• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Nov 25, 2025 By Mark Redfern Photography by Wendy Lynch Redfern Web Exclusive

There’s a hidden music scene you may not be aware of. One that’s not covered by Under the Radar, Pitchfork, Stereogum, or the mainstream media. Artists that first found fame on another platform besides Spotify, Bandcamp, or Apple Music. If you’re not a kid, a parent, or a gamer you may not have been exposed to these artists, but for a certain segment of the population they are just as known as Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter and their songs speak more directly to them. Songs not so much about the singer’s latest crush, but ones inspired by horrific stories and fantastical worlds. Songs born out of video games and children’s cartoons. Music that appeals to middle schoolers, but also those in elementary and high school. And even some adults, mainly parents, like it.

I have been ushered into this secret scene by my 12-year-old daughter Rose. Recently we went to see The Living Tombstone, a band who sing songs about My Little Pony and Five Nights at Freddy’s and dress in elaborate light-up costumes (think Gwar meets TRON) when they perform. It was at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. and it was a true spectacle. There were a lot of kids and parents there, but a healthy amount of 20-somethings too. Read my review of it here.

On a recent November evening, Rose, my wife Wendy, and I ventured to Richmond, VA, a two-hour drive from home, to see CG5, a musician who has collaborated with The Living Tombstone. Like that band, CG5 (real name Charles “Charlie” Duncan Green V) started out as a YouTuber. He began uploading his music to YouTube at age 13, officially creating the CG5 channel in 2014. He currently has 9.15 million subscribers and has posted 693 videos. I was aware of some of his music before the concert, especially “GRIMACE,” a song about the big purple McDonalds character that currently has 52 million YouTube views. It was something I unfavorably associated with Brainrot music, but I went into the concert with an open mind.

CG5 has released so much music over the years that he’s currently on the Too Many Songs Tour, in which he plays 52 songs at each show, although each song is edited down so that it’s not a four-hour concert. The first thing that differentiates a CG5 concert from most shows I’ve been to is the different levels of entry. You can purchase a regular ticket or you can pay more for VIP or Super VIP entry. Both the VIP options include a meet and greet and photo opp with CG5, a limited edition signed poster, limited edition merch, a tour laminate, a prize raffle, a Q&A with CG5, and a special preshow acoustic performance. Then the Super VIPs also get to have “a casual hang” with CG5, are treated to a video of a new song not yet released, and have access to exclusive merch. At the show at the Richmond Music Hall (which has a capacity of 300), it seemed as though more than half the sold-out audience took part in one of the VIP tiers. Parents don’t have to pay extra for VIP or Super VIP as long as their kids have the more expensive tickets.

CG5’s father, Chuck Green, is part of the act. He’s part hypeman, part game show host. He gave the VIP audiences the lay of the land, warning that his son won’t talk all that much between songs to rest his voice and despite the 52-song set list, he promised, “Parents, before you poop your pants, it’s only an hour and a half.”

The Super VIPs watched an unreleased lyric video for the song “1 of Us,” a track connected to the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 movie. Then a young girl named Ava was picked to be involved in an onstage bit with CG5 during the show’s encore later, a bit they rehearsed. After the regular VIPs were let in, during the acoustic set CG5 performed “Locked Away” and “Vibrant Eyes,” doing the full version of the latter as opposed to the cut down version he said he’d be performing during the main set. He did the songs solo on acoustic guitar in his more regular street clothes (with a nicer stage outfit saved for the main set). Then he gave away a CG5 Funko Pop toy, which he signed, and did a Q&A with the audience, rapid fire style, in five minutes. Some of what we learned from the Q&A: he said that Star Wars was “freakin’ epic,” his favorite color was pink (“it’s the manliest color alive”), “I See a Dreamer” was his favorite song to write, he predicted that the new Michael Jackson biopic movie was “going to be amazing” and he was so happy Jackson’s nephew was playing the ’80s icon, Foxy is his favorite Five Nights at Freddy’s character and Sister Location is his favorite FNAF game, but he admitted “I suck at video games.” He also said that his family inspired him to make music, especially their love of ’80s music. “That’s it for me until it’s time for me to sing my freakin’ voice out,” he said as the VIP portions ended.

Once CG5 had changed into his stage clothes, Wendy did a photo shoot with him backstage and Rose got to meet him. We also met his dad. CG5’s tour manager, William Bradford, was a family friend and was incredibly welcoming and helpful and even gave Rose a complimentary CG5 hoodie that she’s worn almost every day since the concert.

Lots of ’80s music played before the main concert and the audience chanted “CG5” repeatedly. Then a video appeared on the screen featuring a man in a suit, behind a desk (a fellow YouTuber named Daniel Thrasher), who amped up the audience. Chuck Green then came on stage, dressed like an ’80s game show host. “Tonight’s show is a spectacular spectacle of songs. 50 songs in fact. That’s way too many songs,” he said. Then he introduced another video, this one a fake ad for a fake sponsor. “Don’t bother to look them up when you get home, they are all real companies,” Green joked. Then we were shown an amusing ad for “CG5 extraordinary glasses,” giant glasses that do extraordinary things, including allowing the wearer to fly, have heat vision (a boy melted his mother), and turn invisible, with CG5 showing up at the end of the video.

Then CG5 took the stage to deafening screams, as if we were at a Beatles show. He performed without any backing band or instruments. Instead he simply sang to a backing track. With so many songs to get through, that made sense. The screen behind him had a counter, indicating how many songs he had performed, from 1 to 52. “Let’s get this one over with,” he said before singing “GRIMACE,” song #6, indicating that maybe he’d moved on from one of his biggest hits.

When we saw The Living Tombstone, the show wasn’t wholly family friendly—one song is about getting drunk and the between-song banter definitely featured some f-bombs—but CG5’s show was reliably PG-rated. One song is even about the classic joke “why did the chicken cross the road.” Sure, some songs are inspired by Five Nights at Freddy’s, a PG-13 horror franchise, and one of the FNAF-themed videos had a mild jump scare, but that was about it.

Midway through, at song 24, the dad came back on stage to present a video of CG5 in seventh grade (the same grade Rose is in now) performing a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” at a school event. Then CG5 performed the song for us live, with childhood videos and photos of him appearing on the screen behind him, including a video of him excitedly reacting to getting 100 YouTube subscribers, followed by other videos of him hitting higher subscriber milestones. You can imagine some of the kids in the audience being inspired by CG5 to start their own YouTube channels after the show (some probably already had channels).

The second half of the set included a cover of The Living Tombstone’s “I Got No Time,” as well as covers of songs from popular 2025 movies (“Your Idol” from KPop Demon Hunters and “Steve’s Lava Chicken” from A Minecraft Movie), mixed in with lots of CG5 originals. By the time he got past song 40 the pace seemed to pick up. At one point I witnessed a dad do a video chat on his phone with his parents so that they could witness what the CG5 concert was like, to get a glimpse into what their grandkids were up to.

And then we got to song 50. As rehearsed earlier, Ava came on stage for a bit to help them unlock bonus songs for the encore and CG5 performed “I See a Dreamer,” which is a song about the Minecraft YouTuber named Dream, and “Sleep Well,” a song inspired by the video game Poppy Playtime, and a fitting set closer.

Various stray thoughts ran through my head as CG5 left the stage. Would Rose still like this music when she’s an adult? Many of the artists I listened to in elementary and middle school (Madonna, Hall & Oates, Huey Lewis and the News, Eurythmics, and Genesis) I still have a fondness for, others (Richard Marx, Debbie Gibson, Samantha Fox) don’t hold up so well. Rose has varied tastes that also extend to Magdalena Bay, Alex G, Badly Drawn Boy, TV Girl, Weezer, Laufey, and even the occasional Radiohead song. CG5 is currently 26 years old, but how much longer will he want to keep performing to such a young audience? Will his audience grow up with him if he branches out into writing songs about more adult topics? In 10 years will he be performing with a full band and singing about relationships or belting out protest songs? Who knows? But for now he’s an icon to a very specific audience and that’s working very well for him. It was a bit exhausting sitting through 52 songs, but there’s no question that his young fans got their money’s worth. As a 40-something man who has devoted much of his adult life to writing about indie rock music, I don’t have to fully get CG5’s music to appreciate it, or to at the very least appreciate that it means the world to my daughter that we went to the Richmond Music Hall that night and allowed her to be right up front, singing and dancing along to some of her favorite songs while her parents hung back.

At the show Rose and I interviewed a 14-year-old fan named Emma Nicole Tolson, who had already seen CG5 in February and also had tickets to see him again at the next tour stop, at the 9:30 Club in D.C. She had Super VIP tickets for all the CG5 shows she had attended and also liked The Living Tombstone. When asked what most appealed to her about CG5, she said she liked his family oriented approach and that he was super kind to fans, adding: “He’s the definition of ‘we made the right person famous’ and I can stand by that.”

www.cg5music.com

Subscribe to Under the Radar’s print magazine.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.