When Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour swept through Chicago in June of 2023, Girl In Red, aka Marie Ulven Ringheim, had the opportunity to showcase her music on one of the biggest stages possible. By the time she played Milwaukee on Monday night at The Rave, you could feel the palpable groundswell of an indie pop sensation on the rise, and you can only imagine that the stadium experience had helped her along that path.
Girl In Red headlined the opening night of FM 102/1’s Big Snow Show 18 at The Rave on Monday, which has ballooned into a three-night affair this week. Cage The Elephant, The All-American Rejects, Andrew McMahon and more will all play Milwaukee as part of the series of concerts, but Monday’s lineup served as a choice opener, with likely the youngest overall crowd of the headliners. They were fitting for a Monday night, though, as they filled The Rave’s main room in presence, and also with screams along to every word of the headlining set.
Prior to Ringheim and co. taking the stage, though, a pair of emerging acts served as a gradual warmup, with Girl In Red tourmates Sunday (1994) getting things started, before an acoustic set from singer/songwriter Jonah Kagen. A trickle-down effect from headliner to openers on social media is certainly responsible for generating buzz these days, and much of The Rave crowd were hanging on Sunday (1994)’s set, likely learning about them from tour clips shared on Instagram and TikTok. Kagen would also persevere through a broken string, and joke multiple times that people wanted him off the stage, because they knew the night’s main attraction was waiting in the wings. That was hardly the case for either opener, though, with fans pulling phones out for Sunday (1994)’s “Tired Boy” and chanting back at Kagen on “Save My Soul.”
Once the lights went out for Girl In Red, though, the decibel level inside The Rave reached pandemonium levels, as Ringheim would walk out to pop star shrieks from every corner of the room. The title track from April’s “I’m Doing It Again Baby!” would start the first dance party of the evening. Coupled with fan favorites Bad Idea!” and “Girls,” Girl In Red had the crowd in the palm of their hands within minutes.
Ringheim would confess that Monday’s show was in jeopardy, though. Apparently, she had eaten oatmeal with a nut that she was allergic to earlier in the day, and was subject to an allergy attack that almost ruined the whole appearance. She would chug water and throw a water bottle down between guitar changes, but appeared to be fully recovered, especially by the time that one of her biggest hits, “We Fell In Love In October” started ringing out mid-set.
Ringheim could bring the energy up and down in The Rave main room in a heartbeat on Monday, switching from mellower tracks like the aforementioned “October” to self-depricating scream-along “You Stupid Bitch” fairly seamlessly. On that song, she told the crowd that she wanted “screamo type energy” from them, but confessed that she herself would not be able to illicit it with her vocal range. Things would only pick up from their, though, with Ringheim asking the crowd to jump as high as possible on “Dead Girl In The Pool,” a song that, frankly, could not have been a better pick for The Rave, and “You Need Me Now,” which followed.
If the allergy attack wasn’t enough earlier in the day, this show left a mark on Ringheim in a different way. After fighting with a mic stand by her piano earlier in the night, she went to pull her mic off of a different stand at the end of the set, only to fully punch herself in the face in the process. The crowd gasped, and she feigned that she had broken a tooth before confessing that she was just playing about that part. She noted that her lip was certainly numb after the accident, but she couldn’t leave her fans hanging without playing “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend,” a staple of every show. For a grand finale, Ringheim would crowdsurf her way to the soundboard and back during the final chorus of the song. Had she not warned the crowd to not pull her hair, she might have been mauled by the hundreds of screaming fans passing her around.
Girl In Red certainly set the tone for a big trio of shows from FM 102/1’s Big Snow Show lineup this year, and there are still two more nights to go. Ticket to shows on Wednesday and Thursday night are available via The Rave website.
