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- September 28, 2021
The third and final day of the Governors Ball festival had a calmer energy in the crowd. With a few “turn-up” artists, it felt like today was an appreciation day for Governors Ball attendees for its 10th Anniversary.
Opening up with Mazie, she’s a statement of what the next generation is sounding like. Her performance is even happier and joyful on stage than how her music sonically sounds as she wanted to talk to the audience but had a song start but laughed and rolled with it playing the songs off her EP The Rainbow Cassette. A joy to be heard when around people who also connect to her usually dark lyrics, makes those dark lyrics sound more tongue in cheek when she sings ” I don’t have no… friends” to a crowd singing back to her those lyrics around their friends for the moment of the performance. She also played a few unreleased songs that take her sounds and jettisons it to 100 making everyone excited for her next single and project.
Princess Nokia was as strange and alluring as her music is on stage as she dances with back up dancers who through “Sugar Honey Iced Tea”, “Boys Are From Mars” ft. Yung Baby Tate, and “Slumber Party” was dancing what was essentially an indigenous Taino inspired dance as homage to her Puerto Rican culture. while getting the crowd laughing between songs about her wardrobe having issues as she rapped trying to take off a pair of jeans shows the focus and comfortable state she was in being in her home town of NYC. Really rolling with the problem she decided to moon the entire crowd to laughs and shock, after her enticing performance of “Tomboy”.
UMI was less of a concert as it was a guided meditation and affirmation exercise with lovely music put to it. Performing “Remember me”, “Love affair”, “Introspection” each asking for the crowd to set intentions when listening, future goals, solutions to problems, and especially being present in the moment with her. It wasn’t all sunshine and daisies, she also asked the crowd to get angry, release a primal scream and start a mosh pit in the sweetest voice before performing her track “Mad”. It was an incredible display of the cleansing power of music. At one point she surprised most of the crowd moving in to fluent Japanese for one of her songs before teaching us a bit of Japanese herself for us to know.
Duck sauce had “A-track” from “Brothers Macklovitch”, with Armand van Helden keeping that House music going to an even bigger crowd and a strange amount of people farther away quietly vibing to the energy they were putting out. Oh, did I mention the 20 ft inflatable duck they had behind them, while the screen played clips of older celebritiies like Bruce Willis from the Die Hard series? That sums Duck Sauce up pretty well.
After a slight delay, 21 savage came out harder than anyone that day, only playing for about 30 minutes but he got the crowd in to his mindset very quickly with “Running”, “10 freaky girls”, and “Mr. Right Now”, getting in to moshes, and rapping along to every lyric, even playing tracks of his new EP “Spiral” that was based on the horror movie “The Book Of Saw”.
Also after a slight delay, between Ellie Goulding playing hit after hit “Anything Can Happen”, ” Hate Me” ” How Deep is too Deep” and “Powerful, you would be shocked at how many Ellie Goulding songs you know pretty intimately. She was having so much fun up there with her voice hitting every note and re-interpreting melodies that harmonized well with each song.
To close out the festival, Post Malone, with his infectiously warm aura, played the hits, and the people were giving that same energy back to him. That night everyone left with a warm feeling in their bodies, like everything just might be OK. Governors Ball 2021, the first since the pandemic was a complete success,
I hope you read something that piqued your interest, Governors Ball has an innate talent for picking artists and putting together a set and environment for expanding your musical tastes.
You can have a peep from our Governors ball playlist below.
Be sure to follow @maxedoutcharacterreviews for some highlights.
