post malone concert review

Post Malone's road show lifts up RodeoHouston with heart and soul

On Tuesday night Post Malone brought his ongoing F-1 Trillion road show to the largest rodeo in Texas, mere months after headlining the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion for two nights in October.

Posty is so incredibly popular right now could have opened and closed RodeoHouston in 2025 and he could have sold out both shows. The streets around NRG Stadium turned feral just before sundown as the parking lots reached capacity. This was easily the hottest ticket of the season.

The whole world seems to have gone country — yet again — and the 29-year-old Post Malone followed suit this past year, debuting a new Hank Jr. Jr. persona to curious audiences with his latest album F-1 Trillion. When the Texas-bred rapper started showing out in Wrangler jeans, turkey feathers, turquoise jewelry, pearl snap shirts, and five-figure cowboy boots, some outlaw gatekeepers and traditional hardliners dismissed him as a scene poser. It’s a familiar story, one that Beyonce experienced herself with the Cowboy Carter project, her own inventive take on the fluid country genre.

[By the way, the last time Malone was at NRG Stadium he was performing with Beyonce during the halftime show of the Houston Texans ritualistic Christmas Day sacrifice to the Baltimore Ravens. While he was in town, he made sure a lucky bartender had a wonderful Christmas. But I digress.]

Malone’s collection of expertly crafted pop-country featuring voices as diverse as Billy Strings, Sierra Ferrell, and Blake Shelton had no business being so satisfying. While other acts are aping the spirit of ‘90s hat acts, Malone seems to be blazing a trail of his own, digging into the earnest hooks of early ‘00s pop-country he grew up on and fusing it with his own innate talent for juicy hooks and tobacco-stained wordplay.

“Wrong Ones” kicked off the proceedings on Tuesday night with Malone taking a long walk from the corner of the stadium to the starred stage. A country-fried version of the buoyant “Circles” followed, with a barefoot Posty stalking the stage dressed like a RodeoHouston volunteer that just got home from a long shift doing parking lot traffic control.

“I’m doing my best not to cuss tonight, ladies and gentlemen,” joked Malone, obviously looking to make a return down the line. Soon enough, he broke his own rule and let a few tender and complimentary expletives escape through his microphone. Judging by the size of the crowd, RodeoHouston might have looked the other way.

Malone spent “Pour Me A Drink” walking the stage crooning with his trademark red Solo cup in hand. 2018’s breakthrough single “Psycho” came reimagined as a soaring anthem, and “White Iverson” began with a few tasteful honky tonk piano licks. It’s impressive how well some of Malone’s earliest singles lend themselves to a pop-country sheen. Even his updated take on “Better Now” sounded like it came straight from Nashville’s Music Row. “Never Love You Again” — sans Sierra Ferrell — was lifted by some fiddle from his virtuosic band member Lillie Mae. Her fiddle remained a constant, steady counter to Malone all night.

It wouldn’t be a RodeoHouston show without another George Strait cover, and Malone delivered his own faithful take on “Ocean Front Property,” to the approving screams of thousands. With the amount of Strait covers this year, it wouldn’t be a surprise if this is some sort of sneaky, conspicuous way of teasing the return of King George to NRG Stadium in 2026.

“Congratulations” was the biggest jolt of the night, full of manic pyro and crying guitar. It was a victory lap, a proof of concept. Sporting his brand-new RodeoHouston belt buckle, Malone utilized every inch of the stage to deliver the most bombastic, uplifting show of 2025.

Setlist

Wrong Ones
Circles
What Don’t Belong To Me
Pour Me A Drink
Psycho
White Iverson
Never Love You Again
Ocean Front Property (George Strait cover)
Better Now
I Had Some Help
Rockstar
Congratulations
Sunflower

Courtesy of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo

Post Malone put a country spin on some of his fan favorite songs.

concert review post malone rodeo houston

Movie Review

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 doesn't match the first movie's enthusiasm

Blumhouse

Five Nights at Freddy's 2.

Blumhouse Productions first made their name with the Paranormal Activity series, establishing themselves as a leader in the horror genre thanks to their relatively cheap yet effective movies. In recent years, they’ve added on “soft” horror films like M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s to draw in a younger audience, with both films becoming so successful that each was quickly given a sequel.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his sister Abby (Piper Rubio) still recovering from the events of the first film, with Abby particularly missing her “friends.” Those friends just so happen to be the souls of murdered children who inhabit animatronic characters at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, children who were abducted and killed by William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

A new threat emerges at another Freddy Fazbear’s location in the form of Charlotte, another murdered child who inhabits a creepy large marionette. Mike, distracted by a possible romance with Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), fails to keep track of Abby, who makes her way to the old pizzeria and inadvertently unleashes Charlotte and her minions on the surrounding town.

Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon (who also created the video game on which the series is based), the film tries to mix together goofy elements with intense scenes. One particular sequence, in which the security guard for Freddy Fazbear’s lets a group of ghost hunters onto the property, toes the line between soft and hard horror. That and a few others show the potential that the filmmakers had if they had stuck to their guns.

Unfortunately, more often than not they either soft-pedal things that would normally be horrific, or can’t figure out how to properly stage scenes. The sight of animatronic robots wreaking havoc is one that is simultaneously frightening and laughable, and the filmmakers never seem to find the right balance in tone. Every step in the direction of making a truly scary horror film is undercut by another in which the robots fail to live up to their promise.

It doesn’t help that Cawthon gives the cast some extremely wooden dialogue, lines that none of the actors can elevate. What may work in a video game format comes off as stilted when said by actors in a live-action film. The story also loses momentum quickly after the first half hour or so, with Cawthon seemingly content to just have characters move from place to place with no sense of connection between any of the scenes.

Hutcherson (The Hunger Games series), after being the true lead of the first film, is given very little to do in this film, and his effort is equal to his character’s arc. The same goes for Lail, whose character seems to be shoehorned into the story. Rubio is called upon to carry the load for a lot of the movie, and the teenager is not quite up to the task. A brief appearance by Skeet Ulrich seems to be a blatant appeal to Scream fans, but he and Lillard only underscore how limited this film is compared to that franchise.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is better than the first film, but not by much. The filmmakers do a decent job of making the new marionette character into a great villain, but they fail to capitalize on its inherent creepiness. Instead, they fall back on less effective elements, ensuring that the film will be forgettable for anyone other than hardcore Freddy fans.

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Five Nights at Freddy's 2 opens in theaters on December 5.

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