“If I fall, you are not allowed to make fun of me.” So said Post Malone as he acknowledged the slickness of the ramp leading down to the catwalk that extended midway into the field of Gillette Stadium on Saturday. This was, after all, a pop star who has fallen into holes in his stage not once but twice over the years, addressing a sold-out crowd at an outdoor concert where it would continue to rain on and off throughout the night.
But Post Malone did not fall, though it was possible to see him slip a little when he navigated the wet surface for the first time during the gruff groan of “Texas Tea.” And for all that the singer and rapper has come off as a hip-hop Pig-Pen since first entering public consciousness a decade ago, he carried a low-wattage charm and enthusiasm that might not stave off mockery but at the very least gave it an affectionate undertone.
That might have been necessary to buy in to the scale of the production. With booming, busy drums and lurching guitar squeals, plenty of numbers leaned on sound and fury and signified not much, and the flame bursts and fireworks that punctuated songs like “Rockstar” simply underlined his band’s churning sensory-overload maximalism. With its late-’70s adult-contemporary tinkly-piano sound, “What Don’t Belong to Me” was soft rock, but loud. The rolling cut-time country of “M-E-X-I-C-O,” meanwhile, was energetic but not particularly convincing.
But if the singer’s recent Nashville pivot may have been mercenary in nature, it also came off as dopily genuine; Malone’s great gift as a pop star is his utter inability to radiate anything but sincerity. Leaning into a rasp and a twang, he pulled off the big-spectacle country of “Wrong Ones” better than a lot of big-spectacle country stars, and the straight-up heartstring-tugger “Yours” imagined the wedding of his 3-year-old daughter, a country theme if ever there was one.
Even if he didn’t slip or fall, Malone’s performance didn’t always have sure footing. His voice was sometimes more robust than on record, as on a more dynamic “Better Now,” and sometimes it was even more warbly and thin. He inserted “Boston” into the lyrics of “M-E-X-I-C-O” and Morgan Wallen’s “I Ain’t Comin’ Back,” and it flew by so quickly in both cases that either nobody noticed or nobody cared.
Still, Malone’s affability was so strong that he could bring a fan in a Dallas Cowboys jersey onstage to perform with him and get the crowd to stop booing long enough for him to sing the almost delicate “Feeling Whitney” accompanied only by her fingerpicking on acoustic guitar. (The booing recommenced after.) And as he returned from the rigging at the back of the stadium where he sang the encore, he stopped to sign autographs and pose for selfies along the way as his band pounded out the post-rock scope of “Congratulations.” “As long as you ain’t hurting nobody, keep being yourself,” he concluded, advice that’s worked out pretty well for Post Malone.
Malone’s steel-guitar player Chandler Walters opened with amiable but personality-light country that could’ve come from any of the last five decades, complete with a medley of Toby Keith, George Strait, and Merle Haggard hits. He was followed by Jelly Roll, who leaned into the power of singing songs of trauma and pain through the lens of hope and joy. With a heavy, hanging-on rasp that evoked classic soul, he was spirited and frisky on “Get By” and gripped onto salvation with white knuckles on “Hard Fought Hallelujah.” If many of his songs seemed built on platitudes, he delivered them with the conviction necessary to sell them.
POST MALONE
With Jelly Roll and Chandler Walters
At Gillette Stadium, Saturday
Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@gmail.com or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social
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