A Farewell in a Room Full of Love at Sarah Kang’s “Hopeless Romantic” NYC Show

The singer’s New York show is her last, for a while, before she becomes a mother.

Sarah Kang was emotional as she stood onstage at her last show of the “Hopeless Romantic” tour. Kang was in New York City, at the intimate venue Le Poisson Rouge, surrounded by friends and family. The singer is expecting her first child soon, and as she explained in a short speech near the end of the night, “I’m saying goodbye to not just this tour, but to who I used to be.” 

Kang met the unexpected farewell with a mixture of emotions. She is excited, she said, to be a mother but she is also “not good with change” and motherhood is perhaps one of the biggest life changes someone can go through.  

This vulnerability, though, is what has connected audiences to Kang since she emerged in music in 2015. Kang is a gifted songwriter who writes about universal topics, like second chances with love or the nostalgia of looking back at youth. She makes art out of mundane chores on songs like “Adventure with You”.“I never thought I’d write a song about doing the laundry,” she said with a laugh as she introduced that song, “but here I am.

What’s made Kang stand out as an artist is that she’s never tried to be more than she is. She’s your wise friend who you confide in; the cool, empathetic older sister who tries to share her experiences with a fragile honesty. 

Her set in New York demonstrated this relatability. Accompanied by just a two-piece band and Kang on guitar, her stories were what held your attention. Her chronicles can be funny: if you like cheesy moments, she’s got a song for you called “Cheeze” or if you spend a lot of time thinking about death, like Kang confessed she does, “We’re All Going to Die Anyway” a duet she recorded with Jackson Lundy, might work. She’s a sharp observer, and a reliable narrator; always quick to admit she’s the most hopeless of us all. 

But Kang has become an important artist because of her stories about love. “Fall For You” and “once in a moon” are perhaps her best known songs. Kang’s mood making here is key: The songs are quiet, intimate soundscapes that make you long for a quiet corner to talk to someone you’re interested in; to feel what it’s like to fall in love with someone. 

Often Kang’s warm voice sounds comforting, cozy even. But when she brought HOHYUN, a singer-songwriter whose track “SUNSET BOULEVARD” made him a rising star, on stage to sing the duet “loml” (short for “love of my life”), a new energy arrived. Together, their voices fused together into a duet that sounded so gorgeous that I felt goosebumps.

The audience, for their part, were a lovely crowd. Throughout the tour, Kang regularly commented that venue staff praised her fans for being the most respectful that they’ve ever dealt with and I experienced this firsthand on Sunday night. There was an almost stunning amount of quiet during each song, as if the crowd was giving Kang the space to feel and breathe every emotion she brought to the stage.

At the end of the night as Kang played her final song with special guest Orion Song, “the summer after senior year”, she looked out into the crowd and sang back to us memories from our youth. “I hope you can be present and remember this moment right now,” Kang told us. “We will never have this moment together again.” 

As the chorus kicked in, Kang looked as if she was taking in every word.  “We tried to grow up fast/ Though we knew it couldn’t last,” she sang before her voice broke in the last line, “Cause we’ll never be as free as the summer after senior year.”

Kang will admit that she isn’t sure who she will become after giving birth. She knows that the girl who turned the stereo up too loud and sang along with her friends in their parents’ minivans is someone of the past. At her final stop in New York, she said goodbye to that girl and looked out for a new future, where undoubtedly new love will be found: In motherhood.