Lollapa-yawn.

I do not envy folks that have had to cover the Lollapalooza lineup announcement over the last couple of years. I attended and/or covered the festival through pretty much every iteration from 1991 until 2019—so I do have fond feelings for Lollapalooza. And once upon a time the lineup announcement really was a fun thing to cover, with everyone jockeying to get their unique take on it out first and drive the conversation. Believe it or not, for a while the bill was actually deep, varied, and filled with quality acts.

These days most media sites basically rehash the press release and print the lineup verbatim on the day it's released. But the folks I feel sorry for are the ones who feel they need to put a positive spin on it, or treat the unveiling as if there is anything of actual interest to see there, which wouldn’t be an issue if the lineups were not so consistently underwhelming these days. If you see a superlative in a headline about a Lollapalooza lineup announcement, it’s a good sign that person (or their publication) is more interested in ensuring their access than they are about actually writing honestly about the music.

And on the fan end of the spectrum, every year I do see some old Lolla-heads trying to point out the handful of interesting acts on the undercard as some sort of defense, but once Lollapalooza expanded to 4 days there is simply not enough quality music on that bill to fill all that time. And telling me there’s one or two interesting acts each day doesn’t seem to support the price of even a single-day ticket, much less one that covers the full extended weekend.

I'm not gonna harsh anyone's mellow who just wants an excuse to party for 4 days in the middle of the summer in downtown Chicago, but let's stop pretending Lollapalooza has any kind of real cultural cache, or even the faintest ties to the underground of interesting musical acts from whence it sprung.