Leon Thomas Is Proof "Mellow Music" Can Still Rock At Lollapalooza
The Grammy winner teases his next chapter after a packed festival set.
Leon Thomas is very focused on live music right now — so much so that he crafted his latest EP Pholks to be a showcase for his performance skills. “Selfishly, I wanted to make a record that I could have a fun time performing live, so a lot of these songs were built for the stage,” Thomas says, the morning after he belted out the R&B bangers in front of a mud-covered Lollapalooza crowd. While a festival show is the perfect arena for the newly minted Grammy winner to share his atmospheric melodies, his admittedly “mellow” vibes are a stark contrast to the frenetic high-energy of headliners like Charli XCX or Tate McRae. But that doesn’t shake him.
“It’s just presence, you know? There’s nothing wrong with mellow music,” Thomas says in a small Q&A put together by Lollapalooza sponsor T-Mobile. “Sometimes I think we get lost in the aspect of, like, ‘Everybody needs to be jumping around going crazy!’ But I do my best not to overthink the tempo. It’s more about getting the story across.”
I’m going to keep having fun up there, regardless of the tempo.
While he may have worried about speeding things up in the past, Thomas has come to love the unique vibe he brings to live performance. “Once I washed away all of those thoughts and decided to make my show my own personal party, every show has been a blast,” Thomas says. “So I’m going to keep having fun up there, regardless of the tempo.”
Pacing is something that’s been on Thomas’ mind a lot recently, as he prepares to enter a new era following his greatest solo success yet. His 2024 album Mutt won Best R&B Album at the 2026 Grammys, with its inescapable title track scoring Thomas his first chart-topping hit. He confirms he’s currently working on his new album, and it’s been a different experience now that the industry is looking at him more expectantly.
“It’s been amazing to have all this momentum around my music, so me and everyone around me are all leaned in and super focused,” Thomas says. “We’re having fun, though. That’s the best part about it. There’s a lot of love going into this project. The music is going to be very special.”
He teases that the “live R&B aesthetic” of Pholks is a good indicator of what this new work will sound like. “That’s a huge part of what I’m pushing,” Thomas says. “I want kids to see me on stage with a guitar, playing drums, and ask for lessons. A lot of schools are cutting music classes, and I really want the next generation to be musically intelligent, too.”
At Lollapalooza, Thomas highlighted his instrumental skills by switching back and forth between an electric guitar and a drum set. He credits his experience touring with Bruno Mars this spring for informing his stage presence at larger shows.
“I studied [Mars’] shows. I would do my 30-minute set, then I’d shower up and sit by the engineer and just watch and take notes,” Thomas says. “Bruno is so meticulous — I’ve watched him in sound checks go over one song 20 times to make sure a tiny detail is right, and that attention to detail turns into performances that are so memorable. I learned a lot performing for crowds that big, too; you have to have a lot of broad movements.”
The 33-year-old (who celebrated his birthday while at Lolla) is bringing all of these lessons into his upcoming album. “I feel like a mad scientist in the studio. I’m always trying to find new ways to blend genres,” Thomas says. “As I move forward, I think my biggest thing is just to keep my narrative fresh. Storytelling is a big part of songwriting, and I’ve been doing everything I can to tell new stories.”
