Gates open in Boom in a few hours and the second, better weekend of Tomorrowland is officially on. You either flew to Belgium or you’re doing what the rest of us are doing, which is refreshing the livestream at your desk and pretending to work. Either way the mainstage wants your hands in the air, so I’m not going to fight it. These four are the pure sundown-singalong anthems, the ones with no shame and no subtlety, and today is the one day of the year you’re allowed to love them out loud.
1. Tiësto - Red Lights
The Belgian godfather of all this playing to a Belgian crowd, and Red Lights is still his cleanest festival weapon. That vocal hook is engineered in a lab to be screamed by 50,000 sunburned people, and every time it lands it works exactly as designed.
2. Nicky Romero - Toulouse
No words, no vocal, just that squeaky lead riff and a whole field losing its mind anyway. Fourteen years old and it still turns up in half the mainstage sets, because nothing gets a crowd off the ground faster than a melody everyone already knows by heart.
3. David Guetta ft. Sia - Titanium
Say what you want about Guetta being a hit factory, the man handed Sia a beat and she turned it into the loudest karaoke moment in festival history. When that chorus hits at golden hour the whole site becomes one enormous, slightly out-of-tune choir, and it’s genuinely moving despite yourself.
4. Axwell Λ Ingrosso - Sun Is Shining
They shot the video in Antwerp, half an hour up the road from the festival, which makes this the most on-brand possible way to open a Belgian weekend. It’s relentlessly, almost aggressively happy, and after the week we’ve all had I’ll take it without a single complaint.
Volume up, out of office on, see you Sunday.