CHICAGO- I first encountered Audrey Hobert by way of Gracie Abrams (bedroom music artist who crossed into a mainstream pop girlie) when she was featured in Abrams’ music video for the song “I Love You, I’m Sorry”. Abrams and Hobert are close friends and co-wrote “I Love You, I’m Sorry” as well as several other songs on Abrams’ 2024 album The Secret of Us.
11 months after the music video release of “I Love You, I’m Sorry”, Hobert dropped her first single “Sue Me”. “Sue Me”, with its catchy beats and the iconic line “Sue me, I wanna be wanted”, quickly went viral and peaked at number 57 on the Billboard Hot 100. In August of 2025, Hobert released her debut album Who’s the Clown, which featured popular tracks like “Thirst Trap” and “Bowling Alley”. Who’s the Clown explores the awkwardness and embarrassment in the journey to adulthood, and the way Hobert uses specificity to describe universal experiences has resonated with pop fans.
Hobert has now been on tour for Who’s the Clown for close to a year and has found great success performing. On October 8 and 9, she had two sold-out shows at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. I was fortunate enough to attend night one along with many other young, enthusiastic and (mostly) female Audrey Hobert fans.
The Staircase to Stardom Tour found its aesthetic through clown makeup, feather boas, plastic tiaras and vibrant tights. On the way to the venue, I was easily able to identify other concert attendees by the amount of color they were wearing.
The show had no opener, but there was a mannequin set out on stage to keep the crowd company while we sang along to an excellent pre-show playlist featuring Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” and Drake’s “Best I Ever Had”. Hobert came on stage with her go-to look for this tour – a tan, knee-length trenchcoat and hair down for maximum hair-flipping potential. The show was a crisp 60 minutes, jam-packed with upbeat songs and fun bits from Hobert. Her songwriting style is lyrically dense rather than challenging in pitch, so half the fun of the show was the experience of being in a room with so many other fangirls, all of us singing along until our throats were dry.
Hobert certainly understands how to entertain a crowd and had several mini speeches worked into her set. My favorite monologue was during the song “Wet Hair” where the artist talked about how she never expected to have this career path and tells the story of being rated a 3 out of 10 by boys in her junior high – culminating in the line: “I was never a 3, I was a beautiful child, now an ever more beautiful woman”.
With passionate sing-alongs and clever speeches, the energy of the show was unmatched. It felt like what my childhood self imagined my college years would be – fun and free, with lots of tiaras. As the end of the show approached, Hobert played the party anthem “Silver Jubilee”, during which the crowd sang along so loudly I could barely hear her singing. We had all too soon made it to the encore, where: surprise! Hobert performed “Sue Me” a second time. I loved this choice – when you’ve only released 12 songs, why not sing your hit single twice?