INTERVIEW: Zach Benson: Your New Favorite Pop Star Is Playing Albany This Week
06/27 @ Empire Underground, Albany
“It’s like your emo friend from middle school came out and started listening to Charli XCX. My goal is to make the audience feel at ease, sway around a little bit, laugh, and then stream the shit out of my songs when they get home.”
If you’re someone who still believes that pop music should sparkle, scream, cry, and maybe throw a little bit of glitter at your face, Zach Benson is for you.
The Virginia-based artist arrives in Albany tomorrow, June 27, with a setlist full of heartbreak and heat, joy and camp, and a sound that feels as expansive as it is intimate. He’s touring in support of his new album, more music for you and your friends, the deluxe version of last year’s music for you and your friends, and it’s one hell of a ride, leaping from soft, acoustic storytelling in songs like “water”, to full-blown hyperpop hysteria with “iminluv” without ever losing the thread.
The production is colorful, the lyrics cut deep, and the voice behind it all is just as hard to pin down: a little chaotic, always sincere, and completely, unapologetically himself.
“A Zach Benson show is high-energy, goofy, lots of sing-along moments and sweet sentimental songs,” he told me when I asked what Albany can expect. “It’s like your emo friend from middle school came out and started listening to Charli XCX. My goal is to make the audience feel at ease, sway around a little bit, laugh, and then stream the shit out of my songs when they get home.”
It’s not a persona. It’s not a gimmick. It’s just Zach, and that raw, radiant honesty is baked into everything he does. You feel it in his lyrics, in his vocals, in his outfit choices, in the occasional scream buried under a glittery synth line. It’s intentional and messy and beautiful, all at once.
He didn’t grow up surrounded by pop music, at least not in the industry sense. “There’s not a ton of pop music in Richmond,” he said. “A lot of my closest friends make folk music, or alternative rock, or hip-hop. Collaborating with those friends, or even just going to their shows, has pushed me to experiment a little more in my songwriting. Five years ago, I wouldn’t have wanted to have heavy guitars or screams or super vulnerable lyrics on one of my tracks, and now I’m like… why not?”
He talks like he writes: conversational, self-aware, a little bit cheeky but completely earnest when it counts. He chases a feeling, not a formula.
“Sometimes I’ll start with the story,” he explained. “Songs like “over & over (& over)” and “sweet savannah” came out of wanting to communicate a specific narrative, and then the song formed around the lyrics. Other times I get obsessed with a specific vibe, so I’ll try to emulate that in a song.”
Right now, that vibe is leaning retro, dreamy, and synthy. “I’ve been listening to a lot of Sade, Janet Jackson, and Tears For Fears recently, so I’ve been trying to find synth patches and samples that give me that same feeling and write a song around that,” he said. But no matter where the production goes, the emotion never gets lost. There’s always a pulse underneath, something tender.
“As an openly queer artist,” I asked, “Do you find that identity affects how you approach performing or connecting with people, or is that just one thread in a bigger story?”
“It’s a part of my life that makes its way into the songs and stage performance, for sure,” he said. “Music has always been therapeutic for me, in that I feel like I can say whatever I need to say when I’m writing, and that suddenly makes me feel comfortable to talk about it in my real life. I’m always going to be writing about my own experiences or things that are interesting to me, and that means writing about my relationships, the way I see myself, the way others might see me. All I can really do is be honest.”
That honesty takes on extra weight during Pride Month, especially in a city like Albany, where the queer community shows up hard and parties even harder. “Pride is community!” he told me. “Pride is showing up and being present and making others feel seen and accepted, and celebrated. It’s donating your time and money and energy to uplift the most vulnerable members of our community, it’s speaking up during times of injustice, it’s making sure that voices are being heard.”
Zach isn’t someone who separates the personal from the professional. There’s no performance mask. No curated cool. What you see is what you get, which is rare in an industry full of PR polish. And what you get, frankly, is fucking electric.
“I’m excited to play these songs for a new audience,” he said. “I’ve never been to Albany, so this will be the first time 99% of people there will hear my music. I’ve played with Sub-Radio before and been a fan of them forever, so I know our audiences have some overlap. I really hope by the end of the set, we’ll have everybody dancing and smiling.”
Toward the end of our chat, I couldn’t help myself, I asked him what he’s listening to, who’s in his personal pop universe. His current rotation includes Charli XCX (obviously), MUNA, Sade, Troye, Lorde, “any synthpop / new wave act from the late 80s, emo bands from the 2000s, and Hannah Montana.”
Honestly, it tracks. He’s a little bit of all of them: raw and glamorous, a genre shapeshifter, unafraid to cry on the dancefloor or scream into a synth line. Nostalgia and orange neon, heartbreak and high camp. He’s the real deal, but he’s also fun as hell. And if there’s any justice in the world, he won’t be playing small venues much longer.
You can catch Zach Benson live in Albany on Friday, June 27 at Empire Underground, opening for Sub-Radio. Doors at 7:00 PM, show at 8:00 PM. Bring your friends, bring your feelings, and get ready to dance the night away.
Tickets are available HERE.