{"id":849519,"date":"2026-08-09T21:11:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T21:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/849519\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T21:11:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T21:11:20","slug":"the-strokes-bring-out-a-megastar-for-outside-lands-biggest-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/849519\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strokes bring out a megastar for Outside Lands’ biggest surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

The two biggest acts at this year\u2019s Outside Lands joined forces Saturday night when the Strokes invited Charli XCX<\/a> back onto the Lands End stage to sing \u201cTake It or Leave It,\u201d the blistering closer to their debut album, released when she was 8 years old. Less than 24 hours after headlining the same field, the British pop star traded verses with Julian Casablancas, who greeted her arrival with an admission about their respective places in music today. The result was the festival\u2019s biggest surprise and an unlikely meeting between two generations of terminally cool pop music.<\/p>\n

Formed by five friends in Manhattan in the late 1990s, the Strokes went from playing Lower East Side clubs to becoming, almost overnight, the coolest band in the world. The tightly wound interplay of Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr.\u2019s guitar work, pop choruses and Casablancas\u2019 distorted baritone, liable at any moment to erupt from a sleazy croon into a ragged howl, made \u201cLast Nite,\u201d \u201cSomeday\u201d and \u201cReptilia\u201d sound like rock music dragged abruptly into a new century. Music that made a generation of millennials start wearing tight black jeans.<\/p>\n

The years since have brought some brilliant albums but also infighting, long silences, solo projects, near collapse and strange musical detours. Somehow, they keep finding their way back, with 2020\u2019s Grammy-winning, glorious \u201cThe New Abnormal\u201d and now with the divisive autotuned\u00a0mayhem of \u201cReality Awaits.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s sometimes hard to know if Casablancas likes being in the Strokes. Last year, he said the band had entered a period when it was being kept together \u201csolely for financial reasons.\u201d On the Lands End stage Saturday, he complained that his bandmates were \u201cbullying\u201d him into playing the evening\u2019s biggest crowd-pleaser, \u201cLast\u00a0Nite.\u201d The band was also missing founding guitarist Nick Valensi, who announced a \u201ctemporary break\u201d from touring this summer without publicly giving a reason. But Casablancas also just enjoys saying s\u2014t. Over the past few months, he has made headlines for criticizing American Zionists, protesting Jeff Bezos with an anti-Amazon T-shirt at Coachella and swiping at Harry Styles and YouTube critic Anthony Fantano in lyrics on the new album. The last time the Strokes headlined Outside Lands, at the pandemic-delayed festival in October 2021, Casablancas complained from the stage that a San Francisco restaurant had refused him entry because his vaccination paperwork did not satisfy its rules.<\/a><\/p>\n

His crankiness was mostly absent Saturday as he led one of the weekend\u2019s densest and rowdiest crowds through anthems like \u201cThe Adults Are Talking\u201d and \u201cWhat Ever Happened?,\u201d alongside lesser-known songs that landed just as hard, including the brilliant \u201cDine N\u2019Dash\u201d from the new record.<\/p>\n

Before bringing out his megastar guest, Casablancas addressed the crowd: \u201cHow are you San Franpsychos doing tonight? It\u2019s good to be back in the dive bar capital of the world.\u201d Someone near the front screamed back, \u201cJulian, meet me at the Page later!\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, Charli XCX walked onstage to a roar. Casablancas introduced her as the \u201cqueen of album sales,\u201d noting that both acts released albums on July 24, before conceding, \u201cShe won, won by a lot. She\u2019s a giant pop star, in our defense.\u201d Charli opened \u201cTake It or Leave It\u201d with an unexpectedly pretty rendition of its bridge \u2014 \u201cHe\u2019s gonna let you down, and gonna break your back for a chance\u201d \u2014 before the band crashed in. She took the lead on the first verse, beginning with, \u201cLeave me alone, I\u2019m in control,\u201d her voice fitting the song\u2019s punk swagger more naturally than anyone might have expected. She and Casablancas traded lines, shouted the chorus together, embraced when it was over, and then Charli disappeared into the fog as quickly as she had arrived.<\/p>\n

Casablancas ended the night with another burst of crowd banter, complaining that he had been unable to watch PinkPantheress because she was playing simultaneously on the Sutro Stage. He also turned his attention to Djo, who had performed immediately before the Strokes at Lands End, saying the “Stranger Things” star<\/a> sounded like \u201cSystem of a Chemical Romance.\u201d Whether this was praise, a dig or simply another joke that amused Casablancas, it was hard to tell.<\/p>\n

While many bands that peaked 25 years ago are content to play safe greatest-hits sets and sell T-shirts, the Strokes remain an exciting and unpredictable force, still pushing it even when not everyone likes where they end up. Their internal dynamics remain difficult to untangle, and Valensi\u2019s absence was sorely felt. Earlier, Casablancas\u00a0made a cryptic comment about drummer Fab Moretti drinking again. But beneath all the verbal s\u2014tposting and provocation came a seemingly genuine moment at the end of the sole encore \u201cYou Only Live Once,\u201d when Casablancas turned toward his drummer and old friend. \u201cI\u2019d die for you, Fabrizio Moretti,\u201d he said. The band then walked offstage at exactly its contractually allotted time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two biggest acts at this year\u2019s Outside Lands joined forces Saturday night when the Strokes invited Charli…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":849520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136,292366,420453],"class_list":["post-849519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-sfgculture","tag-sfgoutsidelands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/849520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}