A late season nor’easter on Thursday into Friday morning couldn’t stop Boston, MA’s music fans from their annual descent onto the Harvard University athletic fields over Memorial Day Weekend for the 2025 edition of Boston Calling Music Festival. While the weather came in contrast to the intense heat of the past few years’ editions, vibes remained high throughout Boston Calling 2025. Check out a rundown of the most memorable sets and storylines from the weekend below.

New, Rotating Green Stage

Not without a few technical hiccups (common at festivals regardless of stage setup), the new, rotating Green Stage opened up the lawn, reduced bottlenecks, and improved sound quality from the old Red Stage next to the Main Stage. Fans raved about bigger screens for those further back, and everyone had more than enough space without the borderline crushes from past years.

Artist Collabs

Two massive artist collaborations gave Boston Calling a taste of what is more commonplace at festivals higher up on the national scene. On the country front, Friday’s headliner Luke Combs brought out Megan Maroney to assist on his song “Beer Never Broke My Heart”. On Sunday, Tom Morello— playing on his alma mater’s campus—brought out Chuck D for “Prophets of Rage”, the eponymous song by their mid-2010s supergroup with Chuck’s Public Enemy cohort DJ Lord, Morello’s Rage Against the Machine bandmates Brad Wilk and Tim Commerford, Cypress Hill’s B-Real.  This is definitely something we’d love to see more of going forward at the festival—pairings and bookings of artists who can share the stage together for special moments.

T-Pain

As promised, T-Pain brought the party—with one of the Blue Stage’s largest crowds ever for his time slot. Rain and cold temperatures couldn’t stop everyone from dancing as his tore his hits like “Buy U A Drank” and “Good Life” and even led the crowd in a cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”. T-Pain was a bit of an outlier on this lineup, but it didn’t matter—everyone was having a blast. He’s a true entertainer.

Cage The Elephant

The Shultz brothers and company jumped, ran into the crowd, and rocked their way through their set. The only downside was that it was a bit shorter than we would have hoped for a band of their energy, and they didn’t have the pyrotechnics from their headlining Neon Pill tour last summer. Matthew Shultz, in particular, didn’t stop running and dancing the entire time—despite donning a designer suit for the occasion. There are no bands right now that can match Cage’s live energy night in and night out.

The Black Crowes

Now 40-plus years and ten albums in, The Black Crowes somehow still feel as fresh as ever while maintaining a classic rock sensibility that would make Greta Van Fleet want to rip them off, too. Scheduled against Avril Lavigne’s set on the Main Stage, Chris Robinson, Rich Robinson, and company delivered a memorable set including hits like “Hard to Handle”, “Thorn In My Pride”, “Remedy”, and Twice as Hard”.

Vampire Weekend

With their best album yet (Only God Was Above Us) and a full headlining tour last year under their belt, Vampire Weekend hit Boston hard with new classics like “Ice Cream Piano” and “Capricon” alongside all-timers like “Campus”, “Unbelievers”, and“Diane Young”. While the band skipped “Ladies of Cambridge”, the 2008 track whose Boston-oriented lyrics we borrowed for this recap, they did bring the set to a close with the Massachusetts-appropriate “Walcott”. This was another set, like Cage’s, that we would have preferred to see a bit longer—their discography is so deep at this point, and we wouldn’t have minded catching one of those crowd-request encores that keep going viral at their headlining shows.

Remi Wolf

Despite the most severe technical issues of the weekend delaying her set about 15 minutes, singer Remi Wolf was a force to be reckoned with. She should be more of a mainstream crossover hit than she is right now, but that doesn’t matter. Belting, shaking her butt, high-kicking, and dancing her way through her set, Remi even hopped on drums for a song. She was the perfect act to follow up Goth Babe, and was definitely one of the most talked-about artists of the weekend.

Dave Matthews Band

At first look, Dave Matthews Band may not have seemed as exciting as Sunday headliners at past editions of Boston Calling, but name appeal doesn’t matter. No fans left after Vampire Weekend; everyone stayed for Dave. One fan we spoke to even said it was his 178th DMB show. It felt like the perfect set to end a New England0specific festival, with classics like “Tripping Billies”, “Grey Street”, “Crash Into Me”, and more, plus his old, reliable “All Along The Watchtower” (Bob Dylan) arrangement and a newer take on “It’s Your Thing” (The Isley Brothers) sung by keyboardist Buddy Strong. While we’d love to see a more “of the moment” headliner next year, Dave Matthews Band showed why they deserved to close out the festival and then some.

View a gallery of photos from the 2025 edition of Boston Calling Music Festival below via Brent Goldman.