PHOTOS: Katelyn Tarver – New York, NY – 5/12/2026

May 17, 2026 Katherine Hui

Katelyn Tarver’s tour stop at Baby’s All Right proved that healing can sound like many things at once: a laugh through tears, a confession, and a room full of strangers singing like old friends.

Touring in support of her third album, “Tell Me How You Really Feel,” Tarver transformed the intimate Brooklyn venue into a space for collective catharsis. The show moved between playful and piercing, finding humor in heartbreak without losing intimacy.

Before she sang a word, she set the emotional framework through voice memos from friends and family reflecting on her divorce and its aftermath. Threaded throughout the set, these recordings functioned as transitions and narrative anchors, tracing a map of reinvention. The effect was deeply intimate, like eavesdropping on private conversations.

Tarver opened with “Losing,” her voice reverberating throughout the venue with clarity as it built to its crescendo. Fresh off opening for more than 80 dates on Big Time Rush’s worldwide arena tour, Tarver belted and layered adlibs with clear ease and confidence, even as the songs she sang about were peeling back deeply personal wounds.

The set moved into “No Matter What,” “So Am I,” and “Strange Weather,” each capturing the disorientation of rebuilding after unexpected change. The emotions deepened in “Don’t Eat Pray Love,” and “The Price” where she confronted her complicated relationship with faith and identity in the former and her grief over the relationship in the latter. Alongside the brilliantly heartbreaking “Covell” and “$82 at Erewhon,” these songs highlighted her journey toward forgiveness and her attention to the mundane details and core memories that persist after heartache.

The emotional weight was consistently balanced with levity. A voice memo from Tarver’s mother, both tender and unintentionally funny, introduced “Nicer,” briefly lightening the room and lifting up the space with the driving pulse of the track from her first album.

A show highlight came during “#1,” where the room erupted into a singalong, with fans waving foam fingers and even passing one onto the stage. The moment underscored how deeply her audience has grown with her, from older favorites like “Weekend Millionaires” and “You Don’t Know” to the wider scope of her new work.

She closed with “Trust Myself,” alongside a message from her younger self, returning to the show’s central idea: survival through self-trust. Reflecting on not knowing if she would return to the stage, she described discovering another side to grief and the possibility of renewal.

What stood out most in Brooklyn was not only Tarver’s songwriting or growth as a performer, but also her resilience as she reshapes her identity while instilling hope after heartbreak in real time, one show at a time.

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