Teddy Swims Gets in His Feels at Sold-Out Irving Show

The emotions were palpable.

Everywhere you turned inside the sweltering Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory on Thursday, people were deep in their feels — perhaps none more so than the man of the hour.

Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Teddy Swims, who continues to ride the long tail of his smash 2023 single “Lose Control,” was achingly vulnerable in both song and speech from the moment he stepped onto the stage at a sold-out venue.

“Thank you for letting me have the best job in the world,” he said, sporting a Terry Black’s BBQ hat atop his head.

For roughly 105 minutes, Georgia native Swims (born Jaten Dimsdale) marshaled an airtight, eight-piece backing band, no small number of theatrical flourishes (sparks and bursts of flame aplenty) and a swaggering setlist which pulled from his sprawling, two-part debut album, I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy, the latter half of which was released earlier this year. (His last trip through town, two years ago at The Bomb Factory, was likely more weighted to the first installment.)

The 32-year-old Swims first rose to prominence posting impassioned covers on YouTube in 2019 and 2020, and that freewheeling sensibility has never really left him. Pinning down precisely what he sounds like involves reeling off a half-dozen different genres: country, soul, R&B, pop, gospel and hard rock all percolate beneath most of his catalog, strung along the high-tension wire of his unshakable sincerity.

“You saved my life in so many ways,” Swims told the cheering fans gathered beneath him in the pit, and to whom he was impressively attentive all night long, taking items to be autographed and dashing off his signature with a Sharpie while not dropping a note. Gimmicky, maybe, but certainly not to the faithful: One fan offered up a full-sized quilt made for Swims’ newborn son.

While much of the early going was thunderous maximalism — the show-opening twofer of “Not Your Man” and “Hammer to the Heart” brought an intensity most concerts can’t manage by their climaxes — it was when Swims, armed with his impassioned, arresting scrape of a voice, scaled back and turned the focus more inward that the evening truly took flight.

Starting with “Need You More,” a tune Swims dedicated to his girlfriend, Raiche Wright, at home in Nashville, and continuing through “Black & White” and “Small Hands,” the latter of which, about his 6-week-old son, Swims confessed he was, as yet, unable to sing without weeping, the vocalist found an intimate pocket to showcase both his sensitivity and his eclectic sensibility.

Watching a man being leveled by his love for his child was deeply poignant — “I miss him so much,” Swims said, roughly wiping his face free of tears — and provided a nice contrast to the more goofy, saccharine larks elsewhere (Swims is deeply enamored of Technicolor images, a bafflingly cute bear mascot and literalizing song lyrics visually).

The capacity crowd, sweltering in the wretchedly hot August night, roared for all of it, phones outstretched and, at least in the general admission area, dancing with abandon to just about every tune they weren’t (instead) pensively swaying to.

It was a diverse cross-section of humanity — young and old, parents and singles — and scarcely a song Swims sang wasn’t greeted with the lyrics being vociferously echoed back to him.

“Lose Control,” the sultry, powerhouse anthem that catapulted Swims to stardom, was saved for the end of the main set — he’s no fool — and, despite an earlier apology for sounding hoarse, Swims gave the folks what they came for.

It’s a song that best captures why Swims has resonated: Splitting the difference between the personal and the universal, the chart-topping hit contains an ache that makes the singer’s vulnerability feel like your own. Looking around on Thursday, as a sea of people lost themselves in the moment, was to behold a contact high that shows no signs of abating.

See more photos from Thursday's show: