Singalongs, sardines, and synergy.
Pulling up to Centennial Park on a grey, dreary day felt more like shuffling into a Sunday morning service at the local church than the usual anticipatory festival experience.
Yet, the entire day felt like it was tilting, pulling every stray fan and curious wanderer toward one magnetic point: Chappell Roan.
From the VIP crows nest, it was a genuinely jaw-dropping sight. One solid, shimmering mass of humanity that made the park look small.
The grounds, from the stage stretched all the way to the trees and beyond, became a sardine-tin bursting with fans donned with cowgirl hats and sparkled eyeshadow all singing along.
Chappell retired her ‘Hot To Go’ pedagogy, and for good right. Nobody here needed to be taught how to sing along, this gelatinous mass of swaying singers (and their less-interested boyfriends) was born for this moment.
The festival grounds rumbled with 20,000 voices roaring “H-O-T-T-O-G-O” like a single, ecstatic and coordinated organism. Almost as if it was pre-choreographed.
But you know what they say: it’s the journey not the destination.
The true magic was in how we got to this incredible climax.
An hour earlier, in the sweatbox of a tent, Yung Lean and Bladee weaved their cloudy wizardry.
The power struck the moment the two stepped on stage for Bladee’s ‘I DON’T LIKE PEOPLE’.
Strobes cut through the shadows like swords on the battlefield, while tracks like Yung Lean’s ‘Afghanistan’ rumbled the stage.
It was an absolute experience, and as someone who had seen Yung Lean before, seeing him and Bladee perform together was a bucket list moment from age 16 that lived up to its hype.
View this post on Instagram
And then there was Geese. Oh, Geese.
You’re probably tired of all the Geese discourse from late, but that crowd clearly can not get enough.
It can only be described as a glorious, chaotic sermon where the mosh pit operated with its own wild civility, a place where you could be slammed into the dirt one second and plucked gently back up by a smiling stranger the next, all while shouting every word.
Playing on a small stage, they drew a massive crowd with an unmatched mosh pit. If you didn’t get thrown around to ‘Trinidad,’ you missed out on something truly special.
Laneway has done it again, and it’s exciting to see what the next instalment has in store for us.
