On April 18, the Leadership, Engagement and Experiential Development (LEED) office at Hopkins announced that The Beaches and Toosii will be performing at the 2025 Spring Fair Concert. The artists were revealed through an Instagram post by the official LEED account and a “Concert Artist Reveal Party” was also hosted.
The concert will take place on April 26 at the Ralph S. O’Connor Recreation Center at 7 p.m., with tickets being available for purchase on April 21 through CampusGroups.
With popular hits such as “Blame Brett” and “T-Shirt”, The Beaches are a Canadian rock band formed in Toronto in 2013. The band consists of Jordan Miller (lead vocals and bass), Kylie Miller (guitar), Leandra Earl (keyboard and guitar), and Eliza Enman-McDaniel (drums). The Beaches are known for their high energy performances and coming-of-age ballads and recently won Rock Album of the Year at the 2024 Juno Awards.
Joining them is Toosii, an American rapper and singer best known for emotionally vulnerable tracks like “Favorite Song” and “Love Cycle.” Born in Syracuse, N.Y. and raised in North Carolina, Toosii has gained recognition for blending melodic rap with introspective lyrics that resonate with a wide audience. His latest album, NAUJOUR, reached 19 on the Billboard 200 and solidified his status as a rising voice in contemporary hip hop.
In an interview with The News-Letter, senior Meera Bhat expressed her disappointment with the artist selection for the Spring Fair Concert. She explained that she felt that this year was not as representative of student preferences as in the past and suggested that an allocation of funds to secure a well-known artist might increase student engagement.
“In my opinion, it just seems like [the students’] opinions weren’t taken into hand. [...] I feel like the past three years have been much more representative of what the student body wants, and this year especially [seems like] they just did not care about what we wanted at all,” Bhat explained. “I also feel like having two relatively unknown artists was something that the body doesn’t want either and that students would much rather have one artist that people really know.”
The Spring Fair Concert is one of the most anticipated events at Hopkins, traditionally drawing large student crowds, such as last year’s performance with Flo Milli, which had over 600 registered attendees in the seven hours after ticket sales opened. With tickets priced at $21.50 for this year’s concert, around 50 students registered within the first five hours.
However, student reception often varies depending on the artists selected, with reactions ranging from enthusiastic anticipation to disappointment based on name recognition and genre preferences.
Several students compared their expectations of this year’s concert to their experiences during previous ones. Sophomore Greta Persian shared that her decision not to attend this year’s concert was due to her lack of familiarity with the performing artists and her hearing from friends that past concerts had featured more popular artists.
“I don’t know either of the artists [this year], and I’m not planning on going because it just doesn’t [seem like] it would be worth my time,“ she said. “I feel like with a lot of the artists that come, I don’t really know their music, haven’t heard of them and the crowds are usually kind of insane [...] so it wasn’t very fun.”
Jack Gao, a junior, recalled attending the Spring Fair concert during his freshman year, which featured Kehlani, and observed that the excitement surrounding such events has waned since then. He noted that, while academic commitments influenced his decision not to attend last year and this year’s concerts, the appeal of the performing artists remains a key factor.
“I don’t really have too much of an opinion for the Spring Fair concert just because I haven’t heard of any of these artists,” Gao explained. “I went freshman year — we had Kehlani. Everybody was super jealous that we had Kehlani — everyone’s heard of Kehlani — so that was pretty good! I think I had a good time in freshman year, and [Kehlani] was what kind of motivated me to go.”
The News-Letter reached out to LEED for comment and did not receive a response at the time of publication.
