Daya got the audience at Ohio University to do more than “sit still, look pretty” on Thursday night.
At 7:30 p.m., Daya performed songs off her self-titled EP for a crowded audience at the Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium.
The set started out in complete darkness, with the band playing instrumentals. Not long after the band started playing, the stage was lit up and Daya entered singing her most recent single, “Sit Still, Look Pretty.”
As she moved onto her next song, “Thirsty,” she continued to get the crowd more excited, which Ashley Russell, an undecided freshman, said she predicted before the concert started.
“This show is going to get loud, I can sense it already,” she said.
Daya’s opening band, PUBLIC, also worked at getting the crowd fired up during their performance. The band told everyone to stand up, and they were dancing within minutes. Ben Lapps, the drummer of PUBLIC, said the crowd was “fun-nominal.”
“It’s so nice to come in and play in front of a crowd that is so happy to see you,” Matthew Alvarado, the bassist of PUBLIC, said.
After the crowd was energetic from PUBLIC’s performance and then by Daya’s first few songs, she decided to slow down the show with her song “U12” and a cover of James Bay’s “Let it Go.”
Daya took a moment of the show to promote her upcoming album that will be released on Oct. 7. She gave everyone a preview of the record by singing a song off of it titled, “Cool.”
The performer sped things back up with her song “Legendary,” before slowing it down again and getting very personal with the crowd.
Daya stood by the piano and started to talk about her song, “Back to Me.”
“This is a song I wrote on the piano,” Daya said. “It is about letting someone go that you really don’t want to let go of.”
She asked everyone to hold up their cell phone lights and started the song.
After the emotional song, the energy of the crowd picked back up as she called out a fan’s name. It was the fan’s birthday and Daya got the whole auditorium to sing “Happy Birthday” to her.
“Thank you so much for hanging with me Athens, Ohio,” Daya said. “I’ve been doing this for a year and a half and this is my dream.”
Daya invited the whole crowd to join her at the front as she sang her hits, “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Hide Away.”
Some members of the crowd were impressed with Daya’s talent considering her young age.
“It is so cool to see someone so young hit it so big,” John Vaughn, the lead singer of PUBLIC, said.
Despite her age, Daya, 17, gave some optimistic advice to the crowd.
“I really do believe you can accomplish anything,” Daya said.
