Spring Fling Festival: Macklemore Tells Attendees to Push Gay Rights On White House

In light of the beautiful weather and end of the semester, these next few weekends are filled with tons of parties and other social events for college students. I know the next few weekends are jam-packed with things to do, right up until finals week in early May. Students who go to school in the wonderful city of Washington, D.C., as I do, kicked off the sunny weather this past weekend by attending a double header concert: Saturday night Calvin Harris DJ’ed at Echostage and Macklemore and Ryan Lewis played all day on the quad for this year’s Spring Fling Festival.  

Echostage is the District’s largest nightlife concert venue, and hundreds of young people flocked the lines in the cold, even hours before Calvin Harris came on at 1 a.m. If you are not familiar with Harris, among his most famous tracks are Sweet Nothing and I Need Your Love, as well as being featured on Rihanna’s famous tune, We Found Love, all of which were played throughout the night. The 30,000+ square foot room housed the intoxicated, the junkies, those with glow sticks, those wearing rave tutus…you get the point. It was solely a feel good concert, and was an absolutely amazing time as people danced from the hours of 9 p.m. with the opening acts all the way until 4 a.m. when Calvin Harris finished his set.

My friends and I then woke up the next morning and rallied to attend our school’s Spring Fling concert featuring the newly popular Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. They engaged with the ground for the entirety of their three-hour set, at one point jumping onto the hands of concertgoers.

Possibly the most memorable part was when one student threw his phone to Macklemore who then took a selfie-photo of himself with the entire student crowd behind him. It even made it on the cover page of imgur! He jumped right into "Thrift Shop," arguably his most famous song, and kids went nuts. Given the political context of the moment, and the somewhat large gay population at my city school, he later on played his pro-gay rights song, "Same Love," which too had everyone singing along. In a nod to the D.C.-based television show House of Cards, he urged students to rush the White House with actor Kevin Spacey to petition for gay rights. Macklemore ran his own show, leaving students wanting so much more that he played a three song encore (which one of my best friends actually started!)

These two unbelievable concerts occurred this past weekend and were high energy dance fests that left students with smiles on their faces and a good old time. This upcoming weekend has more in store, and college students across the nation are undoubtedly holding their Spring concerts. Yeesh, college is just so darn fun.