Donald Glover is saying goodbye to his Childish Gambino moniker on the road — and tapping into his earliest hits on the road. The musician launched his New World Tour on Sunday in Oklahoma City, where he played songs from his new album Bando Stone & the New World and incorporated songs he hasn’t touched in nearly a decade into his setlist.
Gambino played nearly the entirety of Bando Stone, opening his set with “H3@RT$ W3RE M3@NT T0 F7¥,” “Got to Be,” and “In the Night.” (He performed the Bando songs for the first time during a NYC show ahead of the album’s release last month.)
At the Paycom Center Sunday, he performed “To Be Hunted” from this year’s Atavista and “Witchy” from Kaytranada’s Timeless for the first time ever.
@troyyriveraa Heartbeat#childishgambino #thenewworldtour #donaldglover #okc @Jabez
Gambino dedicated the late part of his set to performing a slew of tracks from his 2011 debut album Camp that he hadn’t touched live since 2015.
After playing “Sober” from his 2014 EP Kauai, Gambino surprised the crowd by playing tracks “L.E.S.,” “Heartbeat,” and shortened versions of fan-favorites “Bonfire” and “Freaks and Geeks.”
Fans shared videos from the performance that showed Gambino playing songs from different parts of the arena, and showing off a futuristic light show. The musician has been teasing a live spectacle, telling Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 that the LP was “made for arena rock” and meant to be played live.
@jovanni.405 Last night was sensational! Childish Gambino The New World Tour 2024 OKC 8/11/24 #ChildishGambino #ChildishGambinoTour #Sweatpants #TheNewWorldTour2024 #BandoStoneAndTheNewWorld #fyp #ForYou #ForYouPage #OklahomaCity #PayComCenter @Donald Glover
“If this live show isn’t the best live show you’ve ever seen by the first song, you can have your money back,” Glover said. “When you hear all these songs, you’ll know them. I’m going to add all these new songs. I’m going to add all this new technology, but the live event is what makes it valuable to me.”
Of course, some of Gambino’s greatest hits were still on the setlist. He played songs such as “Feels Like Summer,” “Me and Your Mama,” and “This Is America.” The musician also closed his set with “Redbone” before “Lithonia” for an encore.
The musician is set to bring his New World Tour in Kansas City on Monday before stopping in cities such as Boston, New York City, Tampa, Los Angeles, and Chicago through early October. Amaarae and Willow are joining the singer on the road as openers.
Jack White Responds After Uproar Over Taylor Swift Songwriting Comment
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Jack White posted a statement on Instagram Monday evening after numerous publications took his comments in an interview with The Guardian out of context. When discussing poetry and songwriting, White mentioned fellow musician Taylor Swift‘s style of songwriting, and explored his own approach to storytelling when creating music. Unfortunately, online outlets framed his words as a critique of the Tortured Poets star, especially when it came to headlines that quickly circulated on the internet.
“Putting this up for a day and then taking down to just put this to bed,” wrote White in the since-deleted post. “I didn’t say that I think Taylor Swift’s music was ‘boring’ or whatever click bait the net is trying to scrape together. What I was trying to say in an interview I did about poetry and lyric writing, was that I don’t find it interesting at all for ME to write about MYSELF in my own lyric writing and poetry because I think that it could be repetitive for ME to always write about and It could be uninteresting for people who listen to my music to delve into, and that imaginary characters are more attractive to me as a writer.”
White went on to acknowledge the “tremendous success” of Swift and other songwriters who have their own process, while stating that just “because I say I have a way of doing things doesn’t mean that I think that EVERYONE should do it the same way.” He added, “They should do what works for them, And they do, and it is obviously appealing to many people, and I’m glad to hear that.”
When asked by The Guardian in the article published Sunday, if any of any of his songs were entirely autobiographical, White replied, “Not too much. Now it’s become very popular in the Taylor Swift way of pop singers writing about all of their publicly aired break-ups, which I don’t find interesting at all. I think it’s a little bit boring for me to write about myself.”
White further explained, “Even if I’ve had a really interesting day, I feel like I’ve already lived that, I don’t need to go through it every time I sing this song. If it’s something really painful, I’m not going to put this important, painful thing that I went through out there for some idiot on the internet to stomp all over. So I put a percentage of that into what I do and then morph it into somebody else’s character. I can’t really learn about myself until I put it into somebody else’s shoes.”
Editor’s picks
The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far
The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
In his Monday statement, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee said that at times he has been “made less and less interested in doing interviews” amid the “age of this massive demand for click bait and content.” Any “scrape of anything interesting” can be used as drama and “spit out as bait,” he continued, leading White to “not want to answer questions with any sort of romance or passion or reflection as I’m too busy having to worry about accidentally triggering nonsense like this from so called ‘journalists’ and ‘editors.'”
Trending Stories
Jack White Responds After Uproar Over Taylor Swift Songwriting Comment
Watch Hilary Duff's Intimate Performance of 'Roommates' on 'Fallon'
Rihanna Shooting Suspect Held for Attempted Murder on $10.2 Million Bail
Amy Klobuchar Slams Live Nation Settlement: 'Every Sign Points to a Backroom Deal'
He ended his response to the wave of backlash following his interview by saying, “This has always been a problem as it encourages artists to give ‘safe’ answers to any question and stifles artistic vision and imagination and pushes all of us to not share anything interesting, which was one of the points I made about keeping private things private in that same interview. But yeah, content.”
ADVERTISEMENTWhite recently released Jack White: Collected Lyrics & Selected Writing Volume 1, a collection of lyrics from the artist’s solo recordings including No Name, The Raconteurs, and more, plus selected poems and writings by White, and essays by poet Adrian Matejka.