Sophie Simmons – FIRST CONCERT EVER

In this First Concert Ever segment, the indie pop artist, Sophie Simmons, talks about her first concert ever. You can check out the feature, after the break.

This is kind of an unfair question to me. Growing up in a musical family, of course, my first concert was my dad (KISS). But the first concert of my choosing I don’t really remember. It was probably something along the lines of Spice Girls.

The first ‘concert’ I remember buying tickets to and going to with friends was Coachella. My parents were unbelievably cool about me going to a festival with six friends and no parents. We were in high school and we were given one “babysitter“/bodyguard named George. He drove us around and made sure that none of us got into too much trouble. I just remember the best part of it was not knowing anything about what a festival was or really concerts outside of my family. I loved just walking around and finding new genres of music that I hadn’t heard before and standing in a crowd that knew it very well. That energy was electrifying and made me want to branch out and look for new types of music. I remember specifically watching an EDM act, pretty early on before EDM was really mainstream. We were in one of the tents at the festival and honestly it looked like the people in there were having the most fun out of all the patrons. It opened my eyes to that whole genre and style of production. Songs I had written before that point we’re very acoustic and had minimal production and after that, I started incorporating less organic sounds into my music and blending it with the more organic. And I think that’s something I still do to this day.

I do remember though, I went to a Britney Spears concert when I was younger (coincidentally she was a judge on X Factor when I auditioned, so I’ll take it as a sign that I’m on the right track), and I went backstage to meet her. I remember feeling super disappointed that she was so busy. Which is super understandable now that I know what stressful situations happen before a show. Lesson learned (if I ever have a following): no meet and greets before the show. Only after, so the focus is clearly on the fans.

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(Photo credit: Brian Ziff)