Boston Calling Music Festival is this weekend, and we’re pretty excited. This year’s lineup packs its true juice in the mid-section, where a slate of artists playing under daylight are sure to elevate their status to headliner material by the time the fest rolls around next year. Boston Calling has always been a discovery festival at its core, and the 2024 edition provides an intriguing mix of familiar names at the top (Ed Sheeran, The Killers), a wealth of bands and artists on the verge of breakthroughs, and a healthy homegrown slate that has silenced all the fuckbois complaining about a perceived lack of local representation (don’t sleep on the food, either).
We’ve been banging out Homegrown Spotlights on all the New England bands and artists over the past three weeks, so now we turn our attention to the jams — as in, the ones we really cannot wait to hear ring out across the Harvard Athletic Complex. With apologies to “Mr. Brightside,” truly our generation’s “Hey Jude” and surely anticipated by anyone who bought a synth between 2005 and 2015 (that means everyone, age appropriate), here are our most anticipated songs to hear this weekend at Boston Calling.
(*Disclaimer: We assume these jams will be in the artist’s setlist. Don’t @ us if they aren’t, we don’t control that shit.)
Chappell Roan, ‘Red Wine Supernova’
Some artists play their singles at festival, others roll out a greatest hits parade. Our homegirl Chappell Roan falls into the later category, and her performance Sunday (May 26) at 4:05 p.m. on the Green Stage has been highlighted in neon since the lineup dropped in January. It’s damn near impossible to select just one song we can’t wait to hear this weekend, but we’ll roll with a theatrical ode to sapphic love in “Red Wine Supernova,” which should sound great as the weekend begins to fade.
No stranger to our hot-to-go pink digital pages, Roan is now getting the glow-up she deserves, with features on MTV and in mainstream media, and a fresh plug on Marshalls’ new “Quality Obsessed” televison campaign. Last year’s Album of the Year in The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess has instantly positioned the alt-pop rhinestone cowgirl comet from Missouri as one of our generation’s greatest and most thrilling songwriters, and her ultra-magnetic, sex-positive, queer-highlighted mega-jams — the rambunctious “Pink Pony Club,” hook-up culture yearner “Casual,” tough-to-spell, easy-to-say “Femininomenon,” the cheery “HOT TO GO”; the new ’80s synth purr bop “Good Luck, Babe!” and all the others — will be on full display for this can’t-miss whirlwind of an artist.
d4vd, ‘Leave Her’ and ‘2016’
Back in March we fell for the hypnotic touch of d4vd’s tender alt-pop ballad “My House of Not A Home”, but in an outdoor festival setting, we’re rolling with a pair of tracks released in tandem back in February: The urgent glossy ‘gaze of “Leave Her” and towering indie rock anthem “2016,” both of which should echo with purpose across the festival grounds when the 19-year-old future superstar from Queens plays the Green Stage on Saturday (May 25) at 3:55 p.m.
The upbeat and propulsive rock-leaning tracks showcase yet another side to the genre-bending artist, and when on “2016” d4vd sings “I’m not the same kid I was in 2016,” some of us will be allowed to substitute 2006, 1996, or even 1986. “In my generation, 2016 is regarded in culture as one of the best years in the last decade because of the trends, technology, and overall vibe of that year,” he says. “So I wanted to write something that reflected how grungy and gritty growing up feels — from the punk rock instrumentation, to the unique vocal approach that I took on the track. Something that felt nostalgic to the early 2000s but still felt new and fun.”
Reneé Rapp, ‘I Hate Boston’
Last summer, a billboard declaring “I HATE BOSTON” showed up in the North End, and miraculously, it had nothing to do with outdoor dining. It was the work of Reneé Rapp, the actor, singer, and North Carolina native who was pimping a new single. Not since Future Teens sold hats declaring “Boston sucks” has a musician riled up the city with some good-natured ribbing, sparking humorous social media discussion and breathless headlines across the city.
But it turned out Rapp didn’t really hate Boston at all. The Los Angeles resident just hated an ex who lives here — who can’t relate to that? — and it all came into view on her 2023 album Snow Angel. “It’s more fun when people don’t know, and are very curious as to why I would do such a thing, and it is to incite fights and arguments,” a wonderfully sarcastic Rapp told WBZ-TV. “Cause you guys are very good at that, and you love that.”
We should also point out that Rapp is also known in some circles as playing Regina George in the Broadway production, and subsequent film, of Mean Girls, and has appeared on HBO’s Sex Lives of College Girls. But when she plays the Green Stage on Friday (May 24) at 5:55 p.m., we’ll all have one thing on our minds — how much we love this city.
Alvvays, ‘In Undertow’
A few albums into a remarkable career, Toronto indie rock stalwarts Alvvays have a dizzying fuckton of certified jams, and they’ll all sound understandably great on Sunday (May 26) at 7:50 p.m. when they close out the Allianz Blue Stage. But for us the high point will be 2017 SOTY “In Undertow”, a sweeping post-‘gaze crusher that’ll dance like a beautiful ghost in the thin spring air as the only thing separating us from the heavens above. We may even levitate to get our physical bodies closer to our headspace.
We’ve been chronicling Alvvays’ rise from when we first photographed the band at the ‘Dise nearly seven years ago — much respect for any band that adds an extra “V” to the moniker — and their generation-defining songs, like “Easy On Your Own?”, the revved-up dose of bliss dubbed “Pharmacist“, and the timeless ache of “Archie, Marry Me” — which this writer sang to his now-wife while proposing marriage over a flaming pu-pu platter at The Kowloon in Saugus a few days before Christmas ’17 — should help define this year’s festival. Especially when that early-summer breeze starts to kick in and carries that lush guitar tone across the grounds.
Blondshell, ‘Docket’
Back in March, Blondshell and Bully teamed up for a SOTY contender called “Docket”, and it got us all worked up for this year’s fest a few weeks after the initial lineup reveal thrill had faded. Bully played the fest in 2015, and now it’s Blondshell’s turn, as the alternative rock project of Sabrina Teitelbaum continues to astound. We first got on the Blondshell hype train back in late 2022, but last year’s breakout self-titled debut album brought Teitelbaum’s razor-sharp songwriting acumen and heavy melodies to widespread masses. Now as she prepares to play The Blue Stage at 5:55 p.m. on Sunday (May 26), this collab, a song all about risk-taking, has elevated our excitement levels.
“For me this is a song about splitting off from yourself,” says Teitelbaum. “It’s about uncertainty when you’re in different environments all the time. In a way it’s about wanting to cope with distance and change but it’s also just a bit about being reckless.” Bully’s Alicia Bognanno will not be coming out for the collab, since the band is playing BottleRock NapaValley festival in California at the same time (we assume, we’re not good with time zones), but “Docket” has been appearing on Blondshell’s recent setlists. Maybe Molly Rankin of Alvvays, who play after Blondshell, can lend a hand.
Bonus: Young The Giant, ‘Cough Syrup’
Look, if you’re not screaming “Cough Syrup” at the top of your fucking lungs at a music festival, are you even at a music festival? Come on now.