Stephen Sanchez

One Liner:  Another insanely popular thing based upon sixty-year-old vibes.

Wikipedia Genre:  pop rock, folk-pop, blue-eyed soul, rockabilly

Home: Nashville (but born in CA)

Poster Position: 7
Both Weekends.
Friday at 5:30.

T-Mobile Stage.

Thoughts:  His most popular song is massively popular - like Drake numbers - but unfortunately it is in his Spotify catalog like 40 times so I am kind of growing sick of it by now.  Enough!  "Until I Found You," with just over a billion streams on the original, and then 983 million streams on the version with someone named Em Beihold.  That's a bunch for an old school torchy ballad!

I get Chris Isaak, David Gray, and Ray Lamontagne vibes in there.  Really a beauty of a song, even though it is weird that such a throwback thing would garner almost 2 BILLION streams.  Do these kids go nuts for old Buddy Holly shit too?  I'm sure this is a TikTok thing.

And that is correct.  He built an audience on TikTok with covers, starting in 2020, and after gaining notoriety, he signed with Republic Records.  That tune above was his third single in 2021 and it went nuts, obviously.  No other song even comes close.  The closest is a single that was included on his debut album, 2023's Angel Eyes, called "Evangeline."  66.6 million streams.

I have to say, I still like the Matthew Sweet song more.  But this is another song that leans into some classic sounds - reminds me of Lord Huron.  His voice is fantastic.  That one album bops around in some strange directions - "High" is a little more modern, but "Shake" and "Doesn't Do Me Any Good" are soooo old school.  Really odd.

But despite the oddity of the whole schtick, I like it.  Like with Thee Sinseers I reviewed the other day, I still don't understand why people would be so rabidly into a new version of something that very distinctly went out of style six decades ago.  But whatever.  I dig the vibe in here.