Live Recap: Nick Carter Brings Love Life Tragedy to Des Plaines Theatre
Nick Carter brought his Love Life Tragedy show to the stage at Des Plaines Theatre, delivering a stellar Saturday night to an eager fanbase.
The Des Plaines show, as well as a subsequent Sunday night show in St. Charles, acted as one-off solo special performances for Carter in the gap period between The Backstreet Boys’ sold-out Vegas residency runs at Sphere—the most recent of which ended in August. I was lucky enough to attend one of the Sphere shows in August, but more on that later.
The evening kicked off with a support set from singer-songwriter Sierra Sikora, a local from the Chicagoland area. Sikora took the stage solo; just herself, an acoustic guitar, and the stories she told through her songwriting. Her setlist was mostly comprised of original material, but she did sprinkle in a couple of covers that got the audience singing along, including “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None The Richer and “Creep” by Radiohead—which was fitting for the spooky season. Sikora exuded confidence in her stage presence between songs, telling the crowd personal anecdotes about her lyrics and asking the audience to turn their phone flashlights on for one of her songs. She closed out her set with her single “Dear Athena,” which had everyone clapping along.
Nick Carter and his band hit the stage next, preambled by an interactive graphic of a spaceship on the stage’s screen. The visual introduction felt like a less intense version of the beginning of the Backstreet Boys’ Sphere show, but I won’t give too many spoilers for those fans who are planning to head to Vegas for the next string of shows this winter. Carter kept the BSB nods coming by kicking off his set with the band’s hit “Larger Than Life,” which got the energy pumping in the venue and had everyone out of their seats dancing.
As this show was in honor of Carter’s new solo record entitled Love Life Tragedy that was released in May of this year, the setlist featured a lot of the new material. After the opening number, fans got to hear the first two songs off the album, “Made For Us” and “Nothing Without Your Love.” As Carter and his bandmates performed each song, the visuals on the screen displayed some of the song lyrics or graphics that went along with the theme of the song to help immerse the audience into the storytelling.
Carter took time to address the crowd often between songs, teasing the potential for a full tour around the record and providing some behind-the-scenes stories about how these songs were made. After performing his song “Storms,” the singer told the crowd “Storms feels like that’s been my whole life. 33 years I’ve been in this industry. I’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs, and sometimes you just don’t know how to articulate the things that you’ve been through, but you put them in a song. When you listen to these songs, you can hear what I’m going through in my life. Sometimes you can take these songs and you can actually relate them to yourself and things you’re going through yourself. We all go through a lot of love, we all go through a lot of life, and we all have tragedy, but that’s why we’re here.” Carter followed up the heartfelt moment with a few more songs from the recent album, including “Hey Kid” and “Wild Heart” before pivoting to some of his earlier solo songs “Swet” and “Burning Up.”
Another highlight of the show included a cover of the Simple Minds classic hit “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” which really showed off Carter’s dynamic vocal range and lower register. Speaking of covers, the show concluded with a handful of Backstreet Boys’ biggest hits, including “As Long As You Love Me” and “Everybody (Backstreet's Back).”
Not only was it great to get to hear so many of my favorite nostalgic Backstreet Boys songs performed in a new style with Nick completely at the helm, but this was my first time hearing him perform his solo material live, and the show really displayed how multifaceted Nick Carter is as a songwriter and performer.
Follow along with Nick for any news on the potential solo tour, and if you can, I highly recommend making the trek to Vegas to see the full band at Sphere. You can view photos of the Des Plaines show below, and listen to Love Life Tragedy here.
