Before I begin, I want to give a really big thank you to Sydney Wade and the whole University of Kentucky Student Activity Board for this amazing opportunity of having one of their Media Passes.
On Saturday, November 16th, Quinn XCII's voiced controlled the room, and I had the opportunity to be on the floor of Memorial Colosseum with a Student Activity Board Media Pass allowing me to take photos and be able to cover the Quinn XCII concert from less than two feet away from his face.
Being from West Michigan, I was mesmerized when I heard that Mikael Temrowski, better known as Quinn XCII (92), would be coming to perform here in Lexington, Kentucky, for the students of the University of Kentucky.
Quinn XCII performed songs from his second, but first well-known, popular and recognized, EP in 2015, Change in Scenery, all the way through his most recent 2019 album, From Michigan With Love.
Songs such as "Another Day In Paradise," "Stacy," "Fake Denim," "FFYL," "Flare Guns" and of course many, many more were played for this collegiate show, and his voice was met by nothing less than the high energy and overly excited screams of a couple of hundred college kids who knew every single lyric he had sang.
I have been to many concerts in my twenty years, but Mikael Temrowski really took it to a whole other level for me. He was engaging with the audience and even followed their advice to go to Two Keys later that night, for those of you that threw him up on your Insta I'm happy for you but very jealous that wasn't me. He was real with the audience as well, he wasn't singing some radio edit clean-cut version. He showed his true expression of how he felt when he sang those songs that night.
Quinn XCII started from SoundCloud in Michigan to now being one of the top artists out there that can command a room with his lyrics and passion for music. If there were ever an inspirational artist of never letting your dreams go, Mikael Temrowski would be that artist, I mean come on, his name literally means, Quit Unless your Instincts are Never Neglected, how can you not be inspired from that?