Fletcher

One Liner:  Completely acceptable, if uninteresting, pop music

Wikipedia Genre:  pop

Home: NJ

Poster Position: 4
Weekend One Only.
Friday at 7:30.

IHG Stage.

Thoughts:  "Well well, what can I say about Fletch?  He's been fantastic.  ... He is actually 6'5". With the Afro, 6'9"."  And a look on Wikipedia brings up a treasure trove of things named Fletcher - a dorm at the University of Florida, a collection of British stamps in the British Library, a firearm that fires flechettes, a U.S. destroyer ship, a public use airport in Coahoma County, Mississippi, an a Canadian island, among many other exciting things!

But this one is an American pop singer from New Jersey named Cari Elise Fletcher who, somehow, was included in the Forbes magazine 30 under 30 for 2022.  Born in Asbury Park, NJ, she attended NYU before moving to Nashville to pursue music full time.  She is now based in L.A. (I guess no country angle revealed itself in TN?).  But, while still in high school, she was part of the premier season of The X Factor, where Simon Cowell put her and three other ladies into a group called Lakoda Rayne, which was eliminated from the competition.

The tunes are pretty pure pop stuff.  Her first EP in 2016 was called Finding Fletcher, and featured her first big viral hit called "War Paint."  38.3 million streams.  That song name sounds so familiar, it is really weird.

Nope.  Was certain I had reviewed that song at some point, but not correct.  I definitely do not like that song.  She's definitely model beautiful, but that song is not good.  Super generic.

Her next EP was called you ruined new york city for me, was released in 2019, and featured her biggest hit yet with "Undrunk."  174.1 million streams.

That is a very clever tune lyrically, with the un-drunk, un-lose, un-call, etc. bit.  Completely boring track in the background.  But I get why the sentiments she is singing about there, in that original way, hit with people.  Feels like something written in one of those towers in Nashville by a collection of seven writers.  

Right around here, she got derailed by the pandemic.  She was just about to go on tour with Niall Horan when everything got shut down and she went home to make another EP.  One 2021 single, called "girls girls girls" is weird - she directly steals the "I kissed a girl and I liked it" bit from that Katy Perry song.  That feels really wrong.

Her first real album was 2022's Girl of my Dreams (Deluxe) (i.e. I don't see a non-deluxe version to know which songs don't really belong on here), and it is more of the same.  No huge hits on this one though.  2024's in search of the ANTIDOTE is her most recent attempt.  Same sort of aim here, and we'll take a look at the top song so far, "Eras of Us," with 13.1 million streams.  Trying to cash in on that TayTay "Eras Tour" SEO, eh?

Yawn.  I am well aware that pure pop is a blind spot for me, but the backing tune just sounds like some pop/rock preset on a computer program that advertises "energetic guitar" and "building synths," there is no way I remember that song three minutes from now.  

Strange aside, she caught Lyme disease in 2023.  That stuff is no joke.