HITS
Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth, The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon (March 16)
Khalifa and Puth struck just the right tone with “See You Again,” the tearjerker tribute to the late actor Paul Walker on the Furious 7 soundtrack. Their performance was spare, elegiac and remarkably schmaltz-free, and Puth’s stirring vocals were a highlight. Live, he sounded like he could give Sam Smith a run for his money.
Modest Mouse, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (March 17)
Fresh off releasing Modest Mouse’s latest LP, Strangers to Ourselves, frontman Isaac Brock looked positively feral as he spat out the lyrics to “Lampshades on Fire,” a deliriously bouncy, staccato number with searing lyrics about the trashing of the planet. Keyboardist Lisa Molinaro’s harmonies near the end of the song added a layer of sweetness to Brock’s acidic quirk.
The Weeknd, Jimmy Kimmel Live! (March 19)
Abel Tesfaye and his dreadlock cockscomb had the ladies in Kimmel‘s South by Southwest audience screaming with delight as he burned through “Earned It,” a slow jam from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack that’s a lot sexier than the movie. If the birth rate in Austin spikes nine months from now, blame it on Tesfaye’s high, clear babymaking falsetto.
MISS
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Jimmy Kimmel Live! (March 20)
Sharpe gave a little shrug at the end of his performance of “If I Were Free,” which pretty much summed up how it came across on TV. Although the band sounded top-notch, Sharpe’s disheveled-minstrel shtick — see the video for this song — did not work well live. As he wandered Kimmel’s SXSW stage, there were moments when he seemed to lose interest in finishing the track.