People were flipping out in anticipation for CityFolks night two shows but headliner Cameron Whitcomb was literally flipping. The 22-year-old singer known for songs like “Medusa” and “Kingdom of Fear,” brought the energy with his usual give-it-all performance style — including backflips across the stage, which had him sweating by the second song.
But Cameron was just the cherry on top of a night of fantastic performances on both the TD Main Stage and the Westside Stage.
Thursday’s line-up consisted largely of Canadian Artists, including Cameron, who grew up in Nanaimo, B.C., On the Westside Stage, Montreal’s Fine Food Market opened the night, followed by The Codas, from Kingston Ont., who are creating a name for themselves in the Canadian indie scene. Their lyrical work feels strongly relatable to youth audiences, while their instrumental work is soft, bringing a warm energy to their performances. The Westside Stage closed out with The White Buffalo, who dips his toes into about every folk-related genre there is and pulled in a crowd, but the crowds were truly yet to come.
Sam Drysdale is an artist out of Kitchener ON, who, since signing his first Nashville record deal with ONErpm in May, has gained over 400,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Sam has a contemporary folk sound that drifts into Americana tones and draws on alternative pop influences.
This is the first year CityFolk has been held at the RA festival grounds, and it seems to be working well for the festival. With more space to sprawl out, the festival felt much larger than in past years.
The line to get in alone wrapped around almost half the grounds, easily over one kilometer, leaving many people worried they would not make it in time for the start of Stella’s show. But the line never stopped moving and the festival easily doubled in size in under 20 minutes.
The crowd seemed to lean towards a more country fan or folk-country demographic with a large presence of cowboy hats and boots. While being made up of all ages it was definitely of a younger demographic, with many young kids in attendance who were singing along harder than a majority of the adults there.
This could be a result of Stella’s large online presence and growth through TikTok over the last year. Her fame and growth is largely comparable to how Gracie Abrams blew up so quickly a few years ago.
Her songs feel very familiar and are fun to sing a long or dance to. But some may seem a little too familiar. Over the past few months Stella has been increasingly accused of ripping off many popular songs in her music, with people saying that the rhythm and beat strongly resemble very well known songs.
Currently there are up to five songs that she is under scrutiny for mimicking such as, Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season”, The Chicks “There’s Your Trouble”, and “A Million Dreams” from the movie the Greatest Showman.
As a result, Stella did end up having to give writing credits to Noah Kahan for her song “Boston” and to other artists for a couple others she has written.
While there was chatter coming from the crowd regarding this, no one really seemed to care when the songs came on.
Stella is a considerably new artist who has blown up fairly quickly; her vocals were great but it is easy to see she is still getting comfortable on stage with some moments feeling awkward or dull. However she warmed up and did engage well with the crowd, even noting that “this was her favourite crowd yet” and one of her biggest shows yet.
She did a great job of getting the energy up before Cameron took the stage, and did he ever keep the energy going.
Cameron is known for his big energetic performances and stage antics like back flips, bringing kids up on stage and usually performing shirtless by the end of the night.
He is also, however, very engaged with the audience and seems to be truly loved by his fans, many of whom were wielding paper cut outs of half a heart with the number three on it, three being the number of years Cameron has been sober and clean, something he is very open about both on stage and with his fan base.
Many of his songs are about his struggles with substance abuse, drugs and mental health that he went through in his teen years. His music has a profound sense of reflection and raw emotion. He is often singing about his anxieties and the guilt that comes along with life and death.
He remarked multiple times that this was his biggest headline show yet and how he loves to be back in Canada to play.
Just before the encore of his most famous song “Medusa,” Cameron climbed the scaffolding on the side of the stage to end “Kingdom of Fear”, his most energetic song. It was as if he was almost looking out over the kingdom of fans he has created.
