Hearts on Stages: Confessional Pop Dominates ACL Weekend 2
Raw emotion and unfiltered lyricism took over Zilker Park for the last three days of this year’s Austin City Limits.
Written by Valeria Mota
Photo courtesy of Taylor Regulski
The most vulnerable songs are often written in bedrooms, with songwriters wearing their hearts on notebook pages rather than on their sleeves. For the second weekend of Austin City Limits, those hearts moved from the pages to Zilker Park, with crowds of thousands singing back lines once written to express the deepest feelings. For 2026’s ACL lineup, different artists brought their unique takes to vulnerable songwriting, proving that while confessional writing might be as old as music itself, its ability to connect to listeners remains as vibrant as ever.
FRIDAY
Sienna spiro
Photo by Mckenna Sefcik
Donning a Texas-sized beehive hairdo and a polka-dot shift dress, British artist Sienna Spiro strutted out on stage at 3:29 p.m. for a set that both highlighted both her vocal prowess and unapologetic 1960s aesthetic. The recently crowned VMA’s Best New Artist singer evoked early Adele and Amy Winehouse, but proved that her writing style is entirely her own. Aided by Mathias Lunde’s mournful guitars and Eddie Lopes’ melodramatic piano, Spiro smoothly transitioned between the assertive “This Is My House,” the James Bond-esque “Time, You & Me,” and the poppy “Material Lover” from “The Devil Wears Prada 2” soundtrack. The English singer-songwriter continued her first-ever Austin performance with her now signature melancholic croons, belting “The Visitor,” “MAYBE.,” and “You Stole The Show” without even batting her sharply winged eyes. But it was after performing the seductive “He’s Not My Baby, I’m His” that the singer became the most emotional and delivered what she called “the saddest song [she’s] ever written,” the insanely vulnerable “Pure.” “And sometimes, I get insecure, so I wear a dress on the town,” she bellowed. “Hope a man notices me, I don't know, it makes me proud.” The singer-songwriter’s intimate pop set concluded with the theatrical “Die On This Hill” — serendipitously on the eve of the viral song’s one-year anniversary — and the implicitly hopeful “Great Expectation.” In the span of 41 minutes, Spiro’s mid-century modern style meshed seamlessly with timeless sentiments of romance and heartbreak.
SATURDAY
RYAN BEATTY
Photo by Mckenna Sefcik
Leave it to indie-folk beacon Ryan Beatty to deliver on a tear-jerking performance amidst a dreamy Austin sunset. Equal parts soothing and gut-wrenching, the Californian singer-songwriter took the stage at 5:31 p.m. and breathlessly executed ballad after ballad with a Sinatra-like ease. The set’s first song, “Secret Language,” explicitly established the emotional depth of Beatty’s songwriting: “All the ways I say it / In a secret language / Did you hear what my words couldn’t tell? / I keep it all to myself.” Thankfully, the crooner didn’t keep all his emotions to himself during his ACL performance. Powering through cuts like "Cinnamon Bread,” “Bright Red,” “Virtuoso,” and “Andromeda,” Beatty tackled all angles of love, from romantic to familial, with calming vocals and existential lyrics. Though the bare-bones acoustic instrumentation tended to blend the songs together, Ryan Richter’s lap steel guitar underscored Beatty’s harrowing vulnerability, evoking the image of a sad cowboy drinking his sorrows away at a Western bar. The singer closed his Weekend 2 performance with “Fleur de Lis,” showcasing his powerful yearning through garden metaphors and direct begging. “If only I could love the both of us for you,” he pleaded, resulting in one of the most moving vocal deliveries of his afternoon set. With simple backing instrumentation, velvety vocals, and unparalleled rawness, Beatty turned his sensitive confessions into a bona fide musical power.
SUNDAY
Audrey Hobert
Photo by Mckenna Sefcik
Emotional vulnerability can be scary, but for rising pop star Audrey Hobert, humor and frankness are the perfect way to approach it. Tackling all 12 tracks of her debut album, Who’s The Clown?, the singer-songwriter entered the T-Mobile stage at 4:30 p.m. to deliver a whimsical afternoon set for the penultimate show of her tour, complete with extravagant dance moves and a bouncy trampoline. Each song was a confession fit for an intimate sleepover with best friends, ranging from the assertive advice of “Don’t Go Back to His Ass” to the existential hopelessness of “Sex and the City.” “'Cause why else would you want me? / I think I've got a fucked-up face / And that thought used to haunt me / 'Til I fell in its sweet embrace,” she belted for “Phoebe”’s uplifting chorus. Hobert’s honesty didn’t end with her lyricism — the quirky artist punctuated her 50-minute set with personal stories that proved her humor to be genuine, not just a songwriting technique. “There was this one time I was on the way to a birthday party, and there were these two guys rating all the girls in the car on a scale of one to 10 … and they turned to look at me, and they said three!” she confessed before the last chorus of the relatable “Wet Hair.” “Once you’re told you’re a three in this life, it’s kind of hard to not feel like a three, but I was never a three. I was a beautiful child, now an even more beautiful woman.” It was moments like these that underscored the hope behind Hobert’s often self-deprecating lyrics, ultimately making her set much more engaging for the Sunday crowd. With a slick songwriting approach and a passionate stage presence, Audrey Hobert closed out the last day of ACL Weekend 2 with a refreshing take on confessional pop, proving that comedy can coexist with emotionality.