By Erianne Lewis | Arts and Life Editor
Day three of ACL may have been my favorite day by far, although I woke up with the least amount of energy. I decided to sleep in, so I didn’t officially leave my hotel room until around 1:30 p.m.
I was really craving a smoothie, so to JuiceLand I went. With my JuiceLand smoothie in my left hand and a Celsius in my right, I was ready to conquer the day.
It may have been the last day excitement, or the fact that my best friend from home surprised me by showing up, but the mile-and-a-half walk from my car to the festival felt shorter.
I entered the festival around 3:15 p.m. and headed straight to catch PinkPantheress’s set, which had started 15 minutes earlier. I wanted to meet up with my friends, but I realized they were too far in for me to find them, so I decided to just hang back and vibe to her set.
Dressed in all-black attire with a slick black ponytail, she looked very chic. After each song, she spoke honestly to the audience briefly and joked around about relationships and life.
After her performance ended, I met up with my friends, and we decided to head straight to grab merch. After snapping a few pictures and buying some items from the store, I headed to interview my last artist of the weekend, Jake Wesley Rogers.
After the interview, I grabbed some free pizza from the catering section of the press lounge. Then I met up with my friends to catch parts of The Marías‘ set. I adored their performance, because lead singer María Zardoya just knew how to captivate the audience with her cool and velvety vocals.
They shocked the audience with playing two unreleased songs, and it felt like we were a part of a private listening party. Zardoya’s nude colored two-piece set perfectly contrasted the background visuals.
I ended my ACL weekend with watching Paramore right as the sun was setting. Lead singer Hayley Williams’ bright orange hair complemented the golden glimmer of the sky. The group, also containing drummer Zac Farro and lead guitarist Taylor York, hit the ACL stage for one of their first live performances since 2018.
For most of the early songs, the crowd was hardly harmonizing along and I realized that most people, like me, may not have known the newer songs. It wasn’t until they played, “Ain’t it Fun,” that the crowd really woke up.
Everyone began jumping around and the entire mood of the crowd changed. To me, the energy of the crowd fluctuated, but that may have just been where I was standing. Everyone’s energy was back up when they played “Misery Business” and the crowd was the most hype when they ended with the hit, “Hard Times.”
ACL weekend one 2022 will definitely be an experience I will never forget. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to have met so many great people and to step out of my comfort zone by covering a music festival. If this experience taught me anything, although it sounds very cheesy, it is to take advantage of every opportunity you can. You never know where it will lead you.
