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Boston Calling 2025: Luke Combs triumphs over rain, delays with headline set
Country star Luke Combs reminded Boston Calling 2025 fans that "When It Rains It Pours."
According to Setlist.fm, Luke Combs’ most-played song across all of his catalogued concerts is “When It Rains It Pours.”
Combs didn’t wait long in his set at Boston Calling 2025 to treat his rain-soaked fans to the 2017 tune, punctuating the chorus with a hearty “It really does!”
The North Carolina songwriter wasn’t telling no lies: Despite a forecast that called for scattered showers on Friday, it rained lightly but steadily for six straight hours at Day 1 of the music festival, sending denim-clad country fans to the shelter of various branded activations throughout the day.
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The mood for Combs’ show was additionally dampened by a 20-minute delay at the start of the set. Festival organizers blasted Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” to keep the crowd engaged, but you could feel the unease in the air.
When Combs finally hit the stage a little after 9:15 p.m., he led off with a song that described a sizable portion of the audience (“1, 2 Many”) followed quickly by a pair of tracks that described 100 percent of the crowd (“When It Rains It Pours,” “Cold As You”).
Like a lot of country stars, Combs’ oeuvre oscillates between uptempo party anthems and heartfelt ballads, and the singer calibrated his stage presence accordingly for each. One moment Combs would shotgun a Miller Lite, the next he would take more than two minutes to earnestly describe his journey to music stardom (before “Doin’ This”) or starting a family (before “Houston, We Got A Problem”).
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Combs feels like an artist in transition: He’s foregoing a full nationwide tour this year, playing only select festivals so that he can spend more time raising his two young children. He didn’t play any tracks from his 2024 album “Fathers & Sons,” which feature heartfelt ballads about his family. And despite ripping through odes to beers, blondes, and parties that never end, at one point he ruefully told the crowd he was 35 years old, shaking his head as if to indicate he was ready for a new chapter.
Despite the delays, Combs had the crowd captivated from moment one. Country fans parked themselves at the Green Stage all day long, with four straight country (or country-adjacent) acts in Max McNown, Sheryl Crow, Megan Moroney, and Combs keeping them entertained.
Combs saved some of the best moments of the show for the very end. First, he brought out Moroney (clad in a Red Sox jersey) for “Beer Never Broke My Heart.”
It was a full-circle moment for Moroney, who had a brief cameo as an extra in the music video for the 2019 hit.
Then came the song that put Combs on the radar of non-country fans, his cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” Finally, Combs gave the crowd one last burst of energy with “Ain’t No Love in Oklahoma,” the chugging, churning hit from the soundtrack of 2024’s “Twisters.”
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While the elements may not have been perfect, Combs still delivered exactly what fans wanted, capping off a country-fried Day 1 at Boston Calling 2025.
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