Austin City Limits Music Festival 2019 – Day 3, Weekend 1
Zilker Park, Austin, TX,
October 6, 2019
Review by Stacey Lovett
Day three of weekend one brought three of its own female acts making massive waves on the current music scene and all bringing substantial waves of fans to the stage for their own acts.
Headliner Cardi B kept fans waiting half an hour past the set time to experience her self-proclaimed “Cardi party” – a show as full of Bronx born sass as it was twerk work. While inpatient and questioning the wait, festivalgoers quickly changed their own attitudes when her Netflix special plug flashed on the screen introing her performance. Flanked by a group of dancers, Cardi B flaunted her assets onstage as she turned Zilker Park into a dance party, complete with her own karaoke covers of the songs she’s featured on. She made sure the show was ‘turnt up’ in every way as weekend two would not be graced by her presence, featuring Robyn as the night’s headliner as Cardi finished off the last of her tour in El Paso before, as announced, returning to the studio for another album.
Texas girl Kacey Musgraves gave a leggy golden hour performance that proved to be the soundtrack to so many “this is my song” fans in the audience, gathering together in their own couples and girl groups and living out the heart of the tunes as she sang. And to bridge the gap of these gatherings to bring the audience together as a whole she encouraged fans to make friends with their neighbors and sing along with the music, citing her own appreciation of all of the positivity and good vibes they send her back. Her cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” got the crowd dancing with her and willing to share the love only the Lone Star State could as they returned a ‘yee-haw’ chant that she admitted didn’t work in Coachella as big as Texas could deliver. Kacey paused midset exclaiming “Holy shit it’s hot!” voicing the sentiment of the weekend and plugged fellow female anthem artist Lizzo’s set scheduled to immediately follow hers. As Lizzo’s stage was halfway across the park from this one, Musgraves instructed fans to trade their cowboy boots for tennis shoes and plan to “fucking RUN” which was not far from the truth and quite honestly not even enough to get close to the stage in time. Anyone who stuck around to see Kacey Musgraves cover Brooks & Dunn’s “Neon Moon” then kick off her heels and go hard for “High Horse” were already too late to get close enough to catch much of a good view of Lizzo’s set.
Crowd complaints of Lizzo being put on too small of a stage probably weren’t too far from the truth as even sprinting from any set prior, it took a good 30 minutes to get anywhere in the sea of people to be in the least bit of earshot to anything and even that wasn’t a sure thing. If you weren’t upfront you battled sonic overlap from the other stages as the crowd, though tightly packed in, spanned that large of an area. Those who persevered and made it for the last few songs did get to experience her biggest singles live and fans who camped out to catch the whole set enjoyed a mix of tunes from her latest Cuz I Love You as well as a few from Coconut Oil. However much you caught of the set though you undoubtedly soaked up a bit of Lizzo’s self-love infusion and possibly one of the most coveted ACL performances in recent years.
No matter who you caught at ACL 2019 you were able to ride the wave of the common theme of love, whether it be for yourself or for others or a combination of both for the collective, it was a powerful melody in the air that everyone in attendance lent their own notes to and spread forth for festivals to come.
Austin City Limits Music Festival, Day 3 on Sunday, October 6, 2019, featured Mumford & Sons, Cardi B, GRIZ, LANY, Lizzo, Kacey Musgraves, Brice Hornsby & the Noisemakers, Third Eye Blind, FISHER, Billy Strings, Q Brothers, Caamp, BANKS, Rebelution, GoGo Penguin, Kevin Garrett, Rosalia, Koffee, TOBI, Kaina, Shura, Bea Miller, Joseph, Delacey, IDLES, Duckwirth, Faye Webster, Thomas Csorba, The Japanese House, Still Woozy, Nilufer Yanya, Taela, cleopatrick, Shields of Faith, School of Rock, Otis the Destroyer, Julia Jacklin, and Kevin Garrett.
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