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Upon becoming Boston College’s vice president of student affairs, Shawna Cooper Whitehead announced the Mile 21 Concert, a way for students to have fun and for administrators to curb off-campus drinking.

With Cooper Whitehead now leaving BC to be the next president of Regis University, it is safe to say her legacy will be tainted by this lackluster choice for the Marathon Monday performance.

For context, MarMon concerts of years past have featured high-profile artists, from Saweetie to T-Pain. In contrast, the announcement of Two Friends’ performance prompted more questions than excitement. How did we go from a Jason Derulo concert in 2022 to one from an artist with just 1.5 million monthly listeners? 

For reference, Derulo has 30.7 million monthly listeners, and five-time Grammy nominee Flo Rida (2023) has 42.2 million. 

Unlike past MarMon artists, Two Friends is not known for their original songs, but rather for their “Big Bootie Mixes,” hour-long mashups that gained popularity on SoundCloud. If you’re as unfamiliar with these as we were, we encourage you to up their streams (God knows they need them).

Look, if we wanted to see two guys stand around and hit play on songs they didn’t even make, we’d go to a Walsh 8-man on any given Friday.

At least that would be free.

This is the first year BC is charging students for access to the MarMon stage. In 2023, students paid nothing to see Flo Rida, who had previously performed for 65,000 people at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium. Now, students are being asked to pay to see DJs whose upcoming Florida tour stops are in venues with capacities of around 1,000.

We know $5 isn’t much, but why should we have to start paying for an artist that essentially has two fans? To add insult to injury, other universities’ headliners truly underscore how underwhelming this pick is. 

Headlining Northeastern’s Springfest Concert is none other than Malcolm Todd, an indie artist with 17 million monthly listeners. The comparison is giving us “Chest Pain.” 

To rub salt in the wound, Tufts somehow managed to get pop sensation Zara Larsson to headline their Spring Fling. The North American leg of the Swedish singer’s Midnight Sun tour sold out last month, and her most popular songs have well over 2 billion streams. 

Another thing BC didn’t seem to consider is how this will affect the off-campus party scene. In past years, students have paused early-morning parties on Foster Street to migrate to campus in time for the MarMon concert.

With this wildly unremarkable artist performing, BC should not be surprised when off-campus houses get trashed, and the administration has to deal with angrier neighbors and drunker students come nightfall.

We’d like to think Two Friends was not Cooper Whitehead’s first choice. T-Pain was announced to be the MarMon artist on March 15, and Saweetie on March 19. Two Friends’ relatively late announcement on March 23 leads us to speculate that they may not have been the first choice for MarMon, potentially replacing a bigger artist who canceled at the last minute.

Those might just be our deluded hopes, but if that’s the case, transparency would make us more understanding of this subpar pick.

One thing’s for certain: These are not our friends.