“Do we like the eyeliner or no?”
Sombr is strutting across the stage, dragging the microphone stand by its neck and headbanging to his own music with an ecstatic, toothy, dorky smile.
As strobe lights douse the audience, the singer’s voice is drowned out by the gasping screams from the pit of this Brooklyn club. His rangy six-and-a-half-foot frame is xeroxed on the screens of a hundred cellphones. He’s cloaked in a black suit over a sparkling tank top and — as if he needs a lift — cheetah-print heels. His eyes are smeared black. “Some people on TikTok didn’t like it,” he says sheepishly of the skeleton-esque makeup.
David Roemer for Variety
When he gets a breath, he looks out and laments, “I haven’t been this close to you guys in a while.” Indeed, the gap between Sombr and his fans has widened over the past 18 months after his yearny breakup smash “Back to Friends” catapulted him to the upper echelon of pop music. Now, his 2025 debut album, “I Barely Know Her,” has 4 billion streams and counting, and ahead of his next record, he’s floating on the full-throated endorsement of Taylor Swift. The next time he headlines a show in New York, it will be at Madison Square Garden.
