Bonnaroo 2024 Artist Spotlight: Faye Webster

Like we’ve been doing for many years now, we’re making it our mission to help you get acquainted with many of our favorite acts from Bonnaroo‘s 2024 lineup. After roaring back to life in 2022, after two years off due to Covid and weather, and feeling fully like its old self again with a great fest last summer, this year marks Bonnaroo’s 21st installment (and 23rd anniversary), boasting not only another great and varied lineup, but also a continuation of some of the big changes and improvements rolled out over the last couple of years, with more flexibility in ticketing and camping, a reimagined “Outeroo” campground area, new activations, and further new ways to Roo. Back once again in its usual June 13-16 timeframe, we’re counting down the days until another great weekend on the farm.

As we dig through the entire schedule, we’ll highlight a spread of performers spanning across genres and stages, big and small, new and old, to bring you some of the most interesting, lesser-known, and most highly-recommended among this year’s crop of artists. And as our time at ‘Roo approaches, we’ll also be bringing you some special features and full list-style daily lineup guides, to help you plan your weekend ahead of the fest. While these previews won’t span every artist, and might omit some more obvious must-see acts, we hope they’ll serve as a way to help you navigate Bonnaroo’s gargantuan lineup, and to make the most of your busy weekend at the fest!

Grab your tickets right here if you haven’t already, and read on for our Bonnaroo Artist Spotlight!

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Briefly a Nashville resident while attending (and subsequently dropping out of) Belmont, 26 year old Atlanta singer-songwriter Faye Webster is an exciting and buzzworthy indie/folk breakout, and an artist hard to pin to any single genre convention. Raised on country and western, Webster’s first album, released in her teens, is more informed by her Americana upbringing, but after getting into hip hop in high school, switching from songwriting to photography during her brief stint at Belmont, and falling into the Awful Records collective as her hometown friend group, Webster’s poppy, country-infused indie folk and synth-soaked style began to also take subtle cues from hip hop, leading to a pretty remarkable, eponymous 2017 LP (technically her sophomore release, but for all intents and purposes, treated as a formal debut). Simultaneously fostering her visual art career as a photographer, Faye’s hip hop ties extend behind the camera as well, counting Atlanta rap legends like Killer Mike, Lil Yachty, D.R.A.M. and Offset among her portrait subjects (Faye’s also dipped into directing, including work on her own music videos). And after nabbing a deal with Secretly Canadian, the talented singer amassed further critical-acclaim for 2019’s Atlanta Millionaires Club. Drenched in pedal steel, the record continued Webster’s indie Americana and folk pop influences, fueled with a throughly contemporary indie aesthetic that echos other buzzy artists like Julia Jacklin and Big Thief. As her popularity has continued to balloon, Faye has had quite a prolific run post-pandemic, reaching an even wider audience with confident, contemplative, and musically adventurous 2021 album I Know I’m Funny haha, pulling influences from alt-country, r&b, and indie pop, and drawing praise from everyone from Pitchfork to Barack Obama). In the following year, she released two EPs, the live Live at Electric Lady and a collection of new songs and orchestral re-workings called Car Therapy Sessions, but Faye’s biggest release of as late was this year’s new full-length, Underdressed at the Symphony. Similar in sonic ethos and thematic inspiration as I Know I’m Funny, Webster’s latest arrives at a time she’s more popular than ever (thanks to new viral attention from TikTok and the ongoing strength of some of her catchiest singles), and feels like her most focused, bold, earnest, and polished work yet; a culmination of everything she’s honed to date. We first caught the singer at Bonnaroo 2019 on the come up, and imagine she’ll have a considerably larger audience on her return, and for good reason!

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