The 2016 Coachella Music & Arts Festival starts in just two days, and once again, I find myself yearning to go (next year, definitely!). While I so wish I could go, I hope everyone who is going has loads of fun. If you're a little unfamiliar with the lineup, then check this list out. There are three great headliners this year--LCD Soundsystem, Guns 'n' Roses featuring Axl Rose along with Slash and Duff McKagan, and EDM superstar Calvin Harris--but I'm going to steer past the headliners and give you a list of undercard acts that I personally think you should catch at Coachella when you're not stalking celebrities.
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It's getting close to the time where festivals will stop dropping their lineups and I stop getting excited for festivals. All that's really left is for Riot Fest and Austin City Limits to drop their lineups and the year will pretty much be done! Then it's rinse and repeat.
This year's Lollapalooza lineup is about as good as it was last year. Some highlights, surprises, and the usual. Unlike last year's booking of Metallica and Paul McCartney, this year's lineup doesn't really feature any legacy acts... unless, of course, you consider the Red Hot Chili Peppers a legacy act, seeing as they've been around for over 30 years now. It has been a truly massive year for music. Many bands have had monumental releases, be it their debut or their thirteenth album. Many of my favorite artists, both up-and-comers and established artists, made great albums this year. While there were many albums this year that I absolutely adored, I decided to narrow the list of my favorites down to 20. So here they are, my favorite albums of last year!
This is my second-to-last Best-Of 2015 list, I promise! I'm hard at work on the albums list too!
I figured since I've done this for the Hot 100 chart and the Hot Country Songs chart that I would make a more general list of songs from 2015 that I enjoyed. This will include singles as well as deep cuts; the only rule is that it had to be released in 2015, and a song that was released on an album in 2014 but released as a single in 2015 does count! I'm also limiting myself to only two songs per artist, although most of the artists included will really only have one song included. Well, let's do it to it! Last night (or last week, rather), the Bonnaroo lineup dropped/leaked onto the Internet, and people on both ends of the spectrum lost their minds. Many hated it, some loved it, and a lot of people, myself included, let out a giant "meh". It didn't really help that the lineup rollout was a total mess, with the lineup being leaked via the Bonnaroo app about a week ago.
That being said, there is still a good mix of genres on here, and quite a lot to be excited about. A new year means music festivals everywhere will be dropping their lineups soon. Firefly and Hangout Fest both revealed their 2016 lineups late last year, and Okeechobee's first-wave lineup also dropped late in the fall, with the rest of the lineup being revealed up through December. Early this week, the world-famous California-based festival Coachella revealed its lineup, and like every lineup, it's full of great artists, artists I'd pass on, surprises, and up-and-comers.
To be honest, this lineup is pretty underwhelming compared to previous years, and especially compared to the powerhouse lineup they had last year. I think that can be blamed mostly on Goldenvoice spending most of their money getting Axl and Slash reuniting, which is pretty understandable. All that being said, there are still some fantastic acts on here. The 2015 Billboard Hot 100 Year-End Chart has arrived, and it's just as diverse as I'd hoped. It's certainly been a crazy year for music, and pop music is certainly no exception to the rule. I mean, I thought last year's chart was crazy, but this year has outdone even last year. I mean, "Uptown Funk" was the longest-sitting No. 1 song of the decade, reigning king for 14 consecutive weeks, only dethroned by the Wiz Khalifa / Charlie Puth duet "See You Again". While I didn't love every song that made the chart, I did love quite a few, and so here are ten of my favorites (plus some honorable mentions).
I've exposed myself to all kinds of music over the past year, ranging from mainstream pop to experimental rock. However, since my (official) move to Nashville in late August, I've probably warmed up to country music the most. Looking at this year's Billboard Year-End Hot Country Songs Chart, there were actually enough songs that I liked for me to make a favorites list for this. So I figured: Why not?
LIVE REVIEW: Florence + the Machine - October 9, 2015 - Ascend Amphitheatre - Nashville, TN10/14/2015 The first time I ever heard Florence + the Machine's music was when I was a DJ at WASU during college. Their then-recent album, Ceremonials, also their sophomore album, hadn't even been out for six months. I was in the station early one morning doing my regular 2-hour shift, and one of the songs that I'd heard while in the DJ booth was "Shake It Out".
This year, Red Frog Events and Goldenvoice teamed up to bring us the 4th edition of the Firefly Music Festival. I loved the lineup this year, and since I couldn't make it to Bonnaroo this year, my dad and I decided to instead make the trip north to Dover, DE for Firefly.
The lineup was pretty stacked: headliners were Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon, and The Killers, with other featured acts including Morrissey, Snoop Dogg, Foster the People, Zedd, Modest Mouse, Hozier, and many more. On top of that, there were still plenty of bands, particularly the bottom 1/3 of the lineup, that I was not familiar with at all. Dad and I left Winston-Salem at approximately 6:00 am on Thursday morning, and by about 2:00 pm later that day, we had our campsite at the Woodlands completely set up. We said hello to our neighbors--who were very friendly--and planned out the rest of the day. We started out by scouting out the area around us to find bathrooms, showers, phone charging stations, and water refill stations. One of the big things I noticed right from the get-go is that we were much closer to civilization here than we were at Bonnaroo. Within half a mile from our campsite was a Home Depot, a McDonalds, and even a hotel. Many people, myself included, flocked to the Home Depot daily to charge their phones. The employees there were also very nice about it, even bringing power strips for us to use and tables to sit around. Another thing I noticed at the start was just how far away our campsite was from the festival grounds. From our tent to the front gate, it was a whole mile, and then another mile to the main stage from there. For comparison, when Dad and myself did VIP at Bonnaroo last year, it was less than half a mile from our campsite to the main stage. In fact, the Bonnaroo What Stage was so close to our campsite in 2014 that I finished Bonnaroo watching Elton John from my campsite. In all honesty, the long walk to the main festival grounds didn't bother me all that much. It's the walk back to the campsite that I hated, especially after a long day of partying with 90,000 other people. Plus, there was many more miles of walking around from stage to stage throughout the day to add on to that. Dad estimated that we walked close to fifteen miles each day of the festival. Like I said, it wasn't all that bad until you're walking back to camp. |
Review ScheduleApril 15: Deftones, Tim Hecker, the Lumineers, M83, Parquet Courts Archives
March 2016
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