Festival Season Is Upon Us
Music fans everywhere, we've made it to the 2022 festival season! I can't tell you how excited and grateful I am to have live music of this scale back on my calendar. I think we all might have taken live music for granted. In any case, we deserve a blowout year after the crummy 24 month lull.
Large scale music festivals are going on as planned this year and we need to make informed decisions on what festivals are coming. Speaking for myself at least, I am geeking out over every festival announcement so far. To cut down on all of the festival announcements coming out on the regular, I did you a solid and narrowed down my top favorites! In this blog, Hollywood Branded shares The Most Buzzed About Music Festivals To Come In 2022.
#1 When We Were Young Festival
Emo millennial music fans everywhere are collectively freaking out! It seems like ever since Warped Tour ended their longstanding reign in 2018, there has been a notable gap in the pop punk and emo band festival circuit. Time does in fact, make the heart grow fonder.
This brand new festival produced by Live Nation will take place in Las Vegas, NV at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on October 22, 23 and 29th. It will bring the historic return of a few prominent bands from the emo and pop-punk era including My Chemical Romance, Paramore and The All American Rejects, among many others. Upon the lineup being announced, the festival has received press coverage everywhere under the sun for the stacked lineup of 60 bands over the span of one single day festival. There is reasonable skepticism on how a festival of this size can pull off a single day, versus the more traditional festival format spanning over an entire weekend to account for as little of artist overlap as possible. The internet is quick to judge this overloaded lineup to be the next Fyre Festival of sorts due to these optics and the high sticker price of tickets starting at $225+. After all, this is the Live Nation that brought you Astroworld and all that went wrong with that single day festival back in November.
Regardless of all of this, the festival is breaking records and tapping into a market demographic that is completely starved of the pop punk music that raised them. Us emo kids have been through a lot since Warped Tour packed up their road show and I am absolutely not missing this one. The nostalgia and FOMO is just too real. So grab your eyeliner and skinny jeans and meet me in Las Vegas this fall!
Photo Credit: When We Were Young Festival
#2 Bonnaroo Music And Arts Festival
Bonnaroo is one of the biggest and most sought after music festivals in the U.S. and this year it might have just gotten bigger. After a bummer 2021 year cancelled the festival last minute due to excess rain and flooding from Hurricane Ida, Bonnaroo bounces back with an incredible 4 day celebration of music from June 16-19th.
Based out of Manchester, Tennessee, the festival stands out from its more mainstream pop competitors due to its notable southern and Nashville adjacent roots. Bonnaroo certainly covers the bases in chart topping pop, rock and hip-hop but also notably skews in the Americana, folk and country space. Because of the wide variety of music genre wide, it makes perfect sense that J.Cole, The Chicks and Illenium share headlining slots for Saturday night. Yes that is a rapper, a country band and a DJ taking over that evening nearly at the same time. If that wasn't enough, Sunday night is next level with the iconic Stevie Nicks taking the stage to close out the weekend. Bonnaroo will be jam packed with some legendary sets to make an eclectic fan's dreams come true.
Photo Credit: Bonnaroo
#3 Lovers And Friends Fest
Lovers And Friends is another newly minted festival making the internet go crazy! Just about every R&B and hip-hop act of the 2000's will be making their way to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on May 14 and 15th for a jam packed lineup. Presented by Live Nation, Snoop Dogg and Bobby Dee, this will be the ultimate nostalgia festival with chart topping artists like Usher, Ashanti, Ludacris, Sean Paul and TLC along with over 50 other artists in the genre. It's almost as if the lineup was created by looking at any Billboard Hot 100 chart from the mid 2000's.
As is the case with When We Were Young Festival coming this fall, many wonder how so many great acts can be billed on a single day festival lineup. Lovers And Friends can certainly be the litmus test since it is also being produced by Live Nation in the same exact city and venue space.
This festival will be a blast from the past, as once again we learn that the consumer is willing to spend money on nostalgia. Lineups like this are a rarity, as festival producers tend to build out their lineup based on the biggest and most buzzed about acts in the current music landscape. Nostalgia and rare acts like TLC and Ms. Lauryn Hill move tickets. So much so that the festival is completely sold out on their website in all ticket categories. My only hope is the waitlist can grant a few more of us in on this fun filled weekend of hip-hop and R&B!
Photo Credit: Lovers & Friends Fest
#4 Coachella
Ah, the grand daddy festival of them all, Coachella is back!! After two years of Goldenvoice re-arranging possibilities of the festival's comeback in Fall 2020 and then again in 2021, the festival will make its triumphant return April 15-17 & 22-24 at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, CA.
Let's talk about the headliners this year, which is always a hot topic of discussion. One of them to note is Harry Styles, coming off the heals of his massive money making US tour, 'Love On Tour'. The highly sought after show was an overwhelming success, earning $95 Million for 42 sold out shows. Social media was buzzing throughout the tour cycle, showing fans camping out days before to be lucky enough to get a standby pit ticket. Some could even say seeing Harry at Coachella would be a sweet deal, considering the average price tag for a single Harry Styles concert is in the $500 range. Except plenty of Harry's signature feather boa's on Friday night!
One of the other two headliners hitting the Polo Fields is Billie Eilish, who is returning after her massive album release of "Happier Than Ever" in July 2020. It is her second time at the festival after her debut performance in 2019, which was just the initial takeoff of her massive, record shattering career. Billie will be making history once again this spring as she will be the festival's youngest headliner ever at 20 years old. Ye will be closing out the festival Sunday and expect him to bring a production and performance that will leave people talking. Taking his questionable personal life and controversial ego aside, Ye has a bottomless catalog of hits and a fanbase that is unyieldingly loyal. This upcoming year will be just another installment of Coachella greatness and why the festival is the beast that it is.
Photo Credit: Coachella
#5 Primavera Sound LA And The Expansion of Los Angeles Based Festivals
Primavera Sound is one of the largest and highest attended festivals in Europe and has been a trusted name in the international festival circuit since their start in 2001. The festival's initial stateside launch for 2020 got halted due to COVID, so after two years we are finally in the clear. The festival, based in Barcelona, Spain, is celebrating 20 years by expanding to Los Angeles for the first time on September 16-18! The festival lineup is genre diverse but mainly in the indie pop, rock and electronic music space. Must see acts at the festival include Nine Inch Nails, Lorde, Clairo and Arctic Monkeys, with the lineup poster teasing that there is more names that have yet to be announced.
Does this festival coming to Los Angeles mean we could see more festival producers following suit in the future? The L.A. area also has a Pasadena based festival coming to The Rose Bowl called This Ain't No Picnic (August 27 + 28). With other major events coming up like The Super Bowl and the 2028 Summer Olympics, it will be fascinating to see the growing expansion of entertainment events coming to the city. For a city as vibrant and as rich in culture and music as Los Angeles, I would not sleep on the city of angels for being a growing hub for large scale music festivals in the future.
Photo Credit: Primaverasound.la
Eager To Learn More?
If you want to learn more about the power of music festivals and their star studded headliners shaping pop culture, be sure to check these other blog posts that our team has written on the subject!
- It's Not A Phase: Why "When We Were Young" Is The Festival of 2022
- The Benefits of Music Festivals For Brand Marketing Opportunities for Millennials
- Live Music Is Back: 3 Concerts From This Past Week And What This Means For Your Brand
- Top Coachella Brand Activations
- Why Millennials Like For Brands To Sponsor Music Festivals
Music is such a powerful entertainment medium for it is universal across all ages and backgrounds. However, it's an oversaturated market and targeting the right music audience to your brand can be a challenge. Check out our video to learn what music generationally works best to market your brand!
