07.19.23 – Photos by Rebecca Ackerman and Parker Majerus / Review by Rebecca Ackerman

In honor of her debut album, To Exist With You, Madilyn Mei embarked on a short summer tour and chose 7th St. Entry for her last stop on Wednesday, July 19th. The front row was filled with young fans and their parents. They had friendship bracelets made by Mei herself and were passing around a journal to sign that they planned to give to her. It brought me right back to going to shows with my mom and was nice to see new young fans getting into music. 

Taking the stage first was Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter, rosie. At eighteen years old, rosie caught the attention of her listeners with her debut single “lilac season.” With only four songs on her Spotify profile, I figured the young artist would be performing unreleased music or else we were in for a short set. Rosie’s nervousness was apparent as she endearingly tripped over her words and forgot a few of her lyrics. Despite this, she managed to pull her set together, as it was filled with captivating guitar solos from her bandmates that even had her sitting back in admiration. She told stories about each song including the crowd favorite, “lilac season,” in which she discussed her plans to get a lilac tattoo across her chest when the song turned one. 

Rosie wrapped up her set by sharing that she had thirty two CD’s back on the merch table that she spent four hours making herself using old scrapbook paper from her grandpa’s closet to create the front cover. The CD includes her song “take a hint,” which she’s releasing next Wednesday, July 26th.

When it was time for Mei to take the stage, the crowd was ready to go. As her stage was being set up, I noticed how simple it seemed; a table with a laptop, a cowbell, a güiro (those wooden frog instruments), a ukulele, and a microphone stand covered in vines and fairy lights. Her ukulele was littered with stickers relating to various lyrics from her songs. Mei walked out alone, with little fanfare, wearing a 7th St. Entry zip up hoodie. I noticed that there was a small green, rubber frog stuffed inside her hoodie pocket, which a young fan in front of me excitedly yelled she had given to her earlier in the day at a pop-up show that Mei held at Mischief Toy store in Saint Paul, where she performed a few songs for a small crowd of fans and Patrons. The crowd took to the frog right away and named it Frederick Douglas and it stayed next to her onstage the entire show. 

It’s pretty easy to have an intimate set in a small venue like 7th St. Entry, but Mei managed to craft her own little world. She pulled you into what felt like a tiny cottage filled with small critters and a campfire. Her lyricism shone through on each of the songs that she performed. Mei’s singing voice is quiet, almost a whisper, but its airiness helps draw you in and forces you to pay attention and really understand the depth of her words. She doesn’t overcomplicate her music with heavy beats, which I felt was a nice change from what I usually hear at concerts.

The crowd listened to her set in quiet content. When they did sing, it paired well with Mei’s voice. They didn’t overpower her but sang with her instead. She played favorites like “Blue Haired Boy,” “Six Legs (tippy tappy toes),” and “To Exist With You (Reimagined)” which kept the crowd engaged and singing along. Near the end of the show, someone else gifted Mei a snail figurine that then stayed right next to the frog. 

Mei capped off the night with two songs for her encore which were “Let’s Be Friends” and “The Milk Carton.” During the encore, Mei let loose and danced around stage headbanging and flailing around. It almost seemed like her way of celebrating not only the end of the show, but the end of the tour. 

After her last song, Mei grabbed bracelets and other gifts from fans in the crowd and kindly stayed near the merch booth to chat and take photos. Madilyn Mei has room to grow in this industry, and I look forward to seeing where the next steps in her career take her.