The Entertainment Board announced Tuesday morning on their Facebook page and in an email to campus that the Danish singer songwriter MØ will be headlining the 151st Ivies weekend.
She will be performing on Saturday, April 30. The Thursday performer has yet to be announced.
MØ has gained recognition in the last year through her collaboration with the DJ and producer Major Lazer in his song “Lean On.” “Lean On” is currently the most streamed song of all time on Spotify, with over 600 million plays. MØ has also worked with Iggy Azalea and Avicii, among others.
This will be the third major concert to take place at Bowdoin this year—Guster visited the campus in October, and Børns will be performing a sold-out show in Pickard theater on February 5.
The Entertainment Board (eBoard) announced Tuesday morning on their Facebook page and in an email to campus that the Danish singer-songwriter MØ will be headlining the 151st Ivies weekend. She will be performing on Saturday, April 30. The other Ivies acts are yet to be announced.
MØ has gained recognition in the last year through her collaboration with the DJ and producer Major Lazer in his song “Lean On.” “Lean On” is currently the most streamed song of all time on Spotify, with over 600 million plays. MØ has also worked with Iggy Azalea and Avicii, among others.
“We talked a lot this year on the board about bringing someone up and coming, that was one of our goals,” said Emily Serwer ’16, the co-head of eBoard. “Because our budget is so limiting I know it’s difficult for people to understand the type of artist that we can bring based on our budget, but we thought it would be exciting to bring someone that has been recently coming out with music that’s been doing well, who’s been doing collaborations, that there’s been a lot of buzz around.”
The Ivies news came a day after the tickets for the February 5th BØRNS concert were completely sold out in around four hours. Students lined up around Smith Union to buy tickets starting at 9 a.m., and though the line had dissipated within an hour, the tickets were gone by the end of the day.
Serwer said the eBoard did not expect the show to sell out so quickly, though it did need to fill all the seats in Pickard Theater to break even on the concert.
“It was really incredible,” said Serwer. “We were anticipating selling tickets up until the day of the show, really pushing and advertising, and they sold out within, I believe, four hours.”
There has been some frustration among the student body that the concert is being held in Pickard and not all students who wanted tickets were able to get them.
“I was frustrated because I had class in the morning and didn’t realize they would run out that fast,” said Dana Williams ’18, who did not get a ticket. “It would have been really great if they put it in the Union.”
In the past, musical acts such as Murs and Racer X have performed in Smith Union, but Serwer said that due to the necessity of ticketing, Pickard and Kresge were the only possible venues. Pickard Theater holds 600 people while Kresge Auditorium only seats 300.
The decision to bring BØRNS to campus came after feedback from students and the College asking for more exciting programming around winter weekend.
“We came to up with the idea that if we pooled together all our funds from winter weekend, if we move our budget around a little from other items, we’d be able to afford a pretty cool act, as long as we did ticketing,” said Serwer. “BØRNS was really up and coming, had a lot of buzz on iTunes and Spotify, on music websites, and music press was talking a lot about him and his band, so when that name came up, he was the first choice unanimously on the board.”
There is no truth to the rumor that the seats will be removed for the concert. The Pickard seats are currently out due to construction, but will be returned for the show.
The theater department has requested extra security in anticipation of intoxicated students dirtying the theater and standing on seats during the concert.