Scenes from Gov Ball’s epic weekend, with Lizzo, Odesza, Kendrick Lamar

By Scott Lynch

More than 100,000 people gathered in Flushing Meadows Corona Park this past weekend for the Governors Ball Music Festival, three days and nights of music, partying, moshing, food, chilling, bouncing up and down, and screaming with joy as some 60 different performers played on three stages spread out over the spacious new venue near the iconic Unisphere.

On Friday the headliners were Lizzo and Lil Uzi Vert, on two different stages at the same time, so you had to choose which way to end your night. Both were slamming though, so there wasn’t really a wrong move.

Lizzo (Scott Lynch)

The same thing happened earlier in the day when the so-hot-right-now Ice Spice and the hard-rocking sisters of Haim both went on at 6:45 at opposite ends of the festival grounds. The infinitely charming Haim performed possibly my favorite set of the whole weekend.

Haim (Scott Lynch)

One of the best things about these big festivals is when you pull up to a stage with only a vague idea of who an artist is, and the place is packed with rabid fans who know all the lyrics to all the songs. The enthusiasm is infectious. On Friday this happened to me at 070 Shake, whose non-stop bangers inspired the wildest mosh pit of the weekend. Also fun that first day was Diplo, with a predictable but fun set of familiar hits, and Kim Petras’s rowdy take on slut pop.

070 Shake (Scott Lynch)

Saturday began for me at 2 p.m. with Suki Waterhouse, who we last saw playing keyboardist Karen Sirko on Daisy Jones and the Six, and who gave it her all before a small but swooning crowd on the big stage.

Suki Waterhouse (Scott Lynch)

The stealth winner of the day was KennyHoopla, one of the few rock-punk acts of the weekend, who ignited an early-afternoon rabble into a giddy frenzy.

KennyHoopla (Scott Lynch)

The mosh pits were fun and dusty, clogging noses and coating participants with a layer of grime.

In the pit (Scott Lynch)

Rina Sawayama and the K-Pop sensation Aespa provided back-to-back hits of ecstasy to tens of thousands of adoring fans at Gov Ball main stage as the afternoon turned to evening on Saturday. Sawayama’s set featured scripted scenes, several outfit changes, and lots of melodrama. And Aespa and crew showed off some of the best, most elaborate choreography of the festival, rivaled only by Lizzo and Lil Nas X.

Aespa (Scott Lynch)

Saturday’s dual headliners — again, playing at the same time, at stages a quarter mile or so apart — were the electronic dance music legends Odesza, who wowed the huge crowd with an digital and literal pyrotechnics; and one of the most popular rap stars in the world right now, Lil Baby.

Odesza (Scott Lynch)

Kendrick Lamar closed the festival out on Sunday night, sharing his headliner time slot with no one and delivering a blistering set to the biggest crowd of the weekend. Incredible stuff.

Kendrick (Scott Lynch)

Little Nas X, performing just an hour earlier, brought out a giant horse for “Old Town Road” … plus a giant snake.

Little Nas X (Scott Lynch)

Earlier in the day the 22-year-old PinkPanthress lived up to her early hype with an energetic show, Pusha T played before a massive snow globe filled with stacks of money, and Sofi Tukker threw one of their trademark cheeky dance parties, at the end of which they declared that the Gov Ball crowd was better than the Coachella crowd.

Sofi Tucker (Scott Lynch)

This was the first year Gov Ball was held at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and the new space provided lots of room to spread out, plenty of trees and shade (a feature distinctly absent from the Citi Field parking lot, the festival’s setting the two previous years), and ample fields of patchy grass on which to sit/pass out. The sprawling grounds also meant more and larger corporate-sponsored “activations” than ever, but people seem to like these and they’re easy to ignore if you’re not into them.

@brooklyn_magazine Shoutout to our photographer Scott Lynch🔥 #brooklynmagazine #govball #concertphotography ♬ Good Looking

About 50 food vendors kept everyone fed, including personal festival favorites Destination Dumplings, the Neopolitan pizza pros at San Matteo, and Brooklyn’s own Fany Gerson, who brought a gorgeous array of her Fan Fan doughnuts every morning. There was booze everywhere you turned, of course, but also bubble tea, Red Bull, and water stations blasting out free refills.

(Scott Lynch)