Weekend one wrapped yesterday and your feed is already unbearable, full of drone shots and people crying at the mainstage like they invented feelings. Fine. But everyone who actually knows Tomorrowland knows the second weekend is the better one. The DJs have shaken off the rust, the crowd skews more heads and fewer influencers doing a bit for the camera, and the set that flopped on Friday the 17th gets quietly fixed by Friday the 24th. Boom, Belgium goes again this Friday, and here are the five tracks I want the mainstage to earn.
1. Hardwell - Spaceman
Hardwell headlines the mainstage on the Friday of weekend two, which means Spaceman is coming whether you like it or not, and the truth is you’ll like it. Those first synth stabs still detonate a field of 60,000 people on contact, and the man has been dining out on that hook since 2012 without it going stale once.
2. Eric Prydz - Opus
If Prydz plays this and doesn’t run the full nine-minute version with the slow filter sweep that takes about four minutes to fully open, I want a refund on a ticket I didn’t buy. It’s the closest dance music gets to being cruel about patience, and it pays off every single time.
3. Martin Garrix - Animals
Garrix was 16 when he made this and it still empties every drink onto the floor when the drop hits. Say what you want about the big-room era being a cultural low point, that toothy lead riff from 2013 is welded to a generation’s brainstem and there’s no getting it out.
4. Swedish House Mafia - Don’t You Worry Child
A billion YouTube views and every one of them earned. This is the song that made a stadium of adults sing a chorus about their dead grandfather without a shred of embarrassment, and if it drops at sundown on the mainstage the whole field will do it again.
5. Alesso - Heroes (we could be) ft. Tove Lo
The Tove Lo vocal is the whole trick here, sitting just slightly sad on top of a build that refuses to let you be sad. Eleven years old and it still works as a closer, the kind of track that makes a hungover Saturday crowd forgive you for anything.
Book the second weekend. Thank me Monday.