Rock in Rio 2024 review • DIY Magazine

40 years on from its inaugural event - a behemoth of an opening gambit that saw more than a million punters descend over 10 days to catch the likes of Queen and AC/DC - Rock in Rio still stands as one of the biggest and most ambitious festivals on the planet. Along the way, it’s launched editions in Las Vegas and Madrid; not three months ago, their bi-annual Rock in Rio Lisboa event took over Portugal. On home soil, meanwhile, the site lands in the wild middle ground between Glastonbury and an enormous funfair. Alongside a series of gigantic and intricately designed stages the festival also hosts a specially-commissioned musical, not one but two rollercoasters, its own theme song and a zipwire that flings giddy punters across the front of the main stage. If you’ve ever wanted to fly away from Ed Sheeran at great speed, Rock in Rio has just the ticket.

Sometimes dubbed ‘the Superbowl of music’, the double weekender has become something of a go-to stop not only for your classic megastar headline show (from Macca to Rihanna, their historical roster is vast) but for artists wanting to launch a pivotal moment in front of, famously, one of the world’s most feverous and receptive crowds. Not for nothing has ‘Come to Brazil’ become such a meme-worthy phrase on the touring circuit; watching the 100,000 or so punters that congregate each day revel right to the back rows makes your standard British festival look rather po-faced in comparison.

The first such coup of this year comes in the form of a ‘special appearance’ from Will Smith on Thursday night. Unlike his infamous 2022 Academy Awards special appearance, thankfully this time the only thing that slaps is a 20 minute megamix that marks the star’s first proper live outing in years, and something of a relaunch since dropping a pair of new tracks in the summer. Both those tracks - the swaggier, Jaden-featuring ‘Work Of Art’ and ‘You Can Make It’’s more earnest gospel vibes - feature here, but obviously it’s the classics (‘Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It’, ‘Miami’, ‘Men In Black’) that ring out to make one of the weekend’s most surreally feel-good moments.

Thursday’s Palco Mondo main stage is a family-friendly affair, giving a still-shoeless Joss Stone a rapturous reception before Sheeran - sporting a ‘Rio’-emblazoned T-shirt that looks like he bought it for a fiver from a nearby beach vendor - brings the evening to a close with a one-man show that uses minimal ingredients to incite maximum appreciation from the enormous crowd. However, it’s in the more local treats that the real spice of the festival shines through. On the Palco Sunset stage, local superstar Gloria Groove - a drag pop singer with a line in wind-machined power strutting that could give Beyoncé a run for her money - reflects the organically inclusive spirit of the event, whilst a firework-backed video segment that lights up the main stage, diving into Rock in Rio’s four-decade history, shows genuine joy in what they’ve created.

That attitude spills out in abundance on Saturday - dubbed ‘Brazil Day’ - where global touring artists are benched for the night in favour of a bill that shows off the best homegrown talents. Across the evening, every genre from the traditional rhythms of MPB (música popular brasileira) to samba to funk to rap is given a slot, represented by a handful of the country’s most notable talents. Highlights come from Gaby Amarantos on the MPB bill, who brings a full spectacle of gold star-adorned stagewear and surfy guitars, and the closing rock bill, where the crowd are festooned with Coldplay-style light-up bracelets, turning the evening into a blinking sea of partygoers.

Rewind 24 hours and Friday is ladies' night. Proving that it’s not actually that hard to book women on festival line-ups (Europe, take note), the whole bill is devoted to the gals, from young breakthrough stars to seasoned pros. In a world that still tries to make women over 40 as invisible as possible, it’s truly inspiring to see both Cyndi Lauper and Gloria Gaynor still giving it maximum welly in their respective early evening slots. Lauper speaks passionately of her charity, Girls Just Want To Have Fundamental Rights, ahead of the track that gave it its name (“I stand here and proudly sing this song”), while Gaynor, aged 81, closes her set with an elongated, resplendent ‘I Will Survive’, gifting Rio the biggest sing-along of the weekend.

Columbia’s Karol G - arguably the biggest Spanish-language artist in the world - is justifiably given a hero’s welcome. Opening with a riffy guitar solo that Slash would be proud of, her set is a true fiesta of dance and rhythm, with fireworks that somehow time perfectly even on the off beat, and the sort of effervescent energy that has every single body moving. “Friday night,” she grins, “is Latino party night." Not Latino but certainly up for a party meanwhile is headliner Katy Perry, who - despite releasing critically-panned new album ‘143’ that night - wisely decides to mainline the hits rather than leaning too heavily on her new wares. Say what you will about Perry’s recent artistic choices, but as far as pop superstars go, she’s got a back catalogue to rival the best of them. Clad in metallic Wonder Woman-esque armour, she bounces from ‘California Gurls’ to ‘E.T’., bringing fans on stage to dance for ‘Swish Swish’ and Cyndi Lauper back out for an emotional intergenerational duet of ‘Time After Time’. By the time she reaches the apex of empowerment anthems in ‘Roar’ and ‘Firework’, it’s a classic pop masterclass.

The festival’s closing day is a meshing of the sublime and the ridiculous in the most enjoyable of ways. If the idea of ‘00s R&B stars Ne-Yo and Akon still drawing crowds that could fill the O2 Arena three-times over seems wild on UK shores, in Brazil it’s like they never went away. Of the pair, Ne-Yo - dressed in a red satin suit, velvet slippers and trilby - wins out with a set that writhes and winks like the lustiest showman. From ‘Closer’ to ‘Let Me Love You’, he’s got bona fide hits too - augmented by a snippet of Beyoncé’s ‘Irreplaceable’, a number he casually penned behind the scenes. Shawn Mendes closes the Palco Mondo sunset with a casual bit of shirtlessness, however it’s a Palco Sunset headline with Actual Mariah Carey that will go down as Rock in Rio’s true crowning finale. Dressed in a sequinned, floor-length Brazilian flag dress and tottering around the stage giving everything and nothing at the same time, she is all you hope one of the world’s greatest living divas to be: a glowing angel possessed of a glass-shatteringly flawless vocal range and yet exuding the aura of zero fucks.

Uniting national pride with global megastars and a booking policy that’s genuinely rich, diverse and inclusive, Rock in Rio is proof that, to be massive, you don’t have to lose the heart at the centre.