Chicago, there’s a reason you’re on the docket for every tour that winds through America. You show up. Time and again. Prolonging a trend that began once the fog of the pandemic lifted, concerts large and small keep drawing capacity crowds.
No Taylor Swift? No Boss? No Beyoncé? No problem. The year produced a bumper crop of options that saw a handful of artists continue to push boundaries on production and a swath of legacy acts — Billy Joel, the Eagles, Rolling Stones, Heart, Jeff Lynne’s Electric Light Orchestra included — revisit the past and pass through for possibly the final time.
Did every date justify the costs of admission? Heck, no. But a fair number hit the right notes. Particularly, to my ears and eyes, these performances.
Best empathizer: Jason Isbell at Salt Shed, Feb. 29
Song lyrics are usually easier to discern on a studio recording than amid the commotion of a live rock ‘n’ roll setting. However, Jason Isbell crafts shows so that you pick up on his every word, allowing the emotional gravitas and granular detail of the storylines to become as inescapable as the rootsy backgrounds. That proved the case at the first of his two-night late-winter run, where he overflowed with empathy, understanding and compassion. For a man weeks removed from filing for divorce, Isbell appeared in fantastic spirits. Clicking with his band, further improved by new bassist Anna Butterss, Isbell turned in his finest local concert in years — no small feat. As for his skills as a relatable storyteller and innate ability to relay the lives of a populace often ignored by mainstream culture? Never sharper.
Best role model: Olivia Rodrigo at United Center, March 19
The field of aspiring female pop stars seemingly expands with each passing week. Heartache remains their common denominator, yet few performers, if any, address the issue with the directness, authenticity and panache of Olivia Rodrigo. The former Disney Channel favorite demonstrated how to surmount relationship traumas and negotiate other coming-of-age concerns — particularly those that apply to young women — with tireless energy and caffeinated fun in front of thousands of screaming admirers who saw themselves reflected in the 21-year-old. Backed by an all-female band, Rodrigo embraced her role model status with mature confidence and animated enthusiasm. Ready to let her hair down and rock out, the unpretentious singer-songwriter broadcast salient messages of self-empowerment and personal freedom through the equivalent of a giant megaphone.
Best actor: Mitski at Auditorium Theatre, March 21
Anyone who caught one of Mitski’s four sold-out shows at Auditorium Theatre still might be scratching their head. Transforming the stage into an avante-garde cabaret as she assumed the guise of a real-life toy soldier, the singer executed a non-stop series of dramatic routines whose odd gestures, poses, contortions and dance moves — telegraphed on a circular platform, bathed in mood lighting and enhanced by well-chosen props — exploded the meanings of her songs. Steeped in cynicism and black humor, her symbolic antics suggested the doubt, desperation and dread that ensue if you try to go through life without pretending, lying or ceding to social pressures. Courtesy of Mitski, the ancient arts of pantomime and satire returned in force.
Best fountain of youth (tie): Judas Priest at Rosemont Theatre, May 1, and Metallica at Soldier Field, Aug. 9
More than 50 years into its career, Judas Priest still embodies heavy-metal beliefs and — echoing its song that promises the same — delivers the goods. The English quintet’s streamlined spring show defied the median age of its longest-tenured members and raised a resilient banner in support of outsiders, misfits and the overlooked. Singer Rob Halford screamed for vengeance with piercing luster while the unassailable tandem of Ian Hill and Scott Travis manufactured rhythmic foundations rooted in the pounding roar of the steel factories that once dominated the band’s Birmingham, England, hometown. Fellow contemporaries Metallica tapped its own sources of inspiration during the first of a two-concert stand that fared considerably better than the closing night. Benefitting from a low-slung stage and crisp amplification, the quartet attacked with a conviction that compensated for a prior subpar event at Soldier Field. An added bonus: Metallica channeled the maverick essence of long-departed bassist Cliff Burton. The band finally gave Chicago a live interpretation of the 1986 epic “Orion,” the lynchpin of a bare-knuckled set that focused on its peak creative period.
Best revivalists: Green Day at Wrigley Field, Aug. 13
The once-novel idea of an artist performing a signature album in its entirety has become as ubiquitous as the $50 concert T-shirt. Green Day upped the stakes by tackling two hallmark LPs (“Dookie” and “American Idiot”). But simply rehashing past glories doesn’t qualify as anything beyond nostalgia and, more often than not, acknowledges the waning of a musician’s inventiveness. For nearly two and a half hours at the Friendly Confines, Green Day transcended those traps by playing with blistering urgency, maintaining laser focus and forcing fans to consider the evolution of the records’ messages in the present sociopolitical climate. Five recent tunes that seethed with healthy dissent put an exclamation point on a triumphant, surprisingly optimistic affair.
Best visionary: Missy Elliott at Allstate Arena, Aug. 22
Missy Elliott arrived in Rosemont as a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, era-defining hitmaker and fashion icon. And an innovator who had never mounted a headlining tour. So much for rookie jitters. Owning up to the tour’s Out of This World moniker, Elliott served as the gregarious marshal of a feverishly paced parade where freaky imagination, originality and charisma trumped perfection and logic. Akin to her music, the costumes, backdrops, images, props and 20-person dance squad dripped with vibrant color and outrageous swagger. In constant motion and in sync with the countless choreographed steps, Elliott delivered a masterclass in tempo while her hypnotic lyrical flow and rapid-fire rhymes — no backing-track aid here, thank you — threw down the gauntlet to any challengers to her hip hop throne.
Best intensifier: Julien Baker at Thalia Hall, Sept. 23
Many musicians use the opening night of a tour to iron out kinks, refamiliarize themselves with go-to standards, adhere to rehearsed plans and remember to breathe. Julien Baker opted for a different approach at the launch of her first solo outing in two years. Broiling with bracing intensity and diving deep into her catalog, she demonstrated how delicate singing can land a harder punch than loud cries — though she embraced those, too. Her raw, anguish-laden songs, which can seem flat on record, felt as if they might burst into flame upon impact. Their intimate potency further manifested via Baker’s physical reactions and repeated desires to get everything right. She needn’t have fretted. This towered as a memorable tutorial in what courage, decency, vulnerability and hope sound like filtered through the lens of a singular talent.
Best truth-teller: Anohni and the Johnsons at Symphony Center, Oct. 12
Candidly reporting on the ever-fragile state of our collapsing biosphere is basically a fast track to being ignored, castigated or ostracized. At Anohni’s first area show with her versatile backing band since 2005, she didn’t care about those consequences. The vocalist’s sole concerns related to the natural environment, the animal kingdom and humankind’s responsibility for wrecking our only home. She sang with exquisite beauty and mellow soulfulness that made her bravery, honesty and inner ache all the more palpable. Amid claustrophobic layers of sadness, grief and despondency, Anohni emerged as the most fearless kind of provocateur — a truth-teller who refused to remain silent and complacent in the face of injustice and wrongdoing.
Best stylist: Usher at United Center, Oct. 28
Sure, Usher could use a lesson in reading the moment. The multihyphenate briefly derailed the snappy pacing and savvy feel of his first of three shows with a cheap, ill-advised strip club sequence at a time when his mentor, Sean Combs, sits behind bars due to charges of sex trafficking and coercion. That tone deafness aside, Usher knows how to command a stage and leave a debonair impression. Grinning, roller skating, strolling, peeling bills from fat stacks, mugging for cameras, completing dance moves with effortless fluidity, modeling suave threads comprised of everything from leather to cotton akin to a runway model: The singer exuded style, pure and smooth, like you and me inhale oxygen.
Bob Gendron is a freelance critic.
