From Coachella to Lollapalooza and the just concluded Austin City Limits — festivals that used to be a haven for indie and rock acts are now pushing pop stars to the top. Here’s what the names at the top of this year’s lineup say about the shifts of festivals and popular music in general.
To go forward, we must first go backwards — and when it comes to music festival culture in the United States, one of the best examples of how genres and festivals have shifted in popularity over time, is the line-up changes in one of our longest-running, biggest festivals: Lollapalooza.
Jane’s Addiction, the LA rock band formed in the ‘80s and fronted by Perry Farrell, was bidding adieu with a touring line-up that also came complete with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Violent Femmes, Ice-T & Body Count, and Living Colour in 1991. The tour was a booming success, and it continued in multiple forms — all with deeply rock-centric line-ups. By 2005, when the festival became an annual event in Chicago’s Grant Park, the genre allegiance continued with acts like The Killers, Primus, Dinosaur Jr., Widespread Panic, Pixies, and Weezer all topping the bill, with nary a pure pop act to be seen. As the years went on, a few electronic and hip-hop acts started to top the line-up, but it would be much longer before the likes of Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande would make the top spot.
Fast forward to this year, and based on not only the acts that were chosen for top billing for the Chicago festival but even the fans who made their way to the Windy City for the annual event, pop music is in its heyday, and pop stars are the new rock stars. Blame it on Chappell Roan’s iconic, history-making, crowded midday set last year, or the Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams takeover that took place across airwaves, and Grammy Award wins in 2024, but the face of Lollapalooza was very different among fans and acts this year. Even with nu-metal legends like Korn pulling in the millennial plus crowd — the overall experience confirmed what we’ve seen on the charts: pop is in its heydey (again).
Even Newport Folk Fest, the country’s oldest indie, Americana, and folk festival, boasted pop-adjacent acts like Lana Del Rey on the stage made famous by Bob Dylan. At Austin City Limits, you got to decide whether you wanted to end your Saturday night with indie’s second coming of rock, The Strokes, or one of the world’s cheekiest pop stars, Sabrina Carpenter.
And sure, some of this is just a reflection of the ebb and flow of genre popularity in general. Avid festival goers will recall the rise of hip-hop and R&B on line-ups in the early 2000s that resulted in Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z headlining the UK’s most formidable music festival, Glastonbury… and Noel Gallagher of Oasis famously saying “I’m not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It’s wrong.”… and Jay-Z famously responding by pulling out a guitar and playing “Wonderwall” when he walked out onto the Pyramid Stage as the festival’s first hip-hop headliner.
Historically, pop culture moments like Woodstock and Monterey Pop Festival upheld protest music as a way to bring safe spaces to the counterculture — a central location for, not just music, but also people who shared the same beliefs on civil rights, foreign wars, and politics to convene. As festivals have changed to a place for just celebrating in general, a quick assessment of line-up posters speaks to the shift from rock to EDM, rap and even back again — but for the first time in a long time, pop is the genre that seems to have staying power.
This, of course, is partly to do with what we define as pop. Lady Gaga’s headline set at Coachella this year, which merged real-life theatrics, rock-tinged new hits like “Abracadabra” and pure pop hits like “Poker Face,” is a clean example of how music that floats to the top of popular consciousness is the music that’s not afraid to toe the line of multiple genres. Take Olivia Rodrigo bringing out Weezer at Lolla or Carpenter’s ACL set this year with The Chicks joining her on stage at a fest that also highlighted genre blending artists like Marren Morris, Doechii, and Doja Cat (before she had to bow out of her slot) – when it comes to current pop stars, there truly is something for every type of music fan, and that’s allowing them to pull in bigger audiences who, like them, grew up on multiple genres, had the ability to make a Spotify playlist or Napster mix CD, and have no interest in sticking to one singular sound.
So what does this say about the future of music, music fans, festivals, and music culture in general? It says that we’re over homogeneous line-ups, that we’re more drawn to artists who are willing to play around in multiple genres, that we’ve had so much access to so much music and the ability to make our own playlist that we want that to be how music is reflected live.
There will always be the Tomorrowlands and Rolling Louds that appeal to single-genre fans, but for the rest of us who were first drawn to rock-centric festivals because of the expansive nature of the sound, it looks like we’ll be singing along to what we call “pop music”… even if only just for now.