There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing – or so goes a Norse proverb commonly cited in my Midwestern upbringing.
It’s a sentiment that served ACL Weekend One attendees well because, while there’s little you can do clothing-wise to simultaneously tackle the heat, sun, and dust typical of October in Texas, a good pair of boots will protect against mud pretty reliably. Add a weatherproof jacket for the light showers that fell Friday and Sunday and you just might’ve enjoyed the lower temperatures and overcast skies.
Ahead of the festival, representatives for C3, the event producers behind ACL, told the Chronicle that they were already clearing drains around the park, pre-positioning drying equipment, and adjusting their setup schedule to respond to the roughly inch-and-a-half of rain that fell Thursday.
Morning squeegee and vacuum truck sessions and endless applications of mulch were little match for the many stomping feet churning Zilker Park into a mud pit. When gates opened two hours late on Saturday, backhoe loaders were still pushing the sloppiest of the slop into cordoned-off piles and staff continued laying down turf and plywood over some of the muddiest areas throughout the day. Light Sunday afternoon showers certainly didn’t help, but didn’t seem too detrimental either. In a statement, festival organizers told the Chronicle that they were bringing in extra resources starting Sunday night to remove temporary turf and ground protection.
“We will prioritize rest and recovery of the park this week by strictly limiting activity on the grounds before next weekend,” they wrote. “Assessment of the grounds is underway, and we will meet daily with Austin Parks and Recreation to prepare for remediation after the festival.”
Longtime attendees recalled the torrential downpours of 2009 and organizers’ use of Dillo Dirt, a trademarked compost created at Austin Water’s Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant that combines yard waste and heat-treated sewage waste to create a recycled soil product (one tested by the Environmental Protection Agency and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality). Veteran C3 Presents operations employee Mike Walker took to TikTok to dispel rumors that the mixture was still in use, likely because squeamish citizens can’t separate the idea of poop from scientific processes proven to not carry pathogens.
Dirt and mulch of all varieties don’t always have the most pleasant odor, but this year’s slop seemed to cause far less stink and strife and, by Sunday, festivalgoers appeared to have made peace with the swamp. We’ll see what that means for the grounds of Weekend Two.
Just Dance: Electronic Influence Dominates Lineup
Geese’s “100 Horses” didn’t make it onto their Sunday set list, but its final line echoed in my head as my poorly coordinated hips grew practiced throughout Weekend One: “There is only dance music in times of war.”
No rap or country artists are among this year’s headliners, as festival fans and music nerds were quick to point out when the lineup was announced. Club-friendly, electronic-embracing artists seem to have filled the gaps, as their place in mainstream culture – and similar festival lineups – increases. Assigning causation is a losing game, but it’s tempting to examine this trend running parallel to broader sociopolitical happenings.
Friday headliner Charli xcx can be credited with ushering in the mainstream attention shift to dance music. Her momentous 2024 BRAT album brought unwieldy feelings into the club, musing over feminine insecurities and familial reflections within a genre generally associated with three-word stanzas and vague repetitions – when lyrics are present at all. This year’s Music, Fashion, Film finds her dabbling in darker sounds and themes, asserting that “the world is gonna end” and none of those three creative disciplines can stop it. Merch shirts stamped with a line from David Cronenberg’s spoken-word monologue on the album dotted the muddy grounds: “Oblivion is freedom.”
A jaded shrug and a drive for physiological release on the sweaty dance floor pulse through Geese and Charli xcx’s end-times lyricism. Different beats-per-minute options for letting go were offered by dubstep producer Skrillex, DJ duo SOFI TUKKER, laser-loving EDM trio Levity, electronic acts Snow Strippers and Fcukers, and hyperpop artist underscores. The xx and Lykke Li’s strains of dreamy indie-pop fit into the mix too, with the former remixing some of their 2010s hits into bass-pounding dance tracks. Pop artists like Lorde and Rebecca Black have infused recent releases with more house and techno-inspired elements. Everyone seems to want a shot at their track lighting up the dance floor. Even on the rock side of things, clear tones were hard to come by this year, with distortion-praising, punk-inspired acts like Amyl & the Sniffers and Turnstile stirring mosh pits and fueling a different-yet-similar release.
Given Austin’s outlaw country reputation, two-stepping tradition, and last year’s emphasis on the genre, it was startling to spot roots-inspired Americana acts only in the smaller print. Folk singer Jesse Welles drew a crowd for his politically pointed tunes on Friday, and up-and-coming traditionalist Coleman Jennings carried the weakly lit torch. In these cash-strapped times, I’ve heard jokes that electronic music is popular now because there’s fewer people to pay – a theory that doesn’t explain the dearth of rappers.
Rap has had a notoriously difficult time flourishing in the Live Music Capital, but one or two rappers have reliably headlined the Zilker Park-hosted festival since Kanye West’s appearance in 2011. Last year, viral swamp princess Doechii and Auto-Tune pioneer T-Pain drew giant crowds across generations. Bad Bunny is the genre’s latest star, and while absent from the festival circuit, fellow Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko performed their duet “FINA” Saturday in the closest thing to a headlining rap set in store this year. The rise of Latin rap certainly feels ironic given the inhumane treatment of immigrants at the hands of Trump’s administration and ICE, a dissonance between cultural appreciation and physical mistreatment not unfamiliar to the rap world.
Both rap and country have historically been touted as voices of the proletariat, specificity-prizing storytelling vessels that have struggled to receive their dues from gatekeeping institutions. The same might be said of electronic music in regard to institutional ignorance, but its reflection of human emotion falls more on the side of communal catharsis than empathetic recognition. One year’s lineup is no prediction model for the next, nor a perfect encapsulation of music trends, but it seems festival organizers bet on the idea that audiences wanted to turn their brains off as the beat dropped. The mud-braving crowds seem to have agreed.
This article appears in October 9 • 2026.
