all walks of life. Anyone is welcome here.
“This is a safe space!” Michaels has the crowd shout back to give them validation and comfort.
After a few crowd pleasers, Michaels plays some more emotional tracks. Tears well up in her eyes while she performs; no doubt from a combination of her nerves, heartfelt lyrics, and gratitude. She admits that her parents are in the audience tonight and that sparks a surge in her stage-fright.
Julia smiles and stands still, waving to the crowd with a small flutter of her fingers. On her palm reads the words, “I love you.”
“I have, ‘i love you’ tattooed on my palm because sometimes I can’t say it. So if I hold up my hand, I’m telling you, “I love you.”
She also has the words “speak up” inked across her throat, serving as tiny reminders to love herself.
She cannot begin to express the gratitude she feels for her fans.
The Inner Monologue Tour is Julia’s first headlining tour (her warm energy denotes that we are on a first-name basis), although you would never know it from her stage-presence.
She is effortlessly vulnerable, connected and humble on stage. She commands attention while uniting a room full of strangers as friends.
Nearing the end of her set, Julia asks if she can join the audience down on the floor.
“I always get nervous that you guys think I can’t see you in the back! Now I have proof that I can.
Hopefully I don’t smell bad.”
She parts the center of the crowd and hops off stage, waving to familiar faces in the Nashville audience. iPhone screens light up as her fans help her sing the first verse and chorus of “(Forget) You” by Cee Lo Green.
Hundreds of hands in the air indicate that Michaels’ fans are there to support her and relate to the lyrics of heartbreak, depression and anxiety.
She stops singing to instruct everyone to stop let out the biggest scream they can muster. She understands that everyone has unspoken stress and pent-up frustrations to let out and as instructed, the intimate standing-room-only venue is now filled with a chorus of (presumably, harmonized) yells. When it ends, she asks us to scream again.
“Now hug the person next to you. Even if you don’t know them. Get all sweaty. Let’s go!
“You don’t know how much you’ve just done for someone.
"And now you’ve just made a new friend!”
Julia’s fans serenade her again as she kicks off, “Falling For Boys,” a track off her latest album, Inner Monologue, Part II. She sings out to her parents, who are somewhere in the room, apologizing for how her poor taste in men (sorry--boys) affects them.
She jumps back on stage with her band and they sit down in front, swaying back and forth among a sea of cellphone flashlights and outstretched arms. An interactive audience passionately scream-sings the lyrics to her track, ”Priest,” back to her.
“Sometimes, I miss you and then I remember . . . that I deserve MUCH BETTER!
Cover my tattoo about you with another . . . And now I'm feeling MUCH BETTER!”
Michaels’ foot pops as she accepts a bouquet of flowers from a fan in the front row, giddy like a schoolgirl.
She invites her opener and friend, Rhys Lewis, back on stage to sing a duet with her. He sings Niall Horan’s part of “What a Time”, they hug and she abruptly runs off stage.
Before the lights can even dim, the crowd erupts in screams and Julia dances back into the spotlight to introduce her band and the greatly-anticipated encore of her hit song, “Anxiety.”
By the end of the night, this songwriting powerhouse will have the top three spots on the Pop music charts. This includes, “If The World Was Ending” by JP Saxe, a song she co-wrote and is featured on as well as two singles she wrote with superstar, Selena Gomez.
Uniting the world through her lyrics of heartbreak and triumph, is Julia Michael’s superpower.
Flipping her straight, platinum blonde bob around the stage, Julia holds the microphone out to audience to sing about over-medicating to eliminate anxious thoughts, singing, “I wish it was that simple, ahh.”
Feeling like she is always apologizing for feeling, Julia belts her lyrics alongside Nashville,
“I just want to be f*cking happy!”
Confetti guns fire as she closes her show with “Issues;” the first “baby” to make it out of her diary, that she deemed too personal to give up for adoption. The song that started it all. And Julia’s reign won’t be stopping any time soon.
