In the music industry, artists have to adapt in order to endure, and festivals face the same reality. Soundstorm is a case in point. Since launching in Riyadh in 2019, the festival has evolved its format and priorities as it has grown into one of the region’s defining music events.
The initial editions were built around shock and awe. Four days of programming, more than 200 artists and crowds nearing a quarter of a million turned the desert site into the most maximalist festival the region had seen.
Those early years lived up to comparisons with Europe’s biggest electronic events, both in scale and intensity. For many, they remain the most overwhelming versions of Soundstorm, where excess was the point, not a by-product.
Over time, that approach began to loosen and the programme was no longer built around back-to-back electronic dance music. Pop and RnB headliners were added, and moving to three days changed the rhythm of the festival.
The experience became more manageable and less exhausting, with curated stages welcoming a multitude of genres rather than competing for volume.
This year marks the festival’s most significant refurbishment. The site itself remains the same, but the stages have been given new aesthetics and the internal layout has been rethought. The central walkthrough area has been reintroduced as City of Beats, now filled with activations and smaller performance spaces that play everything from indie rock to jazz, alongside places to pause and gather between sets.
Spending time there makes something else clear. Soundstorm now has the beginnings of a recognisable community. You can see it in how people dress, from relaxed, easy looks to more deliberate outfits built around jackets, sunglasses and statement bling pieces that feel specific to the festival.
It suggests an audience that knows the rhythm of the event and returns with shared expectations, rather than simply passing through. The updated layout brings the site closer together and makes the main festival stages easier to access.
The distances are still long. A walk from one end of the site to another is over 1km, so you still have to plan your time, but the routes are more direct.
Here are highlights from the three-day festival that ended on Saturday.
Cardi B is all bounce and swagger
Cardi B could have used Soundstorm as a cautious return, with a short set to genuinely see whether she even wanted to be back on stage only weeks after giving birth to her fourth child.
But her performance that closed the festival on Saturday was less a rebuild and more an opportunity to look forward and launch the next phase of her career. The kinetic 80-minute act also set the stage for the I Am The Drama tour to kick off in the US next year.
The balance of material made that clear early on. Of the 12 songs she performed, six came from the album Am I the Drama?, serving as a statement of where Cardi sees herself now. You couldn’t ask for a more declarative set opener than Hello, the blazing synths heralding her arrival like a fanfare. She descended from a raised platform, backed by a dozen dancers, and let rip immediately in a show that was at once fun, physical and relentless.
Pretty & Petty was pure bounce and not subtle in the slightest, while Outside was all propulsion and repetition, and a showcase of Cardi’s punchy and swaggering delivery. The American rapper and new mum is in startlingly great form, crossing the stage constantly, weaving into select pieces of choreography as part of the high-energy material.
Visually, the set-up stayed functional rather than ornate. Twelve dancers, raised platforms and large screens shifted between desert landscapes, urban skylines and cascades of falling dollar bills, particularly during No Limit, when she delivered her killer guest verse from the G-Eazy hit.
While there was no band, the playback tracks were clearly recorded with live-band arrangements, which gave this set the sense that it was made for the occasion.
But ultimately what carried the night most was Cardi herself. There is a beguiling rawness to her, a joy that feels instinctual. The smiles, the “shukrans”, and the grins arrived without cue.
That instinct also shaped how she engaged with Saudi audiences. A day before the show, she posted from her Riyadh hotel, training on a stationary bike while wearing an abaya, saying she was getting ready for the show. On stage, she leaned into that same warmth, dropping “mashallahs” and other garbled Arabic greetings repeatedly, which the crowd lapped up.
This is part of the campiness of Cardi B, which often makes the show feel as welcoming as a fans-only affair – qualities that cement her status as a legitimate festival headliner, ready to head from Riyadh to the world.
Halsey brings big sounds back
In many ways, Halsey’s debut performance in Saudi Arabia on Saturday found her returning to where she started.
Midway through a thoroughly excellent set, the American singer made a striking revelation: when she began her career with the stellar album Badlands in 2015, one of the first international fan clubs to form around her music was based in Riyadh, built online long before she ever set foot in the kingdom. It was a touching moment and helped explain the absolute conviction that ran through what became a standout performance of the festival.
Backed by a minimal four-piece band, the sound still felt huge, giving Halsey room to maraud the stage and deliver each song with total commitment. Her voice was commanding, smoky and tender, always a split second away from becoming a plaintive wail. Badlands material sat at the core of the set, with songs such as Gasoline, Colours and Roman Holiday channelled with particular force. These may be pop songs, but with an alternative core, brooding and heavy, the kind that hit you in the gut and pull you into a world that feels passionate and, at times, deliberately claustrophobic.
In a recent interview with Apple Music, Halsey admitted she is currently “not allowed” to make a new album after her latest release The Great Impersonator failed to meet commercial expectations. Watching her at Soundstorm, and seeing the response she drew, that muzzling felt increasingly hard to justify.
If anything, the quality of this performance, and the connection it generated, underlined why an artist like Halsey still needs space to keep making music on her own terms.
Pitbull delivers endorphin overload
The rapper is vigorously latching on to a particularly successful stretch of his two-decade career with some of his biggest shows to date. Watching him headline the second day of the festival in front of 30,000 people makes it clear why he is close to reaching cult status in the pop world. Pitbull consistently builds on the model used by the most effective touring acts today, artists such as Coldplay and Taylor Swift, who build their shows around a communal sense of joy and release.
Ten minutes into his endorphin overload of a set on Friday, my cynicism melted away about his move away from gritty hip-hop to embrace a fondue-thick pop formula, built around various songs about how to start a party and then keep it going.
Hits such as Give Me Everything and Hotel Room Service are made for open-air festivals like Soundstorm and backed by a tight live band, a full dance troupe and a run of costume changes that draw on Miami Vice gloss and Vegas showmanship. Have I been converted to the Pitbull fan club? Perhaps not. But I now know what I can put on to blow away the cobwebs of the morning.
Post Malone brings full-band era to Riyadh
With so much happening across the site, this feels like the next stage of Soundstorm, one that also matches where Post Malone now finds himself.
The American rapper's set came at the end of a year in which he moved into stadiums for the first time, selling out large venues across the US and Europe. What began earlier in the year, when he introduced a full-band concert set-up at Coachella, has been worked through on the road.
Rather than marking a stylistic pivot, the show brought his different musical strands into the same space. Hip-hop remained the base, with pop, rock and country influences alongside. The band was central to how that balance held, used almost like an expanded backing track while adding colour and warmth to some of the songs. Wow and Better Now carried added weight through the keyboards and the minor-key lines of pedal steel, while I Fall Apart opened up into a looser, more expressive vocal performance.
Newer material and earlier songs were treated the same way. Dead at the Honky Tonk and I Had Some Help sat comfortably alongside White Iverson and Rockstar.
Tyla steps up to the main stage
Tyla’s appearance came at a point where everything appears to be going according to plan. Her rise has been steady, and part of the wider rise of amapiano, a sound that has travelled from South Africa to some of the most attended festivals in the world.
In that way, her moment at Soundstorm felt like a possible crest in amapiano’s global journey, as DJs and festivals continue to work out how to place the genre on the biggest stages. Tyla is going through her own transition, adapting her approach for large festival settings.
When The National last saw her two years ago, she was playing to a smaller but still well-received crowd, including an afternoon performance in Malmo, Sweden. At Soundstorm, she appeared as a main-stage headliner, with another headline slot scheduled at Sole DXB on Saturday. The jump in scale is immediate.
The question is clear: does she have the act to pull this off? The answer, for now, is she's getting there.
Breakout single Water continued to draw a strong response, built around that implacably steady amapiano groove. Truth or Dare and Art were more vibe-y affairs, with percussive ad-libs and nods to 1990s-era R&B. New single Chanel had Tyla back in her amapiano pocket, only this time with the sleek production that comes with an increasingly bigger budget.
Comparisons to Rihanna will continue to follow her, though the jury is still out. At 23, Tyla is the same age Rihanna was when she released hit album Loud in 2010. The difference lies in the voice. Rihanna, at that point, was refining a style full of Caribbean-inflected swagger, delivered with a colder precision, while Tyla’s style is sultrier yet more vulnerable, allowing her potentially to do more interesting things with it.
Benson Boone’s world domination continues
Fresh from his Abu Dhabi Grand Prix appearance earlier in the week, American pop star Boone arrived at Soundstorm with momentum already behind him. What began at Coachella in April has carried through a Gulf run, with each show adding to a fan base that has grown quickly and visibly.
At Soundstorm, Boone charged in with the same confidence. Dressed in all-black, with shades amplifying the Freddie Mercury echoes that have become part of his look, he delivered another energetic set. Where the Abu Dhabi show leaned closer to a full concert performance, the Soundstorm set launched immediately, reflecting the shape of his festival appearances.
He opened straight away with Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else, followed by Coffee Cake, before settling into the set. His voice sounded remarkably intact, considering how much he has been touring this year. That carried through to Man in Me and Drunk in My Mind, both rooted in more straightforward balladry. The latter, in particular, recalled an Elton John Tumbleweed Connection-era shape, without straying from Boone’s own style.
The set lifted again with Mystical Magical, one of his giddier songs, and one that landed easily with the crowd. By the time Boone left the stage, his Gulf audience looked secure, rounding off a regional run.
Soundstorm festival continues in Riyadh until Saturday
