The second day of Lollapalooza 2022 had headliners Dua Lipa, Machine Gun Kelly, and Bob Moses as well as unexpected cameo appearances and acts paying tribute to others. While Friday’s lineup included a variety of international performers, host city Chicago received recognition for a tribute to an artist who passed away. Other performers covered a variety of genres, including the Beatles (Taipei Houston’s Eleanor Rigby), Lily Allen (The Regrettes performed Smile), INXS (Bob Moses performed Need You Tonight), and Avril Lavigne, who also made an in-person appearance by the night’s end.

Gun Machine Kelly Accepts Pop-Punk Kingship Speakers played My Chemical Romances Welcome to the Black Parade before Machine Gun Kelly walked the stage, a dramatic reintroduction that, given his rap-to-pop-punk transition, he probably idolizes. MGK strengthened that new persona: He delivered tirades against the Internet while singing into a mannequin hand mike stand by a life-sized pink helicopter during a setlist that was jam-packed with Mainstream Sellout and Tickets to My Downfall songs (That shit tears at your self-esteem). He appeared emotional after introducing Glaive (More Than Life), Iann Dior (Fake Love Don’t Last), and Avril Lavigne (Bois Lie). It appeared to be a dream come true for him—a headline performance.

For Jasiah and Baby Tate, time is a construct.

An enthusiastic young audience that was almost as enthusiastic as the performers’ twerk-filled onstage exuberance was adorable. Fans patiently waited for Baby Tates’ set to start later than expected in the situation during her performance. The wait paid off when rapper Jasiah worked the audience from his stage across the field, providing a frenetic unintended warmup for Baby Tate that included the rock-loving rapper diving into the early gathered crowd and bits of the Killers and System of a Down songs in between his tunes. Later, Baby Tate turned the party up on stage with her equally adept rapping (Dancing Queen) and Randamp;B singing, to the delight of the crowd, who sang along to every word and even picked up an unreleased song whose hook she had given just moments earlier.

Nepotism Noise Rock at its Finest by Taipei Houston

Since Taipei Houston hadn’t released a single prior to two days ago, no one knew what to anticipate from them. The noise-rock pair of drummer Myles and singer-bassist Layne, the 23- and 21-year-old sons of Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, respectively, had a talent for theatrical showmanship like their father and had a few performances opening for Metallica under their belts as a result of nepotism. As the Sun Sets, Taipei Houston’s lone song, and a hard rock rendition of Eleanor Rigby were all played with obvious fervor.

Dry Leg
Rolling Stone’s Griffin Lotz
There is no secret handshake, Wet Leg.

The British buzz band Wet Legs made their festival debut in the United States on Friday, but Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers made it all feel so natural. Their delivery of songs like Wet Dream and I Want to Be Abducted (By a UFO), as well as their casually synced spins and volleyed post-punk melodies and vocals, felt intuitive. That’s not to say that their flirtatious, enjoyable show was devoid of spontaneity; Teasdale dedicated Ur Mum to bandmate Josh Mobaraki, who was not present, and invited the audience to join in with a funny, pealing, backwards-bent scream of his name. By the time they dropped closer Chaise Longue, everyone in the vicinity caught the bandmates’ knowing smiles as a secret shared onstage.

Continually Blackouts The illusion of multiple guitarists is created by Coastal Fever. It’s like watching an ant colony swarm a piece of fruit when you watch Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever perform. The Melbourne indie rock band paces about the stage while performing the majority of its songs, which requires the bassist and three guitarists to move quickly and erratically as though on the verge of a jam. This is a component of their appeal even ten years into their career. Deceptively nuanced songs The Way It Shatters and Cars in Space sounded as fully developed as the studio recordings due to the constant motion and escalating tempo.

Coastal Fever and Rolling Blackouts
Rolling Stone’s Sacha Lecca
The Regrettes Challenge the Audience

Indie pop bands frequently approach festival performances with the goal of attracting new listeners. However, the Regrettes desired to put them to the test. Frontwoman Lydia Night led her Los Angeles band’s large audience through a variety of interactive exercises, such as simultaneously crouching and springing up and learning the lyrics to their cover of Lily Allen’s Smile. The Regrettes’ singles California Friends, La Di Da, and Nowhere were nice enough when performed live, but Nights’ commitment to arranging live interactions transformed a routine performance into an electrifying festival show.

Back to the Future Tinashes Randamp;B Singer-actor-dancer Tinash adds best kept secret to his achievements with Bridged Nineties to Now. After spending so many years on the outskirts of a sector that just didn’t know what to do with her, she doesn’t need to be reminded. Tinashes has now finished waiting. Her type of boom-bap Nineties Randamp;B with a contemporary polish may be more suited to dark clubs, but it was more than successful with the sun acting as the spotlight. She crushed it with a group of carefully choreographed dancers behind her. Even the slow traffic was congested.

Talking About Family Values

He also invited the crowd to vibe with him as family for some more relaxing songs and made time to pay tribute to the late Chicago rapper Juice Wrld. Cordae has plenty of fan favorites in his repertoire that he dropped during his show Have Mercy, with his head-banging anthem Broke As Fuck among them. This was my true brother, he declared, explaining that his first time performing on a large stage was as the opening act for Juice Wrld. He made a vow to never perform again before paying him honors before performing Lucid Dreams for an enthusiastic audience.

Royal Princess
The Stars are in King Princess’ favor.
Friday was a particularly happy day for Mikaela Straus, nicknamed King Princess, and with good reason: not only had her second album,
Baby, hold on

, which had just been released the day before, but a sizable crowd had gathered in that area of the festival. Although Straus did indulge in crowd-pleasing tunes like Pussy is God, many of his songs dealt with more somber themes, and the audience hung on his every cathartic syllable in Cursed and, in particular, Change the Locks.

Josh’s Long Climb for Glass Animals Pays Off

Glass Animals, with their understated beats, understated pop hooks, and singer Dave Bayley’s vocals, appear to have solved the pop code, whether through alchemy or algorithm. Heat Waves allegedly broke the record for staying at No. 1 for the longest amount of time in the United States. The Oxford, England band performed live with the exuberance of prize winners, passionately offering up songs like Your Love (Dj Vu) and Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Bass Drops for Investment Banking by David Solomon

Money can’t buy everything, especially an electronic alter ego. David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, formerly produced generic club remixes under the moniker DJ D-Sol and launched his record label Payback Records in 2018. Now playing music under his actual name, Solomon provided a sea of sports jersey-clad clubgoers desiring mindless clubbing with remixes of ABBA, Walk the Moon, and Queen. He released excessive fog plumes before inviting Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic to play Counting Stars on stage. No justification existed for it either before or after. The good news is that Solomon’s presence will donate 100% of the revenues to charity.

Red-clad Girl at Lollapalooza
Red-Haired Girl Makes Her Own Way

Marie Ulven, a Norwegian singer and LGBTQ icon better known by her stage name Girl in Red, is a true DIY success story who straddles the line between cult and mainstream success. Given her grassroots ascent, it’s difficult to believe she’ll achieve even greater things on anything other than her own terms. She occasionally appeared a little intimidated by her burgeoning fame, pausing between her frank accounts of love lost and won and joked that it was all a “fake it til you make it” attitude despite the positive reception to We Fell In Love. She demonstrated in October that she is progressing well toward fame with Serotonin and Girls.

Festival Explorers Are Rewarded by Bob Moses

The Canadian synth-rock duo Jim Vallance and Tom Howie, who go by the name Bob Moses, were sacrificed to the gods of headliner counter-programming and managed to sneak in a really good concert while tucked away in one of the smaller festival corners. The band wowed the eager audience despite the sparsely populated venue with a large arena-ready sound that expertly blended Eighties pop, fashionably gloomy minor-key house music, and strategically placed guitars into an evocative confection best highlighted by the set conclusion Love Brand New.

Dua Lipa singing high Side stage to main stage The previous time Dua Lipa was here, it wasn’t like this. The field was a swarm of closely packed people who were all clamoring to see the superstar when she finally took the main stage for her headlining act. She thanked people who supported her during her ascent because her prior performances had taken place on smaller venues. She added that since March, before Roe v. Wade was overturned, she had not performed in the United States. She urged the crowd to speak up for racial justice and women’s rights. I’m here to stand up for you in any way I can, I promise. Stand up for the LGBTQ community, stand up for one another. She and her entourage, which included a band, backup singers, and dancers, got the crowd moving to Dua’s made-for-the-dancefloor hits, including Physical, New Rules, Levitating, and her collaboration with Elton John, Cold Heart. She was dressed in a sparkly tattoo-like bodysuit that seemed to change colors with the lights. Don’t Start Now was her final statement.

Dunia Lipa

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