Ahead of her set at Lollapalooza, Gayle stopped by the Audacy tent to chat it up with Julia. Talking about everything from her breezy but easily stainable outfit, to her excitement about getting to perform mega hit “abcdefu” for the Lolla crowd.
LISTEN NOW: Gayle talks with Julia backstage at Lollapalooza 2022
“It’s always so fun to play that song,” Gayle said of her TikTok famous, chart-topping track. “I’m very very excited to play, I always get really nervous and I expect nobody to be there, but I’m so excited… it’s always the last song I sing and everybody gets so hype.”
Seeing as the songs can bring up some pretty intense feels for anyone listening, Julia was curious if Gayle has ever spotted something wild happen in the crowd while she’s performed that song.
The answer — Yup.
“I just did this show, I did this festival is Québec, and it was amazing, it was one of the biggest crowds I’ve ever performed for, I believe 80,000 people, it was something crazy like that. It was just a sea full of people, and people started standing on each other. And I’ve never seen anything.. like grown adults, all of a sudden I’ll be playing and these people just pop up.”
Having the best seat in the house to see the crowd, it was hard not to get distracted, but eventually security got involved, or at least tried to. While being distracted during a performance is not ideal, Gayle made sure to note that while she tries to block things out, it’s also top of mind for her to have her eyes peeled for anything less than desirable.
“I as the artist, someone who has the best view of the stage, I want and need to pay attention to see if anything wrong is happening. I need to make sure if people are to closer to the bars, people need to back up so nobody gets like crushed… Or if anybody is touching anybody inappropriately you can sometimes see that, or if somebody passes out, like you as the artists like you can see in the crowd, but also like people are waving, and sometimes you have to be able to discern what's an emergency and what's somebody just trying to get attention.”
WATCH NOW: Gayle talks with Julia backstage at Lollapalooza 2022
When it comes to spotting things in the crowd, according to things Gayle’s seen has to be “just people screaming at the top of their lungs, like the songs, and just being excited and jumping around with their friends.”
She continued, “there’s a few times when I’d be in a show and people think I can’t see them and so they’ll like do something crazy and I’ll point to them and they’ll be like ‘ahhhh’.” Other times Gayle spots lovebirds in the crowd, “like when I’m singing a love song, looking into each others eyes, or best friends just like dancing, or people that do their own like choreography.”
As for who’s set she was excited to see at the festival, Gayle had to miss her absolute fave Fletcher to wake up early the next day, but had plans of possibly mistakenly sneaking in to her green room to make up for it.
Other topics up for discussion included, “respectfully and consensually” signing peoples boobs, a study of the human experience volume two, gearing up for tour and more.
Check out Gayle’s entire interview above.
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