ALANA SPRINGSTEEN

'27 Live!'

Wednesday September 14, 2022

@ L27 Rooftop Lounge at Westin Nashville in Nashville, TN

As leaves have slowly started to fall from trees, and the cooler nighttime air has entered a tussle with 80-degree temperatures during the twilight hours, these are the clear implications that our warmer weather months are on the way out and fall is on its way in. As such, outdoor venues are starting to give Nashville the final shows of their summertime music series’ as they get ready to close out the year.

One of Nashville’s best kept secrets sits high atop the Westin Hotel on their 27^th floor; their appropriately named L27 Rooftop Lounge.

Though tourists are filtering in and out of the hotel all day long, most of them answer the call of the neon lights of Broadway which makes L27 and their popular music series 27 Live! a place where locals can congregate, hear some of the hottest new acts in country music, see incredible views of the downtown skyline, enjoy a cocktail, and eat some amazing food, all while in a swanky, button down shirt type of ambiance that is refreshingly high-class without being highfalutin.

With two stone hued tiled pillars outlining the rooftop pool, adorned with gothic Gargoyles that hold the lamp styled lighting, the pool itself is completely transformed into the makeshift stage as it’s steel poles and riveted joists sit directly in the water as tinted blue lights glow up from underneath the steel platforms to give this stage the distinction of one of the most unique in all of Nashville.

27 Live! has welcomed some of country music’s strongest emerging acts all summer long, including: Kylie Morgan, Drew Green, Lily Rose, Chayce Beckham, and many more! 

As the summer series is rolling to its close, on one of its last nights of the season they featured Alana Springsteen.

Though she’s been navigating the country music scene since 2019, Springsteen has steadily carved out a name for herself over the past year with buzzed about singles “California” and “Girlfriend” from her 2021 release History of a Breakup (Part 1), and continued to heighten the buzz when she released her follow-up EP earlier this summer, History of a Breakup (Part 2), which delivered songs “Me, Myself, and Why” and “Trust Issues.”

A stellar opening performance from singer-songwriter Shelby Darrall featured several songs from her debut release, Entertainment For the Broken Hearted, including “Wrong Hands,” Happy First” and “Love Me When I’m Leaving,” as well as an acoustic version of “Three Words” and a crowd pleasing medley of pop punk covers that she said inspired her with snippets from the Click 5’s “Just the Girl,” All-American Rejects “Dirty Little Secret,” and “Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down.”  

But as the house lights darkened over the outside venue, matching the darkness of the starlit, nighttime sky, the crowd erupted with cheers as Alana Springsteen trekked her way up the steps to the stage as her band slid into the opening notes of “Me, Myself, and Why.”

With a blast of popping, bright lights on stage, Springsteen’s purely unbridled energy took over as she patrolled the stage front, left to right and right to left, often gesturing with her hands to match the frustration of the lyrics as she leaned into the crowd to sing along with them while they screamed back the lyrics to her, at one point even kneeling down alongside lyrics that saw her questioning her own judgement as she battled the choice to keep allowing herself to get hurt by continually going back to the one who has that toxic grip on her.

Quickly strapping on an acoustic guitar, Springsteen then dove into her most current single “Trust Issues,” during which she would step back from the microphone as the song rolled to its hook and allow just the voices of the crowd to echo through the Nashville skyline as they sang it out to her.

“If you know me, then you know I write a lot of songs about guys who have broken my heart,” Springsteen admitted with a knowing nod. “But this guy broke my heart so bad last year that I didn’t even want to write a song about him, and in typical Nashville, songwriter fashion…we found a way to write about that,” she finished as she leaned into the toe-tapping rhythm and sassy tilted vocals of “You Don’t Deserve a Country Song,” giving the guy who broke her heart a metaphoric middle finger, kiss off.

Keeping the pacing rolling without pause, Springsteen held her heart with one hand as she reached out toward the crowd with the other while feeling the lyrics of “That Was All You,” before briefly slowing things down with “Think About You,” during which she then shifted into a cover of Dan + Shay’s “Tequila,” a song she said to be one of her favorites released in the past few years and encouraged the crowd to sing it along with her.

Hopping around the stage and pointing to a group of females in the crowd who had been singing along all night as she then sang directly with them, Springsteen rolled through “California,” “Where Have You Been?” and “Girlfriend,” before pausing for a breath and to gratefully talk with the crowd.

“I just want to say thank you!” she humbly began. “You guys have no idea what it means to me to see you singing back these songs tonight!” she paused as the crowd cheered.

“So, since we’re celebrating here tonight with the best fans in the world, who’s drinking?” she asked as those with adult beverages in their hands cheered and raised their glasses into the air. “I’m a tequila girl myself and this next song is all about good tequila,” she said as she shared a song of the same name as the drums pounded into a rhythm that you felt pounding in your feet and vibrating up to your chest.

With a clap-along, audience participation moment toward the end of the song, Springsteen declared that things were about to turn up a notch as her and the crowd continued clapping with one another as she drove into a cover of the Brothers Osborne smash hit, “It Ain’t My Fault.”

“I just released my current project History of a Breakup (Part 2), earlier this year… and I don’t do this next song every night, but I wanted to play it here,” she told during the introduction of “Close To Me,” during which she took the line “I turn the game on just to check on your team” and played to the hometown crowd by changing the word "team” to “Titans” as Nissan Stadium glowed off in the distance.

After Dedicating “Used to You” to those in the crowd who were there with someone they loved, Alana rolled through the last quarter of her set without pause as she rounded out the night with “It All Caught Up to Me,” “History of Breaking Up,” and “Still Can’t Say Your Name.”

Pure entertainer!

Flawless performance!

Perfect setlist!

All three of these aspects are crystal clear descriptions that outline just a small taste of what Alana Springsteen brings to the stage that makes her an artist that every newcomer to town who is aspiring to “make it” needs to be taking notes on to learn all the right ways to put on a captivating show from start to finish! 

With her blistering rock tilted edge smashing together with her undeniably modern pop country sound and an onstage energy level that never lets up, Alana Springsteen’s performance radiated across the crowd, amping them up from the moment she hit the stage, pulling them deeper into the set from song to song.

By never really slowing down or taking too many breaths to pause and talk between songs, Springsteen expertly kept the crowd invested throughout her 50-minute performance as they danced along, clapped along, and sang along with her, becoming part of the songs alongside of her as she allowed her amazing vocals and incredible command of the stage to do the rest for making this one heck of a night to remember that we’ll all be talking about for months!

FULL SET LIST

1) Me, Myself, and Why

2) Trust Issues

3) You Don’t Deserve a Country Song

4) That Was All You

5) Think About You

6) Tequila (Dan + Shay cover)

7) California

8) Where Have You Been?

9) Girlfriend

10) Good Tequila

11) It Ain’t My Fault (Brothers Osborne cover)

12) Close To Me

13) Used to You

14) It All Caught Up to Me

15) History of Breaking Up

16) Still Can’t Say Your Name

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