ATLANTA (March 5, 2017) — Country trio The Band Perry kicked off their Welcome to My Bad Imagination Pop-Up Show tour in Atlanta Sunday night, the first of only nine shows intended to debut themselves as a pop band, a radical departure from their original country roots.
The band, which consists of siblings Kimberly, Reid, and Neil Perry, took the stage at Terminal West to give fans an intimate look at their upcoming album, My Bad Imagination. The album, which was announced February 2 via a Facebook post, is being dubbed a pop album.
“My Bad Imagination is an album with a ton of layers and surprises for our fans,” Kimberly Perry said via a press release. “Our fans have stuck by us over the past year while we’ve been quietly creating our new music, and now we want to get as close to them as we can to start listening and moving to these new sounds together.”
Reid Perry adds, “We want our fans to see and feel as much as they hear My Bad Imagination, so we’ve created this series of pop up shows in some of our favorite small rooms around the country to give them the first look at the designs and music that have led us to this moment of growth for our band.”
The show kicked off at approximately 8:50 p.m. with a cut off the new album titled “Make You Happy,” an upbeat tune with a heavy 808 presence coming from Reid’s sampler.
The band then ventured into familiar territory, performing the first single off their sophomore album, “Better Dig Two.” After which, the brothers mingled with the audience as stage technicians scrambled to replace Kimberly’s in-ear monitor which had become faulty during the first song.
“This is the first night of the show, which means it’s a kink night—we’re trying to work out all the kinks,” Production Manager Earl Neal said with a laugh. “But I don’t think [the broken in-ear monitor] detracted from the thrill of the night.”
After the fix, the band launched into three new songs off the upcoming album (“Stay in the Dark,” “The Best One Yet,” and “One Last Look”) all of which featured Reid, and occasionally Neil, performing on their samplers, an indication that they are fully committed to transitioning to the pop genre.
“You know, I started working with the kids a few years ago when they were still considered country,” Neal said. “They’ve never been just a country band. If you’ve been to their live shows, you know they love to perform rock, they love to perform pop, just as well as they love to perform country. It makes my life hard because of the extra equipment I have to manage, but it makes my life just as fun, nonetheless.”
Almost as if they were creating a metaphor for their transition from country to pop, the band performed their six times platinum song, “If I Die Young,” segueing into a cover of Alphaville’s 1984 pop hit, “Forever Young,” with Neil on lead vocals.
This led the band into the closing act of their show, performing a mashup of hit songs including “Seven Nation Army,” “SexyBack,” and “Pony.”
Kimberly closed out the night with a speech about the importance of being true to yourself before closing with the first song they wrote for the upcoming album, “Look at Me Now.”
If applause is any measure of success, The Band Perry gained unanimous acclaim from the Atlanta audience.
“I’ve been with them since the beginning,” said Teddy McCline, who was in the audience Sunday night. “When they first said they were going pop, I was honestly a little upset. But tonight, after hearing the new stuff, I have complete faith in them. They are just as good a pop band as they were a country band.”
Tickets for the Welcome to My Bad Imagination Pop-Up Show, which continues this Tuesday at Irving Plaza in New York, can be purchased below.
“We’ll show it to the rest of the world next,” says Neil Perry. “But this moment is about the family coming together to celebrate a birthday, a new day, the future.”
My Bad Imagination does not have a release date yet, but is expected out later this year. The first single off the album, “Stay in the Dark,” can be purchased here.
Cory Hott 
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