Standing in the middle of a massive crowd, a heat dome sun pulverizing us like it was 199 degrees – it was merely a brain-melting 105 – with pink cowboy hats as far as the eye could see, listening to a sassy redhead from Missouri sing irresistibly catchy, sapphic love songs, yours truly was blindsided. This is the happiest gathering of humanity I have ever been a part of in my 53 and a half years on this planet. It’s not every day that the pop culture zeitgeist consumes your city for a day, a throng of around 50,000 ready to party with a generational pop star who, only six months ago, was little more than a cult favorite and is now having a cultural moment that’s starting to rival the meteoric rise of Nirvana in early 1992.
Only the music isn’t a dour, cathartic hybrid of punk and metal. Instead, it was bright, direct, and bombastically queer. After almost four years of darkness, violence, cultural malaise, and the perpetually looming threat of fascism, today’s young generation is fighting back with a weapon whose power a lot of Gen-Xers and millennials had underestimated: sincere joy.
The rise of Chappell Roan is the music story of 2024, her virality enhanced further by monumental daytime appearances at music festivals across North America. Her hour-long sets have been continually upstaging that day’s headliners, and every big appearance (Coachella, Governor’s Ball, Lollapalooza) has yielded stunning video footage of that plucky, fashion-savvy powerhouse of a singer commanding the attention of tens of thousands with ease. It’s a concert promoter’s dream.
@chappellroan Osheaga ‘24🧚 @OSHEAGA ♬ original sound – chappell roan
Having booked Chappell Roan shortly after The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess came out in 2023, the gamble that Osheaga organizers took almost a year ago was paying off before their eyes on that sweltering Saturday afternoon. Drones and skycams quietly buzzed overhead to capture the moment, not to mention thousands of phones doing the same. Yes, including my own. It was such a surreal moment that one couldn’t not capture that perspective for posterity.
Held for the past 18 years in Parc Jean-Drapeau on a manufactured island in the St. Lawrence River, the Osheaga Music and Arts Festival has experimented and fine-tuned its approach to creating as fun and chill a music festival as possible, with bucketloads of musical acts to excite the kids and just enough legacy acts to lure the affluent, VIP-spending older generations. Making the most of its unique setting, emphasizing the city of Montreal’s own festive, laissez-faire spirit, and specifically targeting young women, Osheaga has evolved into a sort of Canadian Coachella, where music, marketing, and fashion coalesce into an endlessly positive and inclusive spectacle. Gen Z has been primed for a pop festival moment for years, and after being thwarted by the pandemic, all inhibitions have since gone right out the window. This year, the kids served, often more than the music did. Chappell excepted, of course.
That was certainly the case on Day One, on Friday, 2 August. An uncharacteristically lackluster bill, combined with some of the city’s most oppressive summer heat, yielded a crowd of only two-thirds of the festival’s 55,000 capacity. On the plus side, the comfortable number of people allowed for relatively easy movement from the main stages to the five alternate stages across the large park. However, it was safest to minimize walking and drink as much water as possible on a day like this. Consequently, while upbeat, the overall energy was more muted than usual.
UK critical darling the Japanese House, featuring the talented Amber Bain and Brooklyn scenesters Fcukers, helped kick off the afternoon languidly. One of the weekend’s surprisingly few hip-hop artists, Teezo Touchdown, charmed the Green Stage crowd as the sun started to go down mercifully, and over on the main stages, hardcore stalwarts Mannequin Pussy overcame a listless opening half of their set and wound up channeling the energy and fury that we’ve come to expect from them.
While Bladee and Skepta kept the rap fans happy on the other side of the grounds, cult pop fave, Melanie Martinez turned in a lavish, high-concept main stage set featuring immaculately orchestrated and choreographed selections from her first three albums. Although Vermont folk pin-up Noah Kahan has enjoyed incredible success over the past year and a half, it’s clear he’s not quite ready to headline a major festival. The reception to his safe, pleasant music was rapturous from those in attendance, but it was easy to see that organizers were hoping for a larger turnout. When it came to positive energy on Day One, however, nothing could top Romy’s set on the electronic stage, which had a large contingent of happy folks dancing up a storm to the beloved the xx singer’s solo material, highlighted by her recent single “Always Forever” and a gorgeous cover of the xx’s “Angels”.
On the other hand, Saturday’s mood was the opposite of Friday’s. With tens of thousands arriving early to snag a good spot for Chappell Roan’s 3:30pm set, the vibe across the city was buoyant: metro stations were peppered with people of all genders in pink cowboy hats and glittery, drag-influenced outfits, trains were abuzz with excited, pre-festival chatter, and the park was already near capacity by two in the afternoon. While lesser-known artists like Lola Young and New West tried valiantly to impress the massive crowds waiting for their Midwestern Queen, it was an extremely tall order, the excitement growing more palpable by the minute.
To her credit, Chappell Roan did not disappoint. Backed by a tight, three-piece band, the flamboyant redhead in her pink body suit with butterfly wings worked the rapturous crowd like a pro, leading massive sing-alongs to “Femininomenon”, “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl”, “Red Wine Supernova”, “Good Luck, Babe”, and “Pink Pony Club”. Her masterful power ballad “Casual” had the younger women in the crowd swooning, and of course, the requisite sing-and-dance-along to 2024’s ubiquitous – and utterly irresistible – “Hot to Go” yielded the viral moment the festival had been craving. Considering the pink explosion of queer joy during that hour-long set and how impressive, brash, and giddy a performer Roan is – not to mention a phenomenal singer – the mind boggles at the thought of what she can pull off as a proper headliner. We’ll see soon enough.
The evening’s festivities cranked into high gear as the afternoon drew to a close. Rancid delivered a very fun, no-frills, hits-filled, geezer-pleasing punk set. T-Pain drew a throng of kids eager for some 2000s nostalgia, and Renee Rapp, another queer singer who seemed forgotten amidst all the Chappellmania, turned in an incredibly charming performance on the main stage.
Smashing Pumpkins’ 8:00pm set was monstrous, the churning heavy metal riffs of “The Everlasting Gaze” and “Doomsday Clock” made even bigger by the band’s triple-guitar attack, the weekend’s sole reminder of how ferocious mainstream rock music used to sound. Billy Corgan was in good spirits and good vocal form – his viral visit to the Montreal sewer system earlier in the day clearly cheered the fellow up – as he and the band hammered out classic over classic, climaxing with “Jellybelly” and the monumental “Cherub Rock”.
Saturday headliners Green Day were in town to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Dookie and the 20th anniversary of American Idiot, and it was a riot watching these 50-something veterans crank out their timeless pop-punk and rework it through a glam metal lens. Fire! Pyro! Massive sing-alongs! Light show! Inflatables! It was a dizzying, high-energy performance by the indefatigable trio, led by the irrepressible Billy Joe Armstrong, who worked the massive audience like a pint-sized Sammy Hagar.
When a band can kick off a show with songs as stupendous as “Basket Case”, “Longview”, and “Welcome to Paradise”, you know your back catalog is loaded. As great as all the Dookie and American Idiot classics were to hear live, the biggest crowd reactions of Green Day’s two-hour set were for the anthemic classic rock staple “Minority” and the raucous 2009 track “Know Your Enemy”. On the latter song, Armstrong brought up 25-year-old fan Sandrine Touzin, who, after quickly shaking off nerves, brought the house down with her euphoric duet with Billie, her impromptu performance eventually making entertainment news headlines on Monday.
If Saturday was celebratory from beginning to end, Sunday was more like a good, solid brunch the day after the party of the year. After the threat of a storm cut short a scorching set by perpetually great Australian punks Amyl & the Sniffers, the festivities resumed less than an hour later, with UK R&B sensation Raye delivering one of the weekend’s best performances. Flanked by a superb backing band, including a horn section, the glamorously dressed Raye reframed James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” as a feminist anthem, got the crowds dancing on “Black Mascara”, cranked up the hard rock on “Prada”, and delivered a transcendent performance of “Escapism”, arguably one of the finest singles of the 2020s so far.
Budding African superstar Tyla attracted a massive crowd over at the Valley Stage and wowed everyone with her cool persona, effortless style, gigantic tiger prop, and surprising humility, her set highlighted by “Safer”, “Truth or Dare”, “Breathe Me”, and 2023’s breakthrough single “Water”. Although it was nice to see indie rock faves Alvvays graduate to the main stage, Tyla should have been there instead, if only from a public safety standpoint, as the Valley Stage area was approaching dangerous congestion levels because so many people wanted to see her play.
On a weekend loaded with mediocre white male performers – Noah Kahan, Teddy Swims, Two Door Cinema Club, Vincent Lima, Talk, the Blue Stones, Briston Maroney, Still Woozy, and the smarmy, white 1950s America fetishizing Stephen Sanchez – Irish fave Hozier was the final boss. That night, the tall, bearded galoot and his admittedly great backing band somehow bridged the weekend’s chasm between flaccid male pop and electrifying queer/female pop, thanks to his undeniable charisma. His music might be overtly safe in a Chris Martin-meets-Bon Iver kind of way, but “Too Sweet” and the requisite “Take Me to Church” had thousands of women capturing the moment on their phones. The man gets full credit for publicly demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Good job, big guy. You’re not so bad.
While Justice dazzled the alternate stage with their “nowhere near as good as Daft Punk but still fun” French Touch, the night belonged to headliner SZA, who was closing the book on her massive tour in support of 2022’s brilliant album SOS. The first female R&B singer to headline Osheaga, it was a welcome respite from all the lukewarm music by men, as well as a dazzling show. SZA’s carefully orchestrated subterranean fantasmagoria, including a giant ant, a tree house, and a robot that would be treated to a lapdance before being unceremoniously killed before “Kill Bill”, was a feast for the eyes. She matched the visuals with her sumptuous singing, highlighted by such standouts as “Broken Clocks”, the Paramore-indebted “F2F”, “Ghost in the Machine”, and a cover of Prince’s “Kiss”.
Perched atop her simulated tree house, SZA cranked up the pathos on “Nobody Gets Me” and “Normal Girl” before launching into the gorgeous “Saturn”. By the time she kicked into a rendition of Drake’s “Rich Baby Daddy”, people young and old were dancing and singing along to the song’s “shake that ass bitch, hands on your knees” refrain as they made their way to the metro station.
Was it a perfect weekend? No. Did organizers do enough to mitigate the damage from the oppressive heat? Here and there. Were lessons learned? We’ll have to wait and see until Osheaga makes sure no attendee is more than 100 yards from a water refill station. But overall, the vibe was never sour as the young crowd did their damndest to have as much fun as possible. One young woman behind me at the metro station said to no one in particular, “Thank you for having me, Osheaga. I had a great time.” “It really was the best weekend ever,” another person replied.