Rogue Wave Embrace Bonnaroo's Jammy Spirit for Mellow Sunday Set

For the first set on the last day of Bonnaroo, California rockers Rogue Wave offered a remedy to fest-goers' hangovers after Kanye West's epic sunrise performance, which started at 4:30 and didn't wrap until sometime around 6 a.m. The group delivered a mellow set of Shins-style indie-pop tunes, including songs like "Publish My Love" and "Chicago X Twelve." True to Bonnaroo's jam-band spirit, the quintet showed off their improvisatory chops: the droney ballad "Bird on a Wire" crescendoed into a full-on tribal groove, with all the dudes picking up sticks to band on toms before a segue — Grateful Dead-style — into "Lake Michigan." Nice!

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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