Ben Rector looked out at the crowd of thousands gathered at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City and asked for help getting the lyrics of his next song right.
“I’m going to sing what I believe is one of your favorite hymns, but I’ve never sung it before,” he said. And then his pianist played the opening bars of the Primary song “I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus.” The crowd broke into delighted cheers and sang along to every word.
Rector was the closing act Friday, Aug. 2, at a concert hosted by the 2024 Utah Area Young Single Adult Conference. He was preceded by singers Emma Nissen and Rachel Platten. A second concert featuring the same program took place Saturday, Aug. 3. Conference organizers estimated over 10,000 people attended between both nights.
The musical acts were accompanied by electronic bracelets provided to each concert-goer, which lit up with the songs in coordinated patterns and in a variety of colors. Between sets, videos played on the large overhead screens, featuring young adults sharing their trials and testimonies.
Rector is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter known for his “passionate and melodic” piano-driven pop music, according to music resource website All Music. His albums have made Billboard charts multiple times, such as his 2015 album “Brand New” and 2018 album “Magic,” which both topped Billboard’s Americana/Folk Albums chart.
He’s also no stranger to Utah — it’s where his sisters and their husbands live with their families, he said, and where his music has always been well-received. He even performed a “place song” he wrote especially for the state. (“Brigham Young was out here traveling west and/He said, ‘This is the place/We should stop cuz it’s the best land/Next to this big, brackish lake’”)
But while Friday night’s audience visibly enjoyed Rector’s pop music, dancing and singing along, it was his performance of a Latter-day Saint favorite that helped make the night spiritually uplifting for some young single adults.
“It was so heartfelt,” said Hannah Kozak, a young single adult from California who recently moved to Lehi, Utah. “Everybody was singing along to that song. … If they didn’t know anything else, they knew that one.”
Kozak’s friend, Emily Bennett, said she loved the way Rector connected with the crowd.
She also loved Emma Nissen’s “powerful” music about having faith in the Lord, which she’s been listening to since her mission.
Bennett said large events sometimes make her feel overwhelmed, but when she put on the bracelet provided by the concert, she saw it was printed with a scriptural phrase about “being one.”
“When I put this on and I saw that, it was really comforting. … I [thought], ‘That’s the purpose of this [event].’ It’s reassuring,” Bennett said.
Kozak echoed her friend’s thoughts, and said she especially loves the lyric “There’s no one way to look like a child of God” from Emma Nissen’s song “Flesh and Bone.”
“It is a really good reminder, especially nowadays where everybody is trying to copy each other,” Kozak said. “We’re all a child of God, no matter what we do.”
Finding God in darkness
New York-based singer/songwriter Rachel Platten opened Friday’s concert with her powerful vocals, contagious energy and a dazzling smile that never dimmed. Platten is best known for her 2015 pop ballad “Fight Song,” which was a top 10 summer jam in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, according to All Music.
Between songs, she shared personal experiences about battling postpartum depression (she and her husband, Kevin Lazan, have two small daughters) and finding God through the darkness.
In particular, her recent song “Mercy” came from a deeply painful place and yet is so joyful, she said. “I felt like I was crying out for God, [asking], ‘Where are You? I don’t know where You are, I’m scared.’ … I was in my studio alone at two in the morning, and this song came rushing out of me — this glorious, joyful song, almost as an answer.”
Following Platten’s performance, Latter-day Saint singer Emma Nissen took the stage with her extraordinary jazz voice. Nissen has been steadily gaining recognition for her “Christian Jazz” style of music ever since an Instagram reel sharing a snippet of her song “Breathe” went viral in November 2023, LDS Living reported.
In December 2023, she performed with “legendary” producer Adam Blackstone at Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City, LDS Living reported, where she sang her original song, “Love Like You.”
That song — the title track of her upcoming debut album, out Aug. 28 — was among those she performed for the Utah Area Young Single Adult Conference concert on Aug. 2, garnering wild cheers from the crowd.
In between songs, Nissen shared some experiences from her time as a missionary near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She struggled understanding her purpose as a missionary at that time, she said, but the Spirit taught her to have faith, a lesson that later directly inspired her song “Gotta Have Faith.”
She also touched on the importance of being kind and loving everyone.
“It’s important to remember that we’re going to encounter a lot of people that we don’t agree with, but that doesn’t mean that we have to be mean to them, because everybody’s fighting a battle that we don’t know anything about,” she said, adding, “We’re all His children. We’re all flesh and bone.”
