by Chloe Goldberg
Indie-pop artist Chelsea Cutler headlined Student Entertainment Event’s annual Fallapalooza concert on Oct.11, becoming the first female headliner in the event’s four-year history.
The concert kicked off at 8 p.m. with a 30-minute set from EDM DJ and producer Giancarlo Estrada, who goes by the stage name Gianni. Estrada won SEE’s student DJ mixer competition to earn the opener spot this year.
Cutler took the stage soon after, opening with “Evil,” an upbeat yet somber track from her 2018 album “Sleeping With Roses II.” In a 15-song set that lasted a little over an hour, Cutler mainly performed hits from her two albums, sprinkling in well-known singles like “Sixteen” and a few collaborations like “Not Ok,” co-produced by EDM veteran Kygo, and “You Were Good To Me,” a song she wrote with pop artist Jeremy Zucker. The latter, performed in the middle of the set, became a short interlude from the high-energy electronic music that consumed most of the night, allowing Cutler to put away her electric guitar and show off her vocal range.
She rounded out the set with a cover of The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside,” leading into her 2018 single “The Reason.”
The 22-year-old singer-songwriter has been steadily rising in the charts since 2014, when she began uploading acoustic covers of popular electronic songs on SoundCloud. Three years later, Cutler secured a record deal with Sony affiliate Ultra Records, according to SEE’s website. Since then, the Connecticut-born artist has released two full-length albums and a joint EP, “brent,” with Jeremy Zucker.
Her rapid rise in the indie pop world made Cutler an attractive headliner for SEE’s annual concert. But there was another factor— the opportunity to host Fallapalooza’s first female performer.
Divya Kapoor, SEE’s musical arts director, emphasized how important it was that SEE strives to support more female artists.
“I think that women in entertainment, women in music, is a really big community,” said Kapoor. “It’s really hard to be a woman in music because there’s not as much exposure or visibility of women.”
Kapoor also noted that Cutler is the first Fallapalooza headliner to break away from the traditional EDM genre. Although SEE founded the event to bring in EDM artists that would attract a larger crowd, Cutler’s indie-pop sound, though influenced by EDM, offered the chance to attract a different kind of audience.
“We’re trying to shift toward that, where we’re not just focusing on one genre but really looking at what the campus wants,” explained Kapoor. Cutler beat several other emerging artists on a survey last semester to gauge who students wanted to see at Fallapalooza.
The turnout made it clear that Cutler has found her own audience at the University of Maryland.
“Her music is written very well, and it’s nice that it’s written by her, in collaboration with other people,” said Caroline Klecka, a freshman journalism major who first heard Cutler perform two summers ago at Firefly Music Festival.
Cutler is set to go on tour with electro pop artist Lauv later this month, making stops in Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
Featured photo courtesy of @chelseacutler on Instagram.