Tyla is a modern pop star who sings, writes songs, and dances. She broke through internationally with the superhit "Water" in 2023. She combines modern pop, R&B, afropop, and South African dance rhythms—a genre called amapiano, but which is sometimes also called popiano. Tyla has made amapiano more recognized globally. The music works both on the dance floor and on the radio.
Tyla started early by posting singing videos on social media and developed her own music. She gained attention in her home country with "Getting Late" already in 2019, but it was "Water" that made her an international artist. She has won two Grammy Awards—for "Water" in 2024 and "Push 2 Start" in 2026; the first already at 22 years old and she has collaborated with major artists. Tyla has also gained attention as a fashion icon. Her visual expression is an important part of her artistic identity, rather than just a complement to the music.
Tyla released her second album APOP* on July 24, 2026, and to celebrate the album she embarked on her current tour "The A*POP World Tour"—and tonight it was Stockholm’s turn with a concert at Annexet.
The concert opens with Tyla coming out on stage together with five female dancers—all with neon details on their clothes. Even Tyla’s mic is decorated in neon. The first three songs are "That girl", "Jump", and "Push 2 start". Then she sang "Hot tub" and encouraged the audience to sing along to "Truth or dare", which she performed alone on stage. The sing-along, however, was a bit lukewarm, and I felt it was mainly those closest to the stage who sang along. After the song "Feel something" the audience cheered.
Not much happens on stage apart from Tyla’s sensual and sometimes sexy moves together with the dancers, who are now joined by two men. The main break in the show is a tall built structure that dancers and Tyla climb onto. The structure is partially obscured by white screens lit with varying pink, blue, and white lights through which you could see the artists in silhouette. It was pretty well done, but that was most of it when it comes to effects.
Despite some calmer songs, such as "Breath me" and "On and on", the music was permeated by a heavy bass at high volume, constantly thumping through the speakers. I was happy for the earplugs I brought even though I had moved to the very back of the audience. The setlist was a generous 23 songs, but due to the constant and overly loud bass that often took over, the songs felt quite similar—the sound somewhat drowned them out.
Some of the songs Tyla performs alone on stage, among others during "Bana ba", "Is it love", and "Art", whose lyrics the audience themselves finished in the last lines.
Tyla says “Can I join you?” and steps further forward on stage as she starts singing "I don’t care". She gets parts of the audience to sing along. Afterwards she says "I'm thirsty. Are you? You want to drink?" The crowd shouts: "Yeah!" Tyla asks: "What do you want to drink?" and the audience sparks up and shouts "Water!" The question and answer are repeated a couple of times. Tyla urges the audience to dance before she begins singing "Water", which was her major breakthrough. There are no dancers for this song either. Most of the audience sings along, and there were the most phones in the air during this song, which was clearly a crowd favorite.
The arena goes dark and the spotlights shoot out flashes across the audience. After another couple of songs, it becomes dark in the arena again. Suddenly, Tyla appears right next to me, making her way to in front of the mixing desk far back in the audience. When people see what's happening, part of the audience moves as a united crowd after her. She stands on a platform and sings, then steps down among the audience, to their delight. She then takes the same way back, constantly followed by security and the cameraman filming the whole concert.
During the song "Kiss", among other things, the dancers hang in loops attached to the structure on stage and perform almost gymnastic exercises before returning to dancing. When the audience hears the tones of "She did it again", almost everyone starts singing "oh, uh-oh, oh," which is part of the chorus. A fun fact is that Zara Larsson participated in the recording of "Kiss". The audience also sings along during "It it".
When Tyla leaves the stage a little later, the arena goes dark again—and parts of the audience begin to leave. Suddenly the spotlights explode anew and the dancers come out again for "Shake ah". From the audience echoes: “Tyla, we wanna party” on repeat.
So, how do I experience a concert without musicians, no costume changes, and no special effects apart from spotlights casting light in various colors over the audience without much finesse, but with very good dancing and quite nice music after all—and the more it’s mixed with African rhythms the better. However, I am convinced that Tyla can put on a much better stage show than what she offered the Stockholm audience. The music sounded fairly similar throughout, but that was probably mostly due to the loud bass sounding from the speakers throughout the concert, which I think was a bit too much. If I were to simply describe the music without now knowing the genre amapiano, I would describe it as African, calmer club music with elements of R&B. The concert was good, but nothing more than that.
