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 turned the intimate Brooklyn venue into a space for collective catharsis. The show moved between playful and piercing, finding humor in heartbreak without losing intimacy.

The emotional tone was set through a series of voice memos from friends and family reflecting on her divorce and its aftermath. Threaded throughout the show, these audio clips were used as both song transitions and narrative anchors, tracing a map of her whirlwind journey post-breakup. The clever strategy felt deeply intimate, like eavesdropping on private conversations.

Tarver opened with “Losing,” her voice reverberating throughout the venue with clarity as the song built to its crescendo. Fresh off opening for more than 80 dates on Big Time Rush’s worldwide arena tour, Tarver belted lyrics 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 her life amidst the devastation. The lyrics hit deeper with in “Don’t Eat Pray Love,” and “The Price” where she confronted her complicated relationship with faith, identity and her grief over the relationship. 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 in the set. 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 male voice memo cosplaying a fling commented on the irony of modern love as she navigates her new chapter in adulthood. The show never lingered on sadness, but instead turned the page to the chapter of hope.

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, singing along to every lyric of older tracks 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, reinforcing one the show’s central themes: the light at the end of the tunnel. As she thanked the crowd, Tarver reflected on not knowing if she would return to the stage or where life would take her, but that there is ultimately another side of grief—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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