Eminem Austin City Limit Festival Performance is the Best Spectacle.
Austin City Limits Festival, a Texas tradition on par with South by Southwest, began its second year as a two-week music extravaganza with three days of mostly clear skies in gorgeous Zilker Park. Onstage, veteran rockers Pearl Jam took the top headline position, while Eminem nearly stole the show. The crowd was enthralled by Skrillex, Zedd, and Major Lazer’s EDM trifecta, as well as the Dirty South sweetness of Outkast’s continuing reunion and Beck’s kitchen-sink eclecticism. With the first half of the 2014 edition in the books, there is one thing everyone can agree on: Iggy Azalea needs a bigger platform next weekend.
Eminem’s last week’s ACL Music Festival Performance is named the “Best Spectacle” by Rollingstone. The Performance when Eminem Headlines the Saturday’s Austin city festival lineup as he performed he closes the Saturday’s ACL Music fest at Zilker Park Austin, Texas. Eminem, Dressed in youthful black shorts, a zip-up hoodie, and a cap, Eminem remains a household pop-culture commodity, and his stadium show packed sardines around the Samsung Galaxy stage.
His recent collaborations with chart-toppers like Rihanna, Haley Williams, and Drake made it rain–“Forever,” specifically, came packaged with Super Bowl pyrotechnics. He showed why he’s attained such longevity in an hour, 45-minute set, cramming 31 songs into his rapid-fire set.
Eminem had to cut many of his songs after a couple of verses, but there was no complaining as he fits almost all of his biggest singles into the time.
The Rollingstone wrote “Fans of Eminem began assembling hours before his Saturday night set, and by the time the Detroit rapper took the stage, the crowd rivaled that of any headliner in the festival’s history.
This speaks volumes about both Eminem’s continued drawing power and the transformation of the festival, which began as a mostly roots rock and country endeavor but has eagerly embraced rap stars like Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. Either way, Em took the stage as a top prizefighter, hitting the speedbag through dense verses and power-punching the hooks.
Cuts from his opening trio of records worked best – the bounce of “The Real Slim Shady” and “Without Me” was an easy highlight – and the set built toward those quasi-motivational anthems “Not Afraid” and “Lose Yourself,” rapped as fireworks exploded for a knockout blow. Still, a few songs earlier, one had to engage in an impressive suspension of disbelief – or at least note the irony – when Eminem said he’d been remiss in not addressing all the ladies in the crowd, as if they’d not been a party to the hour-long tapestry misogyny he’d crafted.” as they honor the Rapper’s Epic ACL performance as the Best Spectacle.
Also Rolling Stone honored Best of The Fest to Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam has progressed to the point in their career where they can do almost anything onstage, including performing a festival-closing set that does not feature the career-defining song “Jeremy.” Or start with a sad song like “The Long Road” and quickly transition into the almost-hardcore punk of “Go” without losing the audience. In between songs, Vedder was frequently at his wine-buzzed, extemporaneous best, mocking a crowd member waving a flag for the size of its pole, asking the audience to register to vote in the November midterm elections, and inviting the crowd to a keg party at a crew member’s Austin house.
