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Millennials came to the Jonas Brothers concert Saturday night at Moda Center ready to party like it was 2005. The Jo Bros swung through town Sept. 20 on their “Greetings From Your Hometown” tour, the boy band’s 20th anniversary of making music together.
The show was a two-hour nostalgia extravaganza, polished and professional almost to a fault. The crowd pogo-jumped to the beat of “Year 3000,” they swooned to the bros’ first No. 1 single, 2019’s “Sucker,” and they felt actual heat from the extensive pyrotechnics during “Burnin’ Up.” (One of the flames stubbornly wouldn’t go out afterward, and a stage technician had to use a fire extinguisher, causing a brief delay in the show.)
The crowd did not, however, witness a jovial family reunion. The dialogue was scripted, except for a part where Joe interacted with fans and read their signs aloud. “Tonight, we are celebrating a 20-year journey together,” Nick said. “And that’s not just the three of us up here on the stage, that’s each and every one of you making this whole thing possible.”
The bros did not interact with each other much—one leaned on another’s shoulder for a moment, but there was certainly no brotherly banter or ribbing or affection—leading concertgoers to wonder if the band’s chasm that led to its 2013–19 hiatus has fully healed or not. But maybe that’s asking too much. Pop music is a business and the bros now have a lot of mouths to feed, with five young daughters among them. And it was a generous show: The set list stretched to nearly 30 songs, though some of those were crammed into a medley of deep cuts.
Highlights included a pair of songs from the bros’ mid-2010s side hustles: Joe’s band DNCE’s infectious 2015 “Cake by the Ocean,” followed up immediately by Nick’s single “Jealous.” Also, some of their new material was sounding strong, notably their breakup song “Backwards” with its irresistible chorus (“I’ve been in my bed/Spending every second wishing you were lying on my chest/Say I’m moving on, but I keep going backwards.”) The song could be about a minute longer for my taste, but I guess I’ll have to take that up with the Spotify algorithm powers-that-be demanding ever-shorter hits.
They played guitar, piano and tambourine, they sang in soaring falsettos; Joe even live-whistled during “Sucker.” But I’m still insisting they play-act best friends even though they’ve survived the mindfuckery of the American public playing a sustained 20-year game of choosing which Jo Bro is hottest and the best vocalist? That feels unfair. And yet.
