In February, when Post Malone and Jelly Roll announced they planned to join forces for the BIG ASS Stadium Tour, it made perfect sense.
After all, the pairing takes two artists with deep roots in hip-hop who have crossed multiple genre borders throughout their musical adventures, both embracing rock, pop and country and proving equally adept at all styles. And for an outing of this size, it makes them ideal tourmates.
There’s also no shortage of hits between the two: Post Malone has scored 11 Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including such No. 1s as Rockstar (featuring 21 Savage), “Psycho” (featuring Ty Dolla $ign), “Sunflower” with Swae Lee and “Circles.” Jelly Roll is on a, well, roll, with six straight No. 1s on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, among them “Halfway to Hell,” “Save Me” (featuring Lainey Wilson) and his first country chart-topper, “Son of a Sinner.”
Both artists are also coming off triumphant appearances in the desert — at Coachella for Post Malone and Stagecoach for Jelly Roll — so they should be primed and ready to go when the 26-city tour kicks off Tuesday (April 29) at Salt Lake City’s Rice-Eccles Stadium. The U.S. dates end July 1 at San Francisco’s Oracle Park. Americana sensation Sierra Ferrell will open a number of shows on the U.S. leg.
A few weeks ago, the superstars announced plans to extend the tour for a series of European dates that includes stops in Berlin, London, Barcelona and Lisbon.
Below is our dream setlist for their show — if we were in charge.
As Jelly rises from below the stage on a platform that rises at least a story high — as if he is ascending skyward — he opens with the perfect invitation to join him for a musical journey toward salvation on the road from despair to hope and every emotion in between that makes us human.
With the church that graces the cover of his breakthrough album, Whitsitt Chapel, shadowcast around the stadium, by song two Jelly has the whole audience singing along and nodding in agreement as he drops truth bombs like, “I only talk to God when I need a favor/And I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer. “
The swirling guitars of “Halfway to Hell” ring out as Jelly Roll kicks into full gear with this driving hit that he took straight to No. 1 and continues on our path toward redemption.
After taking the audience to church and sounding like a tent revival preacher, Jelly sees to reassure and unite with this gentle song, as he comforts those who are feeling far from ok — and makes clear that, collectively, will be alright in this group singalong.
The concert hits its emotional peak as Jelly launches into “Save Me,” with its desperate plea for help as he sings, “I’m a lost cause/don’t waste your time on me.” Unlike the last tour where he was drenched in rain during the song, this time a full choir comes out to join him, taking the hit to an even higher level as the despair is surrounded by the most heavenly of voices for a glorious contrast.
The dark mood continues as Jelly segues into the self-incriminating “Dead Man Walking,” a 2021 No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart before he started crossing over into country. Jelly takes “walking” literally and comes down into the audience as he walks back to a B-stage in the middle of a stadium.
Sitting on a bar stool in center of the B-stage with a single spotlight on him and accompanied only be an acoustic guitar, Jelly goes into an emotional version of “Dreams Don’t Die,” the song that he debuted when he appeared on Fire Country a few weeks ago.
Jelly continues on the B-stage with “She,” a deep cut from Whitsitt Chapel, an intensely emotional tale of a woman drug addict, that could be any number of women who have been part of Jelly’s wife, whether his mom or the mother of his daughter.
He returns to the main stage but stays with the addiction theme. The protagonist in “She” may still be deep in her addiction, but Jelly Roll flips the coin and takes the whole stadium to a 12-step meeting with “Winning Streak,” the emotional opening track to his Beautifully Broken album.
Bringing the crowd back to its feet after a few slow songs, as flashpots burst around him Jelly launches into a muscular, full-bodied version of recent No. 1 “Liar.” The fiddles blaze and the choir returns to amp up the intensity in this song about the negative voices in our heads that lie to us constantly and how important it is not to listen to them.
After running through his hits, Jelly Roll welcomes Post Malone to a roaring crowd as he prepares to hand over the show to his tourmate. But first, they delve into a soaring version of “Losers,” their collab from Malone’s F-1 Trillion, their sloping message to the folks that never fit in, the ones who never win, “the outcasts, the sinners,” with the reminder that they are never alone.
With hypnotic lights flashing 360 degrees around the stadium to the slurry, hypnotic beat of the song, Post Malone brings out Ty Dolla $ign for the swaying hit.
Keeping the hazy, woozy mood going, “Rockstar” encapsulates so many of Post’s styles — pop, hip-hop, rock, trap… And yes, because this is a dream concert, 21 Savage joins him.
Post Malone takes us back to where it all began back in 2015 when most of us heard his name for the first time with his debut single, the relaxed, basketball-influenced rap track, “White Iverson,” written because he thought his braids made him look like a white Allen Iverson.
As a treat to his fans who have been there since the beginning, Posty slows it down for a gorgeous version of this treat also from his debut album Stoney, just accompanied by an acoustic guitar. The crowd raises their glasses when he sings “put on a little “Dwight,” in homage to one of his favorite artists, Dwight Yoakam.
Post Malone brings it back from the past and zooms to the future with this gorgeous tribute to his infant daughter from the standpoint of a conversation with her potential partner as Post prepares to walk her down the aisle many, many years from now.
Post Malone segues into his pop era with the heartfelt “Sunflower,” his entry for the 2018 animated film, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Spidey doesn’t show up, but his collaborator, Swae Lee, does for a massive sing-along.
The hit parade continues as he performs “Circles,” which in 2019 went straight to the top of the Hot 100. There’s a reason Post’s soft-rock tune has garnered more than 2.7 billion streams on Spotify — it may be about a failed relationship that neither one party can quite manage to walk away from, but it keeps listeners coming back, too.
After taking the audience on a roller-coaster ride, Post Malone builds to a crescendo as the instantly lilting intro of “I Had Some Help” starts and duet partner Morgan Wallen ambles out, giving Posty a big bro hug as the two bounce through their six-week Hot 100 chart-topper.
Then they segue into their new hit, the very appropriate show closer “I Ain’t Comin’ Back.” Jelly Roll comes back out to join Posty and Wallen as fireworks explode around the trio and people slowly stream toward the exits singing along.
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