Governors Ball 2025: Olivia Rodrigo and Hozier reign over New York festival

The Guardian

2 days ago

For the past year, I have dined out on the story of being in the Sunday crowd at last year's Governor's Ball. That sweltering afternoon in the sun, the largest crowd of New York's premier music festival – more than could fit on the lawn of Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens – gathered at an unusual hour for a mid-bill set. If you're lucky, there are a few times in the life of a regular concertgoer when it is not just another great show, when you can feel the gravity of the zeitgeist shift. Chappell Roan, dressed as the Statue of Liberty and ferried to the stage in a giant apple, belting Red Wine Supernova to a sea of pink cowboy hats in one of the loudest sing-backs I have ever heard, is one of those times, a clear sonic boom of a cultural rocket taking off.
Roan's star-making moment turned out to be a stake in the ground of a tentpole year for women in pop music, and the 2024 Gov Ball happened to find itself at the center. The festival lucked out in booking Roan before she blew up, unofficially launching her successful campaign for Grammys best new artist. Same for Sabrina Carpenter, also given mid-day booking before Espresso became the song of the summer. From Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna to proudly queer Broadway crossover Reneé Rapp to headliner SZA, the festival palpably hummed with hype for female acts both ascendant and bankable, taking advantage of Coachella's so-called flop year for a cheaper, more accessible, banner weekend for, as I heard more than once, the 'girls and the gays'.
That momentum was palpably absent from this year's Gov Ball, a colder and soggier affair that felt comparatively removed from the cultural pulse, short on buzzy moments or big debuts, though still an excellent showcase for the breadth and talent of international artists. That's not entirely the fault of the organizers, who had to grapple with intermittent storms bad enough to delay all of Saturday, forcing cuts to lower-bill acts, shortened sets and exorbitant entrance lines snaking around the park. And no shade to a slate of enjoyable performers who brought as much energy as they could to gray days, and especially not to Saturday headliner Olivia Rodrigo, a pop princess in her own right who drew easily the biggest crowd of the weekend – the sheer amount of people rushing the gates after her triumphant kiss-off anthem Get Him Back! brought foot traffic to a sardined standstill.
That Rodrigo would pull the greatest focus of the weekend – Saturday was the only day to sell out – is not a surprise, as Gov Ball notoriously skews young, the festival being relatively cheap (emphasis on relative – three-day general admission starts at $359, compared to $649 for Coachella, and a single day goes for $189) and accessible via public transit. (One hopes the hordes of teenage girls I saw in the outfit of the summer – a lacy, tiered white miniskirt and brown western boots – were not on Klarna payment plans.) Like her one-time idol Taylor Swift, Rodrigo appeals to the very young – girls on their parents' shoulders, teens who trill in unison 'ooooh she looks so goooooood' when she appeared in a red polka dot lingerie set and knee-high Doc Martens, her staple shade of blood-red lipstick pristine. Girls largely too young to understand the import of David Byrne, who showed up for a buoyant duet of Burning Down the House that delighted as much as it confused the audience around me.
Rodrigo, still an ingenue when speaking and gloriously fed up in song, delivered on an already well-regarded set, her Guts tour having been under way for over a year. Such was another weight on this year's Gov Ball, which caught fellow headliners Tyler, The Creator and Hozier on the back end of tour cycles instead of launching them, as with last year's headliners Post Malone, SZA and the Killers. Tyler, the still-impish provocateur of experimental hip-hop, acknowledged as much during his banger of a Friday set, admitting in typical chillspeak that though he was tired from his Chromakopia tour, 'I fuck with Governors Ball and what they do so I decided to show the fuck up.' And he did, offering a masterclass of weirdo charisma from atop a storage container, at turns devilish, mischievous and conspiratorial ('Let's see what other old shit I got,' he said before launching into 2011 hit She.)
The ghost of 2011 could be felt elsewhere; if last year skewed pure pop, this one skewed toward the voguish, so-called 'stomp clap hey' revival of folk pop, with more acoustic acts such as Mt Joy, the Japanese House and festival-closer Hozier, as well as Spotify-friendly indie pop bands like Wallows (fronted by 13 Reasons Why actor Dylan Minnette) and Australian duo Royel Otis. If there was a viral star of the weekend, it was upstart Benson Boone, appealing to a similar crowd as Rodrigo with ruddy-cheeked earnestness and, by my count, nine backflips. ('Did you really just say don't flip? What did you think this show was gonna be?' he said to a concerned audience member after his first high arc off the piano.) The same straining balladeer act that drew Pitchfork derision at Coachella won over the crowd here; former YouTuber and Rodrigo BFF Conan Gray stretched the theatrical earnestness even further with a sailor moon-themed set.
The zeitgeist is an uncontrollable variable, and though its current was overall weaker this year, it still flashed in lower-billed sets that got the people going. South African siren Tyla performed Bliss for the first time live – albeit so early on Friday the adults were not yet out of work – and, as at Coachella, transfixed audiences with her sinuous dancing and micro-shorts. Mk.gee, whose guitar feats inspired dozens of 'how did he do that?' videos last year, kicked off the weekend by blowing out everyone's ear drums (complimentary) in a smoky, banter-less, virtuosic set befitting a new guitar mystic. Puerto Rican reggaeton artist Young Miko nearly stole the show Saturday, flexing her bars and Puerto Rican pride for one of the most hype sets of the weekend. 'New York, is it gay here or is it just me?' she said in English, wishing everyone a happy pride month. (And later, in Spanish and to huge cheers, 'Whenever I come to New York I feel at home.') British chanteuse Raye brought up the energy with her powerhouse vocals, while genre-bending Ghanaian-American singer Amaarae performed in front of clear instructions for her audience: MOSH.
If the energy – and weather – was hit and miss, Gov Ball at least brought it home on Sunday with back-to-back sets calling to some higher power. For Oxford psychedelic-pop quartet Glass Animals, the catharsis of letting go on a dance floor, let by startlingly (and winsomely) upbeat frontman Dave Bayley; the bass drop of Tokyo Drifting into 2020 smash Heat Waves killed whatever hearing and inhibitions I had left. And for Irish headliner Hozier, the power of solidarity, underscored by 90 minutes of worshipful folk-rock and one extended speech 'from the heart' on anti-colonialism, name-checking Mavis Staples, the American civil rights movement, the Irish civil rights movement and the ongoing struggle for Palestinian liberation.
'Every single day, we have an opportunity to show up for not only members of our community but people around the world,' he said. 'I would advise you to say no to the types of imperialism that lead to cycles of violence that we're seeing at the moment.' The 35-year-old flattered New York as a 'very special place' where he witnessed 'acts of goodness, acts of solidarity' and anti-racism. One could dismiss it as pandering, but as a stranger hugged my sister and I to Hozier's rousing Take Me to Church, and his transcendent chords blended magically with the whirr of incoming flights to LaGuardia, I found myself among the festival faithful.