With no disrespect to Peck or The Aces, there was no chance either could have prepared the Pride audience for the maximalist excellence of Kim Petras’ headlining set. Orville Peck rocks Nashville Pride, photos by Taylor Lomax. Peck’s cover of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” released recently in honor of the tenth anniversary of its namesake album, was a festival highlight-especially in a set of performances surprisingly devoid of Pride mainstays like Cher’s “Believe” or Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” His aesthetic and sound felt like a perfect fit for the Nashville setting, pairing a stunning retro sensibility with more modern and subversive gender commentary. Masked gay Canadian country crooner (what a string of words!) Orville Peck followed, presenting arguably the rawest musical talent of the night with a somewhat barebones (not a read) set that placed his unparalleled Cashian vocals front and center. The Aces performing at Nashville Pride, photos by Taylor Lomax. By the time lead singer Cristal Ramirez introduced their debut single “Stuck,” which served as the set’s closer, you could practically feel a wave of euphoria rush over the park.
Their set, a solid forty minutes of non-stop energy, felt equal parts larger-than-life and intimately raw, stadium-ready without sacrificing any of their trademark vulnerability. Saturday’s performers took the stage in front of a park that was more mud than solid ground-though you wouldn’t know it from the size and immense enthusiasm of the crowd before them.įirst up on the main stage lineup was indie-pop outfit The Aces, who brought their sunny, bouncy, and deeply queer anthems to a crowd that ate them right up. Nashville Pride was no exception, starting late on Saturday due to rain concerns and ultimately forgoing the festival entirely on Sunday.īut gay people are going to find a way to party no matter what. Between the cancellations of Bonnaroo and Imagine this month and the heavy storms that threatened to cancel this weekend’s Music Midtown, acts of God (read: the irreversible damage done by climate change) have challenged the industry notion that the show must go on. It was a fitting coda to a deeply unpredictable and eclectic iteration of Nashville Pride (which, I might add, also saw me brushing elbows with Kacey Musgraves, who responded to my complimenting her outfit with a simple “I know, right?”)-one befitting the weekend’s unorthodox placement in September.Īmong other things, this year has taught us that holding festivals in September in the South is, at best, misguided. I’m still not sure if we seemed particularly enthusiastic or if we were just being typecast as white twinks (XCX’s target demographic), but either way, the answer was a resounding yes, followed by the least graceful entrance onto a stage the Basement East has ever seen. “Do you know the Charli verse?” she’d shouted in my and my roommate’s faces as the song’s glitchy trap-infused refrain blasted all around us. I was more than a little drunk when Canadian underground rapper Tommy Genesis pulled me on stage to rap Charli XCX’s verse on her “100 Bad.” Kim Petras performing at Nashville Pride, photo by Taylor Lomax.