As we’ve been sharing here in the newsletter all year, and what our platform has been showing you for the past 10 years, COLORS is about connecting people through genuine creative expression.
From every artist who steps onto our stage and the teams behind them, to everyone here at COLORS whose work brings A COLORS SHOW to life, every performance represents countless hours of human ideas, experimentation, refinement, and passion. Artists spend years developing their voices and strengthening their craft through trial and error. Our team does the same, through collaborating, problem-solving, and obsessing over every detail to make each A COLORS SHOW one of a kind.
What you see in the final product is the result of that process: the people, the practice, the mistakes, the decisions, and the evolution.
And you can see that process in every artist who steps onto the COLORS stage. Before they ever perform, the work has long begun. Some artists start as children, taking lessons, while others perform in mirrors or in living rooms for their families theatrically, not knowing they possess what it takes to be an artist. Some start in high school garage bands, choir, musical theatre–so much experience gained before we even know their name. The music has been written, the performance rehearsed, and the artist and their team have made numerous choices about how they want to be seen and understood. From hair and makeup to clothing and styling, every detail can highlight their identity, their politics, the themes of the song, or simply the world they want to create around the music. Every choice made speaks volumes for each artist before they even sing or perform a single note.
By the time an artist takes their place in front of our mic, they’ve already made hundreds of creative decisions.
And then there are the decisions we make together. It starts with our team listening through artist after artist and song after song to find the next COLORS moment. Then come the conversations, outreach, booking, and scheduling. Our production team paints the set, prepares the stage, sets the lights, maps out call times, and prepares the cameras. Directors, sound engineers, editors, producers, and many others each bring their own craft to the process.
And once the performance is captured, the work continues through editing, social media, streaming platforms, and promotion…including, well, writing this newsletter right now.
And even beyond the SHOW, we remain connected to our wider COLORS Alumni community, celebrating their achievements and the journeys that continue to unfold. A single COLORS SHOW represents multiple lifetimes of passion and hard work, while these AI trends take a few moments and a couple of mouse clicks to produce memes for a laugh.
Aside from this trend bringing new audiences to the original “Hotel Lobby” SHOW, we hold our excitement for the continued success of Quavo and Takeoff, and their celebration of this success by recreating this trend with singer Victoria Monét as Takeoff’s stand-in, against a green screen, live, laughing, with the caption “NO AI”.
For the love of art, and the process of it all, let’s not forget the value in what's shaped by human experience and creative vision.
RIP Takeoff.
