Demi Lovato Performed At Festival After Calling Out Lollapalooza Crowds

Demi Lovato is being called out by fans for performing at a huge music festival — just one week after they criticized crowds at Lollapalooza

If you’re a person who spends any time on the internet, you’ve surely seen photos from Lollapalooza by now. The music festival drew horror from around the world when photos showed a huge, maskless crowd at the four-day fest — it’s estimated that Lolla brought 100,000 people per day to Chicago’s Grant Park. At the time, even Demi Lovato joined in on the criticism, shaming the festival and its attendees on Instagram.

On their Instagram stories, Lovato shared a photo of the huge crowd and wrote, “C’mon y’all!!! good morning from Lollapalooza. Yes this pic is real. There is still a pandemic happening!!!” Lovato shared the photo of the fourth and final day of Lolla.

But just a week later, Lovato performed at a music festival themself. They shared a snap on their Instagram story from Anaheim, California’s Sad Summer Festival, where they joined the band All Time Low onstage for a surprise performance. In the photo Lovato shared, you can see a huge, maskless crowd. Sure, it’s not nearly the same size as the 100,000 people who attended Lollapalooza, but it’s still a stark change from what Lovato was sharing last week. Over this photo, they wrote, “Y’all were so fun!!! Thanks for having me.”

Many people online saw the move as pretty hypocritical, and they took to social media to say that.

What makes this worse is that Lollapalooza had a number of pretty stringent security measures in place. Festival attendees were required to show either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test, and hundreds of people were turned away from the festival for not having either. Masks were also required in all indoor spaces in Grant Park. Meanwhile, Sad Summer Festival’s website makes no mention of masks, proof of vaccination, or testing. And as the highly contagious delta variant has become the dominant COVID strain in the U.S., there have been outbreaks linked to outdoor music festivals. In Oregon, 62 cases were tied to July 10th’s Pendleton Whisky Music Fest. And in Michigan, authorities found 96 cases that could be traced to the Faster Horses Festival, which took place in Brooklyn, Michigan over the July 16th weekend.

It’s too soon to know whether Lollapalooza or Sad Summer Fest contributed to any outbreaks, but we’ll likely find out in the coming days and weeks. So far, Lovato has not addressed this controversy on any of their social media.