A new year means another new festival! I feel like I’ve been collecting them like infinity stones these past few years, but that’s certainly nothing to be mad about!
To be fair, this wasn’t the full Lollapalooza experience. Due to other travel plans this year, I decided to go for one day, as that was the day that Stray Kids was performing! If I’m being honest, almost all of the rest of the lineup wasn’t that impressive, and unfortunately the bands that I was interested in were all playing on different days. Not that choosing the day Stray Kids played was a hard choice. In fact, I made it pretty immediately. And thank goodness I have a friend who’s always down for adventure! She herself didn’t go to the festival, but she got me to Chicago, and for that, I am forever grateful.
While the initial plan was to walk around the festival grounds for a few hours and check out some other random sets before camping out at the Bud Light stage for the rest of the day, the weather had other plans. It was disturbingly hot out, despite several hours of cloud coverage. That means I was soaked for the first two hours I was there, so after grabbing some merch and water, I parked it the shade while I checked out the likes of a few random bands including Militarie Gun and Qveen Hveby. Finally around 4 in the afternoon I snagged some food and some more water on my way to the Bud Light stage. But about ten minutes in the searing sun convinced me that I wasn’t meant to stand close for Stray Kids’ set. Yet again I found myself in the shade for Sexy Redd, whose crowd was kind of comical to watch from the sidelines. I’d never heard any of his music, but I couldn’t deny it was catchy.
Finally, the sun set itself behind Chicago’s tallest skyscrapers, which meant I could finally secure a place in the crowd. While it didn’t seem that far away, everyone is tall, the ground is flat, and apparently, the stage isn’t that tall. I watched in awe as tons of people around me recorded and sang along to Laufey, and Icelandic jazz-pop musician. She was flanked by the Chicago Philharmonic, which means she for sure landed the most unique set I’ve ever seen at a music festival. I was equally surprised to see how many people left after her set was over. I figured by that point the Stays had been there for awhile and weren’t going anywhere. It did fill in by the time Stray Kids took the stage, but it wasn’t nearly as congested as I was preparing myself for.
As I expected, Stray Kids were amazing. Their set was high energy with plenty of crowd interaction and they played all the hits – some of them even twice! To be honest, I didn’t really get that decision. With well over a hundred songs at their disposal and plenty of popular ones that didn’t make the cut, I would have rather heard those compared to the “festival version” of Chk Chk Boom.” Still, they made the repeats worth the hype and the crowd didn’t really seem to care what they were playing, especially when we caught glimpses of several sets of abs. I wasn’t complaining about that either. There was only one outfit change throughout the evening, but it was comforting to see they were being impacted by the heat as much as I was. To be fair, they were also doing a lot more work up there, so kudos to them.
The set was complete with fire and fireworks and an effusive amount of thanks, and I cannot wait to see them again. It was awesome that seeing my first K-pop band coincided with my first Lollapalooza experience, but I don’t think I’d go back unless the lineup was just right. Still, seeing Stray Kids once just doesn’t seem like enough, so I hope there’s a good date for me on their North American tour.
