Dance Music’s Stars Shine at San Francisco’s Outside Lands Festival

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San Francisco turned into a magical music revelry for three days last weekend. Music lovers and foodies took over the mystical Golden Gate Park to sing, dance, eat, drink, relax, live outside and collect moments they’ll never forget at Outside Lands.

The 7^th annual festival boasted some of the biggest names in electronic music. Chromeo and Holy Ghost! helped kicked off the groovy dance party on the sunny, opening day. The Brit boys from Disclosure set the tone for the main stage on opening night, right before sundown and Kanye West - playing crowd favorites such as “Latch”, “White Noise” & “You & Me.”  German producer Boys Noize closed out the Panhandle Stage on day 2 with his hard electro set, and upholding to last year’s act at the same stage, Dillon Francis.

Flume attracted most of the festival during his set, with his adorable self, pumping out heavy bass tracks to an underestimated crowd to the boys of Duck Sauce dropping a ‘duck beak’ party, where fun met funk – A-Trak and Armand Van Halden handed out plastic duckbills to the crowd for a wacky, mega party mid-day.

Day 3 drew in massive crowds – acts such as The Flaming Lips, gave a fun, psychedelic, groovy performance complete with mushrooms, rainbows and sun costumes (gotta love some Wayne Coyne), with the London-based electronic tastemaker Gold Panda hypnotized the early afternoon with his part underground and part experimental instrumental style of music.

Tycho, the San Francisco-based producer better known as Scott Hansen (and his band), led an ethereal, ambient and dreamy set –with a perfectly paired sound of stylized instruments and electronic production, making it the ideal chill music for an afternoon in the park, marking one of the festival's most impressive and surprising sets.

As nightfall hit and the super moon illuminated the sky – The Killers and Tiesto closed out the final night. Frontman Brandon Flowers sang crowd favorites such as “Smile,” “That Way It Was,” “Mr. Brightside” “When We Were Young” – with nearly everyone swooning to each melody and lyric Mr. Flowers sang as Karl the Fog rolled in. Tiesto threw an electrifying dance party under the full moon – with the energy of the crowd proving enough to keep the festival-goers warm. Songs from his set included Tegan and Sara’s harder remixed version of “Feel It In My Bones,” Matthew Koma’s “Wasted,” John Legend’s remix of “All Of Me” and appropriately capping the night off with “Chasing Summers.”

The 3-day fest, filled with 10 hours of music laid out in seven stages from a huge breadth of today’s hottest and emerging artists, was a great way to cap off the summer in San Francisco — celebrating the spirit of the culinary scene & adventure, the community and a love for music.

Did you attend Outside Lands this year? Who was your favorite act? Any memorable moments? And don’t worry, if you missed this year’s festival, it will be around until 2021.

Written by: Thao Le