GALLERY & REVIEW | Natalie Jane by Jaz Wilkins

New Jersey born singer Natalie Janowski, known professionally as Natalie Jane, recently made her debut tour in three major Australian cities. Natalie burst onto the music scene in 2020 during season 18 of popular TV show ‘American Idol’, in which she’d made it through the first two rounds and into the Top 40 contestants. After the show, she continued to release music independently over the year with hits such as ‘Kind of Love’ and ‘Red Flag’, both garnering millions of plays on Spotify. In July of 2022, she chose to sign a deal with Capitol Records instead of attending school at the University of California at Berkley to continue her professional music career, and soon she released her label debut ‘Mentally Cheating’, blowing her career up even further. As of today, the song has over 47 million plays on Spotify.

I had the amazing opportunity to cover her first ever show at The Tivoli in Fortitude Valley thanks to Hannah from Morse Code PR and Natalie Jane’s team, thank you all for having me! Now, we will get on with the review.

Natalie Jane’s debut Australian show went just as you would have expected. The venue was packed with a line going down almost two streets with excited fans boasting signs, hoping to be noticed by Natalie herself. Her show was opened by local Byron Bay artist, Oliver Cronin. Oliver took to the stage at 8:30pm to warm the crowd up for the main act, but in doing so he won over the hearts of the entire audience who were singing and jumping along to his songs from the very beginning. Accompanying him were his drummer, guitarist, and a backing track which all blended together smoothly and made his sound very whole to the point where the drums and the bass were rumbling the entire venue. Oliver was very interactive with the crowd and performed his own hits, opening the show with ‘Exit’ and quickly following up with ‘Burning House’, which received high praise from the crowd. Oliver spoke to the crowd in between songs about his life and his dreams, even dedicating one song towards the end of his set to his fiancee, to which he shared some very sweet words about her before singing the heartfelt melody. My favourite song of the night from Oliver had to be his final song of the set, titled ‘Hello, Goodbye’ as it was extremely high energy and was an amazing choice to get the crowd hyped up and excited for the act to come.

Natalie entered the stage at 9:30pm after much anticipation from the crowd, causing her fans to scream and vie for her attention from behind the barrier. Natalie opened the show with the song that the tour is named after ‘Sick To My Stomach’. She took to the stage in an outfit that modernises a popular look in the 80’s, sporting a white balloon skirt with a white top that looked inspired by outfits seen worn in the popular TV series ‘The Jetsons’ with a pair of black high top boots. Accompanying Natalie on stage was an Australian session drummer by the name of Caleb, who played extremely well and kept time with the backing tracks extremely smoothly

She was extremely interactive with her audience between songs, taking the time to talk to the crowd about to being her first ever time in Australia and explain the stories behind her upcoming tracks.

She followed up with her 2024 singles ‘Tattoos’ and ‘can i see you tonight?’ which caused the audience to exclaim in excitement. My absolute favourite song of the night was the one titled ‘Mentally Cheating’. She asked the audience beforehand if anyone attending was there with their partners or was in a long term relationship, resulting in a huge show of hands to which her response was ‘Then I hope you don’t relate to this next song’ before bursting right into the track, which is an anthem of confusing feelings about love and relationships. Her voice was extremely vocally powerful in this song, as you could tell she was coming from a place with a lot of feeling and passion about the place she was in when the song was written.

Afterwards, she followed up with two softer tracks from her discography ‘Somebody to Someone’ and ‘I’m Her’, which brought the show back to a slower pace where took a seat on the platform she had with her on stage and took the time to really let her vocals shine. Natalie has a way of being extremely subtle yet powerful with her vocal ability, going from low to high notes with what seemed to be extreme ease.

Another favourite song of mine that she played was her song ‘Yucky’, which was extremely fast paced and fun song to dance along to and had easy lyrics to remember and be able to sing along to despite only hearing the songs once very briefly. I would say this is the song she had the most fun performing of the night as she had the biggest smile plastered on her face while she skipped around the stage singing along to the song with her fans.

She closed the night out with her hit song ‘AVA’ which everyone on TikTok and Instagram will have heard at some point. The song is definitely a fan favourite, albeit slightly overplayed online back in 2022 when it was released. The song itself was very popular amongst the ‘POV’ genre on both platforms and blew up with over 90 million Spotify plays as of January 2025. This song was arguably one of the loudest songs of the night both from Natalie and her audience, likely being because it was the last song of the night and it being one of her most popular and confrontational songs, naturally causing her and the audience to want to scream their lungs out to the lyrics.

Overall, this show was definitely one of the most fun and high energy shows I’ve attended. Natalie was so humble on stage and you can tell that she absolutely adores her fans and performing on stage. Her show was fast paced, exciting, and loud, which compared to her music is exactly spot on to what I would have expected. Her songs carried over live really well when compared to her studio tracks, and I loved how the lack of vocal effects while she was on stage allowed her to really showcase how incredible her vocal skills are. The venue was the perfect size for her show, allowing lots of room for everyone to move around and still get an amazing view of the stage no matter where you stood.

One of my favourite things about Natalie’s performance is how it showcased a transformation from simply being a ‘TikTok artist’ to a musical sensation with over two million listeners worldwide, and being able to hear these tracks live and finally put a face to all of the trending sounds she’s had on social media over the last five years. Natalie should be extremely proud of how far she has come with her music career at only twenty years old, and it’s very clear that she has an extremely bright future in music ahead of her due to her sheer talent and willpower to push forward and make a name for herself within the music industry. Its very heartwarming to see a talented artist that started out online be able to touch the hearts of millions of people and tour the world with their music. I cant wait to see the future of her career and hopefully see her sell out even bigger and better shows worldwide in the coming years!