“Sometimes I forget it’s fun to play because sometimes it’s not,” Santigold told the crowd at The Beacham in Orlando Wednesday night, March 5th. “But we’re having fun tonight.”
The Philadelphia indie artist was one of many artists who canceled tours in 2022 over the unsustainability of modern touring, especially post-COVID, as costs rise and artists get ever-smaller portions of the revenue. She did return to touring in 2024, and on Wednesday night, she kicked off her 2025 tour in Orlando. For one night at least, she’s having fun despite the challenges of the tour.
DJ Troy Baker opened the night and warmed up the crowd by spinning reggae and soca party hits. Then Santigold, whose real name is Santi White, took the stage flanked by two backup dancers, a drummer, and a multi-instrumentalist who mostly played guitar and keyboards in matching white outfits. In addition to the band members, backing tracks provided the songs’ basslines and some backing vocals.
After a cover of “Hold the Line,” her collaboration with Major Lazer, Santigold went straight into three of the set’s biggest crowd-pleasers. First was her breakthrough hit “L.E.S. Artistes,” where Santigold strutted onstage with a broad smile as she sang over the infectious muted guitar arpeggios. That smile rarely left her face throughout the night. She followed that with the pulsing “Go” and the slow reggae anthem “Shove It.”
Over ninety minutes, Santigold showed the versatility of her music, a unique blend of new wave pop, indie rock, dub reggae, and hip-hop. Santigold crooned, yelped, and rapped with her expressive mezzo-soprano voice that was often as rhythmic as the percussion behind her.
“How many dancers we got here tonight?” Santigold asked the crowd packed into the club. After some cheers, she issued a challenge. “You feel confident about that?” She then invited ten people onstage to dance along to “Unstoppable.” The dance was a contest, with the crowd members expected to perform the same moves as her two backing dancers. At the song’s end, the crowd voted on which audience member danced the best.
Santigold’s set was like a big house party celebrating innovative pop music, from the thumping psychedelic rap of “High Priestess” to the indie rock of “Disparate Youth.” For the final song of the regular set, she again invited fans onto the stage to dance along to the otherworldly synth jam “Creator.”
For the encore, Santigold and her band returned for a slow jam of “Starstruck” and a rendition of “Big Mouth,” dialing the percussion to eleven. She closed the night with a tongue-in-cheek cover of Spank Rock’s “B-O-O-T-A-Y,” which she described as “like a 2 Live Crew song.”
The Beacham crowd had a great time, but no one had more fun than Santigold. Despite the challenges of touring, nothing else offers the same experience. The genre-defying concert in Orlando was a great start to Santigold’s first tour of the year.
