On the 8th of September, George Clanton stopped by Paradiso in Amsterdam on his European tour. By 7:20 PM, the upstairs venue of Paradiso was only half full. Even though the room felt intimate, the show was completely sold out. Most of the crowd looked between 16 and 35, leaning towards the alt scene, buzzing with excitement to see George Clanton.
For anyone new to him: George is a 37-year-old musician from Ridgeway, Virginia. He has been an underground star since the early 2010s. Born from the internet’s vaporwave underground, he went on to create his own label, 100% Electronica, in 2015, and later founded 100% ElectroniCON, the world’s first vaporwave festival. Between streaming live shows on Twitch and YouTube, studying anthropology and teaching himself programming, Clanton has become more than just a musician, he’s a kind of community builder. His 2018 album Slide, which he once called a “vaporwave opera”, showed just how ambitious he’s always been.
The night kicked off with George calling the gig “the most exclusive show of all of Europe” since it was his first headlining performance in Amsterdam. He told the crowd to leave the curtains closed because “as far as I’m concerned it’s fucking 2 am right now” and then asked if the crowd had had enough wine and beer. He tried a joke that didn’t land, admitting he needed to work on his Dutch humor, before turning to a fan and asking what puts a smile on his face in the morning. The fan answered “George Clanton,” which sent the crowd cheering.
Clanton asked for a bigger cheer to start the show and gave a shout out to a fan he had met earlier that day named Thor: “I listened to your music, and you’re in for a treat tonight.”
Then the first notes of ‘Living Loose’ hit, and Clanton wasted no time jumping straight into the crowd as fans sang along to every word. He turned to Thor and told him, “if you see anybody with their arms crossed, grab them, give them a big old bear hug, say I love you and then jump up and down with them in the chorus.”. From there he rolled straight into ‘It Makes the Babies Want to Cry’, again disappearing into the sea of bodies before emerging grinning on stage. At one point a fan handed him sunglasses. He put them on, smirked, and said, “I want to keep them, I look good right?” before giving them back.
Before ‘Everything I Want’, he asked if there were people present that weren’t from the Netherlands. Cheers rang out for different cities and he teased them for taking tickets away from locals. He compared the night to his last Amsterdam appearance opening for TV Girl, a show he called “a little bit of a disaster” because that crowd didn’t take a liking to his performance. But this time, he promised, would be different. “You’re gonna like this one, Amsterdam” he proclaimed as he started his next song ‘Dumb’.
Clanton then introduced Thor properly: “I met a fan earlier by the name Thor Kissing. Is Kissing a popular Dutch name?” He explained that Thor had given him a CD earlier in the day and that he’d prepped one of Thor’s songs so they could perform it together, a cover of ‘Justify Your Life’. Thor took the lead on vocals as the crowd sang along, and at the end he announced his own upcoming show in Nijmegen.
Clanton kept the momentum going with ‘Make It Forever’. He reached into the crowd to hold hands, dove in again, and tried to hand the mic to a fan to sing along, though she didn’t dare.
Later, before ‘Warmpop’, he asked how many “Gen Z bitches” were in the audience and joked that they’d probably found him on TikTok as this song went viral and ended up dedicating the song to them.
He introduced ‘Punchin Down’ by going on a tangent about the word “bitch” saying it can be an insult, but also a term of endearment, especially in queer spaces. “When my friends say yes bitch, I kinda understand what they mean,” he explained. “I just want to have a good party.”
That party fell a bit short as technical difficulties resulted in the music cutting out mid-song. “I would blame it on whoever you’re racist against,” he said, “but Amsterdam seems too welcoming.” He joked that in Dublin he would’ve just blamed the English, earning loud boos at the mention of England. When the sound failed again, he filled the gap with a story about dinner in the city, before shouting out his crew, John, Anton on lights, and Bento on sound. By the time the track finally worked, the delay had only built the tension, and the crowd went wild when the drop finally landed.
As the set wound down, Clanton framed ‘I Been Young’ as the emotional turn. “I’ve played all the songs about being betrayed by love, about being losers,” he told the crowd. “Now I’m gonna play a song about being in love, about being a winner.” The audience swayed together, voices rising in unison.
Though he had already gone overtime, Clanton wasn’t ready to leave. He announced one last song, ‘Bleed’. For the encore he climbed back into the crowd one more time, pouring water over the front rows and letting the chaos carry him. Then, in an almost comic contrast, he calmed the energy down by shaking hands politely with fans before walking offstage.
George Clanton’s Amsterdam headlining debut felt less like a polished performance and more like hanging out with a funny, chaotic friend who just happens to be fronting one of the most exciting electronic shows around. He cracked jokes, handed the spotlight to a fan, and even turned technical failures into comedy. For the 250 people crammed into that little upstairs venue, it wasn’t just a concert, it felt like a once-in-a-lifetime party.
