By Erica Thompson, News Staff
“You can’t please everyone, but you can try,” Margulis said. “In the past, Springfest has been all one genre, so this year we really wanted to mix it up.”
Last year’s Springfest primarily featured rap and hip-hop acts with the lineup of Drake, 3OH!3 and KOS, while in 2009 the concert featured two alternative rock acts – Guster and Jimmy Eat World – and a DJ, Diplo.
“I knew that Wiz was getting really popular and Mac Miller and him are buddies so that just kind of fell into place,” she said. “Third Eye Blind is just such a solid throwback, and a great live band. I’ve seen Taking Back Sunday a million times and I know they put on a great live show, so I think it all worked out.”
Mac’s performance included his songs “Donald Trump,” “Knock Knock” and “Oy Vey,” among others.
“I didn’t really know who he was before the show, but a lot of people seemed to be big fans and he had a lot of energy which was a good way to start the show,” said Renee Smith, a freshman physical therapy major.
Taking Back Sunday took the stage following Miller and brought the audience on a “trip down memory lane,” said Kayla Capuano, a middler psychology major.
The band performed a mix of songs off “Tell All Your Friends,” “Louder Now” and “Where You Want To Be,” with crowd-favorite throwbacks like “You’re So Last Summer” and “A Decade Under the Influence,” as well as a new song titled “Don’t Lose Your Faith in Me.” The song is off its up-coming, self-titled album set to release this summer.
“I haven’t listened to Taking Back Sunday since I was in middle school so their new stuff really doesn’t mean much to me,” Capuano said. “But the old stuff is what I really was there to hear. Everybody loved ‘A Decade Under the Influence.’”
Third Eye Blind also played a range of old and new music, including some of their biggest hits like “I’ll Never Let You Go,” “Jumper” and “Semi-Charmed Life.” The band also switched up its set and included a quick cover of Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me.”
Khalifa, the final act, performed “In Tha Cut,” “The Thrill,” “Black and Yellow,” which seemed to be the most popular among the crowd, as well as a combination of other tracks from his older mix tapes.
“I bought my ticket primarily see Wiz,” said Forrest Peralta, a sophomore business major who paid $160 for a ticket at the door. “The other bands were alright but I was really there to see him. Pricey but worth it.”
Peralta is one of many students who experienced trouble purchasing tickets through myNEU’s virtual queue. Alex Lougovtsov, a middler business major, said he was in the virtual waiting room was bumped back to number 3900, twice, and wound up without a ticket.
“I was pissed. I was waiting on tickets before all of my friends and I was the only one who didn’t get one,” he said. “I wound up having to buy tickets for like sixty bucks off somebody.”
With tickets in such high demand, Margulis attributes much of the success of this year’s Springfest concert to a marketing technique different than previous years. She said creating hype and making Facebook teasers got the student body interested and excited enough, apparently, to pay upwards of four times the facevalue of a ticket.
“To have people approach you that you don’t know, telling you how rad the concert was, that’s the most rewarding part of this,” Margulis said.
– News staff Allie Ehrhart and Emma Shuck contributed to this report.
