Highlights from Governors Ball 2024, Day Three

SZA Swings on a Wrecking Ball, Peso Pluma Suffers Injury Onstage, and Chappell Roan Cosplays the Statue of Liberty

Indie-sounding and rock bands dominated the earlier part of day Three at Governors Ball 2024. Beach Fossils, Geese, Husbands and the Hails led the indie charge, and G Flip and Baby Queen rocked the open fields. By late afternoon, however, the stages were dominated by women and LGBT pop artists. Mexican singer Peso Pluma and Palestinian singers Elyanna and Saint Levant also introduced a brand new dimension to the annual three-day music festival.

SZA

SZA

Solána Imani Rowe, known professionally as SZA, headlined Gov Ball this year with more hit songs in tow than the last time she performed at a local festival, Panorama, in 2018. In her 90 minutes on the main Gov Ball NYC stage, she managed to squeeze 25 songs, some by way of medleys. Although she has a forthcoming album, Lana, scheduled for release later this year, she sang only one song from that album, “Saturn,” which she released in February.

SZA’s debut album, CTRL, was released exactly seven years to the date of her headlining performance, and so she started and ended her performance with songs from that album. She performed twice as many songs from her second and most recent album, 2022’s SOS, however. The wildest moment of SZA’s set was during “Low” from that second album, when she rode on a swinging faux wrecking ball high above the stage.

SZA

Peso Pluma

“You finally got Peso Pluma here,” the singer told his large audience from the GoPuff stage.

Hassan Emilio Kabande Laija, known professionally as Peso Pluma, became the first-ever Mexican singer to co-headline at Gov Ball. He performed an hour-long set of corridos tumbados blended with hip hop and reggaeton.

Powered by his large band, Pluma and his troupe danced on a sloped stage to his series of hits. During "IDGAF," however, he suffered a foot injury. Nevertheless, he persevered through the evident pain.

Peso Pluma

Guest performers were rare at Gov Ball 2024, yet Pluma introduced Rich the Kid, a native of Queens, to perform their song "Gimme a Second." Pluma then gave Rich the Kid the opportunity to perform his hit single, "Plug Walk." After the Rich the Kid interlude, Pluma limped back on stage, barefoot and bandaged.

“I can’t even barely stand, but I don’t give a f*ck,” Pluma told his audience. Pluma’s production team produced a chair, but Pluma tossed it into the pit between the stage and the audience barrier. “I’m here for you all, to hell with the chair. Let’s jump around New York, I want to see you all jump. This is called ‘AMG’,” he said to the audience.

Immediately after his performance, Pluma was rushed to a local hospital. From there, Pluma confirmed by photographs on social media that he fractured his right foot.

Faye Webster

With Peso Pluma drawing one of the festival’s largest crowds, Faye Webster simultaneously across the park at the IHG stage pulled a significantly smaller audience. At one point between songs, Webster told her audience, “I’m stalling so I can listen to Peso Pluma.” whose music was loud enough to be heard across the park.

Webster played and sang her soft pop songs in what looked like blue pajamas. Her stage set consisted of a giant blue t-shirt on a giant hanger alongside a row of laundry machines and rows of blue clothing hanging on two racks. At one point, a bubble machine filled the air with suds. Somebody needed to inform Webster that Rush already had laundry machines on stage in the early 2000s. Rush’s dryers actually tumbled their loads, however, unlike Webster’s static machines.

Reneé Rapp

Reneé Rapp won fame as an actor in Mean Girls on Broadway and film and more recently in The Sex Lives of College Girls on television, but her love for performing live music was evident on the Gov Ball main stage. She drew a large crowd, with many in the audience singing along to many songs. Much of her set consisted of pop dance tunes yet, calling herself a "slut for ballads," she slowed the tempo and intensity on "In the Kitchen" and "The Wedding Song."

Rapp introduced “Pretty Girls” by instructing the audience, “If you’re a pretty girl, put your hands up!” She spoke with a fan in the audience named Sam. “What’s your name, baby?” she asked. “Well, Sam, I need you to hear me when I say you’re one of the prettiest girls out here.”

Reneé Rapp

“Happy Pride everyone! We’re so visible it’s sickening. We viz, we viz, we 4k." said Rapp, who formerly identified as bisexual and now identifies as lesbian. Rapp asked the audience to cheer if they "love lesbians," to which she received thunderous applause. “How are my token straight boyfriends?” Rapp asked. “Yep, I don’t care,” she joked.

She closed her set with an exuberant shout-out: “Can I get a round of applause for lesbians?”

Stephen Sanchez

Stephen Sanchez swooned his audience at the IHG stage. The 21-year-old singer covered Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” and pretty much embodied a retro persona from a half century ago. Perhaps a bit excited about performing on such a large stage, he started climbing the stage rigging at one point.

Don Toliver

Just a few days before the release of his fourth album, Hardstone Psycho, Don Toliver performed on the GoPuff stage in front of a huge inflatable replica of himself. He gave his audience a taste of the upcoming album by playing four of his new songs in addition to his earlier work. He performed "Bandit" twice, as well as "Attitude" and “Deep in the Water,” and closed with "Tore Up" in a live debut. After the Gov Ball set, Toliver performed a Gov Ball After Dark set at the Harbor nightclub.

Cannons

Chappell Roan

Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, known professionally as Chappell Roan, was perhaps the buzziest artist on the Governors Ball lineup. She gained fans earlier this year as the support act on the Olivia Rodrigo tour. This weekend, her 2023 debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, rose to number 16 on the Billboard 200 chart.

As far as entrances, no other artist at the festival did it better. The set began with a backdrop displaying a Google search for "Am I gay?" Roan’s band appeared in outfits designed in light of New York City’s yellow taxi cabs. In a cloud of smoke, a crew dressed in black suits slid a literal Big Apple to the edge of the stage. The crew passed around an oversized joint before spinning the apple. The apple cracked open to reveal Chappell in head-to-toe green body paint and dressed in an outfit reminiscent of one of the city’s most famous icons, the Statue of Liberty, except with chaps that exposed her green buttocks. As she began her performance, she wore a crown designed to resemble the famed landmark’s crown and held a torch like Lady Liberty’s in one hand and a giant joint in the other, which she passed to one of her back-up dancers. She stopped and stared into the audience, which was sprinkled with fans wearing pink glittery cowboy hats in her honor.

“I’m in drag of the biggest queen of all,” she told the audience, “but in case you’ve forgotten what’s etched on my pretty little toes: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ That means freedom and trans rights. That means freedom and women’s rights, and it especially means freedom for all oppressed people in occupied territories.” The crowd erupted with cheers and applause.

Chappell Roan

Roan later changed into a yellow taxi-inspired outfit to match her crew’s taxi print. Before performing “Casual,” she drew attention to her boots, emblazoned with “1-800-ROAN,” and checkered gloves. The outfit was completed with air-freshener earrings.

While Roan’s aesthetic is influenced by the drag queen culture, her songs were inspired by 1980s synth-pop and early 2000s pop hits. She started her set with “Femininomenon,” the first of 10 songs in her setlist, almost all from her album. She also premiered a new ballad, “Subway.”

Roan told the audience that she declined the Biden administration’s invitation for her to perform in honor of the LGBTQ community this June. She then dedicated her angriest song to the government. Speaking directly into the camera, she said that she would sing “My Kink Is Karma” as a “response to the White House, who asked me to perform for Pride. We want liberty, justice, and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come.”

Kevin Abstract

Clifford Ian Simpson, known by his stage name Kevin Abstract, is a rapper, singer, and songwriter best recognized for his role as a founding member of Brockhampton. His set on the GoPuff stage seemed a bit spontaneous, as he asked the audience what they wanted to hear and what they were expecting from his performance. He covered Lady A’s “Need You Now,” Quadeca’s “Texas Blue,” and three Brockhampton songs. One of the Brockhampton songs, “Buzzcut,” he cut short because he forgot the lyrics. He noted that if he had written a gay theme for the song, he would not have forgotten the words.

Beach Fossils with guest Cleo

Brooklyn’s Beach Fossils played a soft indie set. At one point, the band invited on stage guitarist Tommy Davidson’s young daughter Cleo, joking that she “won the million dollar raffle.” Armed with a tiny toy guitar, oversized yellow-rimmed sunglasses and large earmuffs, Cleo strummed her guitar during “Sleep Apnea,” then waved and said “Hi” to the audience before leaving the stage. “Cleo, you’re hired!” the band called out to her.

Malcolm Todd

Malcolm Todd opened his set with “Leave It All To Me,” the theme song from the iCarly television series. His set also included original songs and a cover of TLC’s “Waterfalls.” He expressed his excitement about opening for Chappell Roan on the Gov Ball NYC stage and wished everyone a “Happy Pride Month.”

Geese

Formed in 2016 while attending high school, vocalist/keyboardist Cameron Winter, guitarist Em Green, bassist Dominic DiGesu and drummer Max Bassin began composing quirky music in Brooklyn. Geese soon began playing its left-of-center indie music in local clubs. Gov Ball was the band’s first festival performance. After the set at the IHG stage, the four musicians went to the press lounge, where they posed for photographs holding a wooden goose.

Saint Levant

Marwan Abdelhamid, known as Saint Levant, is a Palestinian rapper and singer, presently living in Los Angeles, California. He dedicated parts of his performance on the GoPuff stage to the victims of the Israeli-Palestinian war and spoke about his “complicated” feelings about performing at an American festival only a few days after an Israeli initiative at a Palestinian refugee camp reportedly killed more than 200 people.

“I’m here now,” he said, “trying to share a moment, trying to celebrate my culture and be here with you, but in the back of my mind all I can think about are these children, these women and these men.” He concluded, “Liberation will come.”

Elyanna

Elian Marjieh, known professionally as Elyanna, is a Palestinian-Chilean singer-songwriter, merging Arabic music with Latin rhythms to create an experimental Arab-pop sound. On the main Gov Ball NYC stage, Elyanna performed “Olive Branch” in front of a graphic reading “All Eyes on Rafah,” referring to the war-torn city in Gaza. Elyanna performed entirely in Arabic as her musicians played traditional instruments like the tabla and oud. She and her troupe of dancers dramatized each song with choreography.

G Flip

Georgia Claire Flipo, known professionally as G Flip and informally as simply "G,” made her U.S. festival debut on the IHG stage. One of the hardest rocking acts on the Governors Ball bill this year, G switched from Flying V guitar to drums and back. While drumming, they sang a hard-edged cover of Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer.” G Flip also invited Lauren Sanderson on stage for a duet on one song.

Baby Queen

Arabella Latham, known professionally as Baby Queen, is a South African singer based in London, England. She made her U.S. festival debut on the GoPuff Stage by shredding on a pink guitar. She wore a denim jacket with a large image of a birthday cake embroidered on the cake with the number 25 and a message, "Quarter Life Crisis."

Baby Queen asked her early audience, “Who’s getting drunk today? Well, this is a song about getting f*cked up.” She then sang “Raw Thoughts.”

Husbands

Husbands, an indie rock band from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was the first band to perform on the main Gov Ball NYC stage on Sunday. The band incorporated pop, shoegaze, garage rock, and reverb-heavy surf-rock sounds.

The Hails hailed the band’s home state of Florida, and alma mater, the University of Florida, at the beginning of the set. "Go Gators!" shouted the band.

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The Manhattan Beat reports on New York City's live music circuit. All articles are written by Everynight Charley Crespo. All photographs are taken by Everynight Charley Crespo, except when noted otherwise.

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