Janet Jackson takes control of Outside Lands’ new focus.
Emphasis shifts from indie rock to female artists, hip-hop acts
This year, the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival truly belonged to the outsiders.
In its 11th year, the festival returned to the western end of Golden Gate Park — filling the stretch from Marx Meadow to the Polo Field with more than 200,000 people Friday-Sunday, Aug. 10-12 — with a new pecking order.
Women, artists of color and LGBTQ-friendly performers rose in the ranks, drawing the biggest crowds over the weekend — while the indie rock acts that established the festival in its first decade seemed to serve more as curiosities, offering parents and grizzled festival veterans something to hang onto in a rapidly changing environment.
Going into Outside Lands, there was a lot of noise
the festival’s first femalefronted headlining acts on the main Lands End stage — Florence + the Machine, who performed a triumphant, highly emotional set Saturday, and Janet Jackson, who closed out the concert Sunday with a performance loaded with fan favorites and political jabs.
“A lot of hits, huh?” said the 52-year-old pop star, a humble brag during her more than hour-long set.
But the shift worked from the top down. With a demographic that seems to get younger and more restless year after year, holding anyone’s attention required a good dose of glamour and histrionics.
Janelle Monáe powered through a bout of food poisoning to put in an electrifying performance on the final day. For a few tense moments before her 4:40 p.m. set time on Sunday, rumors circulated that Monáe wouldn’t perform at all. But the singer came out with all cylinders firing, singing and dancing through dynamic renditions of her hits such as “Electric Lady” and “I Like That,” throwing in a brief nod to her idol Michael Jackson — the late brother, of course, to Sunday’s headliner.
On the festival’s second day, the body-positive feminist pop and hip-hop singer Lizzo delivered on all fronts. Wearing a yellow bodysuit with all the frills, Lizzo was flanked by a pair of backup dancers and offered a chaotic tutorial in twerking, giving the underdressed and over-served masses at the main stage a new arsenal of moves.
“You all know how to do that, because you’re nasty!” she said.
Later in the day, the Scottish pop band Chvrches, led by Lauren Mayberry, didn’t need to offer any instruction to get the audience bopping along en masse to its walloping synthesizer melodies.
On Friday, it was Perfume Genius that kept the kids rapt. The stage alias of the 36-yearold Seattle singer-songwriter Mike Hadreas turned tales of battling homophobia and family dysfunction into breathtaking electro-pop meditations that offered a cooling relief from the unexpected weekend heat wave.
On the same day, “Call Me Maybe” singer Carly Rae Jepsen created the festival’s big moment on the Twin Peaks stage in Hellman Hollow by bringing out pride icon and Lady Gaga’s former dancer Mark Kanemura to join her for a rousing performance of “Cut to the Feeling.” As Jepsen sang her heart out, the topless dancer tore through a succession of rainbow colored wigs and sprinkled the crowd with glitter.
That exuberant spirit was everywhere.
The young Vallejo rap duo SOB x RBE yelped and got the huge crowd at Twin Peaks joining in on their spitfire verses on Saturday; the Latin tuxedo-clad Los Angeles group Chicano Batman conjured up a sensual, gently soulful set on the Sutro Stage; and with his girlfriend, model Bella Hadid, watching from the crowd, the Weeknd wooed festivalgoers with his brooding R&B hits like “Can’t Feel My Face” and “I Feel It Coming” as the mainabout stage headliner on Friday — a spot usually reserved for the tried-and-true alt-rock acts like Radiohead and the Black Keys.
Traditional indie acts like Mac DeMarco and Father John Misty still had a place at the festival, but stacked against the utopian pop and left-field acts elsewhere, their sets felt a little, well, dull. Watching Bon Iver, the Grammy-winning outfit fronted by Justin Vernon, who last played the festival in 2008, particularly felt like a slog. Shiftless and droning, his main stage set Saturday afternoon mainly served as an excuse to recover from the whirlwind of activity in the other areas of the park.
Beck, another festival veteran, was the only one who managed to straddle the line. The 48-year-old pop chameleon knows enough about the art of reinvention to mix up the hits with a generous serving of material from his latest release, 2017’s “Colors,” delivering crowd-pleasing renditions of his recent hits like “Wow” and “Up All Night.”
Even the festival’s side stages felt seismic changes.
For the first time, the Barbary comedy and improv tent welcomed a trio of female headliners: Michelle Wolf from “The Daily Show,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” star Chelsea Peretti and “2 Dope Queens” podcast co-host Phoebe Robinson.
That stage also saw the introduction of a TED Talksstyle speaker series called D.A.V.E. (Discussions About Virtually Everything) with a clear political bent featuring TV science advocate Bill Nye, “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, now a candidate for governor, who authorized samesex marriage in violation of state law in 2004 as San Francisco’s mayor.
The addition of a cannabis education experience called Grass Lands, in reaction to the changing legal limitations in California (another cause close to Newsom’s heart), brought yet another progressive element to the festival.
It’s a challenge that, like the rest of Outside Lands, may require throwing out the rulebook.