It’s Always Summer Somewhere (Even With a Little Rain): Khalid & Lauv Kick Off Their Co-Headline Tour at Red Rocks

Okay so. Buying tickets to a Red Rocks show is always a little bit of a gamble. You know going in that Colorado weather does not care about your outfit, your hair, or your plans. On May 18th, that gamble came back with an on-and-off sprinkle all night. And somehow, it made the very first night of Khalid and Lauv’s It’s Always Summer Somewhere tour hit even harder than I was already expecting it to.

I should say upfront: I’m not coming into this one objective. I’ve been a Lauv fan since I Met You When I Was 18, and Khalid since “Young Dumb & Broke” was inescapable on every playlist I owned. So this was always going to be a personal one for me. Ironic tour title aside, it turned into one of those nights where the weather stopped being an inconvenience about twenty minutes in and just became part of the story.

Lauv Opens in the Rain and It Actually Works

Doors were at 6:30, Lauv was on by 7:30, and it had already started sprinkling on and off by the time he walked out. Watching him work a soaked amphitheater felt fitting in a way I wasn’t expecting. His whole sound has always lived in that late-night, slightly heartbroken pocket, going all the way back to the I Met You When I Was 18 days, and a gray, dripping sky suits that catalog more than sunshine ever would.

He leaned into the songs everyone came to hear, and the light rain drifting in and out gave the whole set a stripped-down, intimate feeling that a venue holding 9,500 people doesn’t usually get. A few ponchos went up whenever it picked back up, phones mostly stayed down, and everyone just genuinely locked in and sang along.

And then he did the thing. “Paris in the Rain” was already going to be a moment no matter what, but when he got to the end and swapped the lyric to “Denver in the rain,” right as another light sprinkle rolled through, the whole amphitheater lost it. It’s a small detail, but it’s the kind of thing that turns a good show into one you’re still talking about the next morning.

Khalid Takes Over Under a Light, On-and-Off Drizzle

Khalid hit the stage at 8:50, and the rain was still coming and going in light bursts. He opened with “Motion” into “Better,” and from there the set was genuinely stacked. This wasn’t a “new album plus three old hits to keep people happy” type set, it was a full-catalog victory lap. “8TEEN” and “Location” for the day-ones. “Young Dumb & Broke” and “Saved” pulling full American Teen nostalgia out of a crowd that clearly grew up on that album, myself included, since that’s the song that made me a fan in the first place. And then a heavy dose of after the sun goes down cuts, including “out of body,” “please don’t call (333),” “nah,” “yes no maybe,” and “rendezvous,” that made it obvious how much he’s leaning into this newer, more personal, moodier R&B era. If you’ve been sitting with that album since it dropped, hearing that stretch live was genuinely emotional.

The cover run deserves its own paragraph, honestly. Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” straight into Simply Red’s “Holding Back the Years” was such a specific, unexpected choice, and it landed. Then later folding in Marshmello’s “Silence” and Calvin Harris’s “Rollin” shifted the energy of the back half of the set into something more club, more movement: less “everyone crying together” and more “everyone jumping in the mud together.” Both moods were fully welcome.

And obviously, obviously, “lovely” and “Love Lies” got some of the loudest reactions of the night. Those are the two songs where you could feel every single person in that amphitheater singing at full volume, rain running down everyone’s faces. Closing with “Talk” into “Young Dumb & Broke” sent the whole crowd out on such a high that people were still singing in the parking lot, soaked to the bone and clearly not caring.

Why the Rain Actually Added to It

It wasn’t a downpour, just a light, on-and-off sprinkle that came and went throughout the night, but it was enough to change the whole mood. Red Rocks lit up against a moody, overcast Colorado sky, a little mist drifting through the lights, everyone singing along anyway whenever the rain picked back up. That’s the kind of atmosphere you can’t manufacture no matter how good your production budget is. It turned an already emotional, well-built set list into something that felt a little bigger than a typical tour opener. As someone who has been to a lot of shows at that venue, this is going to be one of the first ones I bring up when people ask what the best night I’ve ever had there was.

The Takeaway

For a tour kickoff, this was about as strong a start as Khalid and Lauv could have asked for. Two catalogs that complement each other well, a crowd that showed up equally hard for both of them, and a little rain that somehow made the whole night feel more special instead of less. If night one is any indication of how It’s Always Summer Somewhere is going to go, the rest of this run is going to be worth catching.

Bring a light jacket, just in case.