Las Vegas festival Life Is Beautiful was forced to cancel its 2020 edition (of course), but it’s coming back strong in 2021 with an impressive lineup. Even if you can’t make it to the actual festival (which takes place from September 17 to 19), though, some additional “Life Is Beautiful Presents” performances will still pack quite the punch.
The festival announced the series of shows, at Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas, today: Jacob Collier will perform on September 15, Brittany Howard (with Ant Clemons) on the 16th, San Holo on the 17th, and Ludacris (with Childish Major) on the 18th.
Those artists are also on the festival lineup, which is led by Billie Eilish, Tame Impala, ASAP Rocky, Green Day, Haim, Young Thug, St. Vincent, 6lack, Modest Mouse, Don Toliver, Lany, Earthgang, Purity Ring, Ashnikko, Shaed, Trevor Daniel, Still Woozy, Noah Cyrus, Yaeji, Remi Wolf, and Jamila Woods.
When announcing that lineup, organizers noted, “When curating the lineup for Life Is Beautiful this year, we challenged ourselves to stay grounded in the realities of the year that we just lived. The way we discover artists changed, the places we listened to music evolved, and the meaning of music deepened as we listened in new ways. This year’s lineup isn’t our 2019 lineup in 2021. It’s our 2021 lineup, and celebrates the artists, both established and emerging, who were the shining lights during our darkest days.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Kanye played the newest version of Donda from the steps of a replica of his childhood home, which was built on the field of the Soldier Field stadium in his hometown Chicago and styled as a church. While the borderline sacrilegious imagery is old hat for both artists, who’ve both enjoyed provoking the Christian establishment since their careers began nearly 25 years ago, fans didn’t enjoy seeing Kanye connect himself to someone accused of sexual assault during an event ostensibly meant to honor his late mother, Donda West. A number of fans on Twitter noted the discrepancy, which was exacerbated by his choice to play a new version of “Jail” that replaced Jay-Z’s verse with one from DaBaby — who himself has been under fire for making homophobic comments onstage during Rolling Loud.
cutting a jay-z verse for dababy and bringing out marilyn manson(?) out to just stand there is so fucking weird why does he do this pic.twitter.com/uopGGpHTqD
If Kanye’s goal was to get people talking, well, mission accomplished. If it was to endear himself to the fans he’s alienated over the years with his antics, I don’t think he should hold his breath. Check out more responses below.
Ye got DaBaby and Marilyn Manson on the porch. R Kelly finna bust through the door like the Kool-Aid just like this pic.twitter.com/y6DB2vkP82
kanye replacing jayz with dababy and then proceeding to chill on the front porch of a replica of his childhood home with marilyn manson is the most surreal thing to happen this release cycle
As a kid growing up in Milwaukee, I looked forward to Summerfest with a holiday-like anticipation; as a teen, I grew to mock its supreme un-hipness, even as I still occasionally attended; as an adult living through a time in which music festivals happen on more summer weekends than not, I can only now appreciate quite how unusual my hometown’s version actually is. Summerfest isn’t necessarily better than your Lollapaloozas, Coachellas, or Newport Folks, but it is undeniably broader than those or any other big-name fest. It’s been running so long without a particular musical niche that it’s fallen into that rarest of zones: It’s an all-things-to-all-people gathering. If you can’t find something to like among roughly a thousand bands over ten days, well, you can still go eat some bratwurst, stare wistfully at Lake Michigan, or watch a juggler do his thing.
It’s easier not to be niche-bound when you’re the “World’s Largest Music Festival,” a title that Summerfest could rightfully claim for decades, based on attendance — which peaked in 2001 with just over a million people cumulatively through its gates. That’s quite a few more souls than live in the city of Milwaukee, to give it some perspective. It’s a yearly tourism boon, pushing $186 million into the local economy per annum, according to president and CEO Don Smiley. It’s the single biggest attraction the city can claim as its own — and it does so, loudly and proudly: You can see the smiley Summerfest logo all around town, all year round.
You also can’t miss Summerfest’s highly unusual site: The Henry Maier Festival Park spans 75 acres of absolutely prime real estate, right on Lake Michigan and directly adjacent to downtown Milwaukee. In the 1920s, the strip of land was an airport, and during the Cold War it was a military installation that housed nuclear-capable Nike missiles. Summerfest, which launched in 1968 at various venues around the city, took over the park — a generous word for it at that point, considering there wasn’t much there — in 1970, and slowly but surely built something permanent, both literally and figuratively.
In addition to Summerfest, the Maier Festival Park is also home to Milwaukee’s yearly ethnic festivals, which are generally much smaller affairs but nonetheless charming and fun: German Fest, Festa Italiana, Polish Fest, and others keep the park busy for a few extra summer days in normal years. Weirdly, the park is otherwise locked up tight the rest of the year, visibly lonely from the freeway that runs just above it, its stages and Skyglider quiet and still.
When I started going in the early 1980s, Summerfest still felt a little ramshackle, with only a few permanent structures on the grounds. The stages were typical of what you still see at most fests, erected and removed as needed. They were (and still are) strategically placed throughout the festival so that acts weren’t in sonic competition: If you were busy listening to Weird Al, you wouldn’t necessarily be disturbed by Greg Kihn or REO Speedwagon.
Summerfest
One ridiculously cheap ticket — under $10 per day at the time, still a crazy bargain at $23 — got you general admission access to every stage. Much of the schedule during the daytime back then was taken up by local bands playing to empty bleachers, but the nighttime programming was radically diverse, even then. Looking at the mid-’80s, I’m seeing R.E.M., Huey Lewis, Los Lobos, the Pointer Sisters, Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, Kool & The Gang. The Replacements and Fishbone had day-ending slots in ‘91, as did Kansas. In 1989, I camped out overnight at the Summerfest box office for tickets to perhaps the coolest triple bill of all time — New Order, Public Image Ltd., and the Sugarcubes — and wound up in the front row.
Then as now, the vibe at Summerfest can be as tough to pin down as the music programming, and while it’d be slightly unfair to compare it to a more urban state fair, that’s also partly true. There’s very little of Coachella’s see-and-be-seen energy, perhaps because the families excited to see Michael “mouth noises guy from the Police Academy movies” Winslow don’t really give a shit about the neon mesh bodysuit-clad Foushee fans or the old metal dudes there for the latest iteration of L.A. Guns. It’s democracy in action, with space for a massive swath of popular and semi-popular music. Smiley tells me that’s all by design: “We purposely construct it for everyone.” He’s equally proud of booking international touring acts like Guns N Roses and Megan Thee Stallion as he is of the brand new Children’s Community Park, which includes sensory rooms, nursing rooms, and playground equipment.
As years passed and Summerfest grew, the park that contains it became more like a small city of its own. In 1987, they added a 23,000-seat amphitheater to draw even bigger bands — though tickets for those shows cost extra. Just last year — when Summerfest was canceled, rescheduled, then canceled and rescheduled again due to COVID — they completely rebuilt that amphitheater to better accommodate the kind of massive stage shows that have become the norm in more recent years. Other permanent stages, food service buildings, and offices are now in use, including the new-ish 10,000-capacity, separately ticketed BMO Harris Pavilion. All of the stages have delightfully corporate names, naturally, and Smiley proudly notes that Summerfest — which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit — has lots of corporate sponsors but much lower ticket prices, a fact that Milwaukeeans find a perfectly acceptable trade-off.
Which brings us to the uncertainty of 2021. With the early part of the year still so COVD-uncertain, Summerfest moved away from its usual June-into-July dates and will now take place over the first three weekends in September. The artists are, as usual, all over the map in the best ways: Green Day, Chance the Rapper, Chris Stapleton, Run the Jewels, Dave Chappelle, Miley Cyrus, Diplo, Pixies, 311. Thurston Moore is on the schedule right there next to the Steve Meisner Polka Band. At one end of the grounds you can see a David Bowie tribute band, and the other a ventriloquist act called Red Hot Chili Puppets that, sadly, has nothing to do with the band (beyond the name, anyway). As of this writing, the reserved seats for REO Speedwagon are sold out, but plenty remain for Joan Jett.
The delightful whiplash goes on and on, and it’s a big part of the Summerfest draw. The whole thing is unpretentious in the same way its home city is: People are there for a good time, and whether that involves waiting all day to be up in front for Coheed & Cambria or happening upon a juggling demonstration while munching on some ribs doesn’t much matter.
MTV has announced the first run of performers coming to the 2021 VMAs. On your screen this year will be Lil Nas X, Olivia Rodrigo, Lorde, Machine Gun Kelly, and Camila Cabello, with more likely to be announced in the weeks ahead. This will be Rodrigo’s debut VMAs performance after snagging five nominations this year. Meanwhile, Lil Nas X last performed at the VMAs in 2019, performing “Panini.”
Lorde, meanwhile, will do a world-premiere performance from her upcoming album Solar Power, and Machine Gun Kelly will give his new single “Papercuts” its live debut. Cabello will reportedly perform her single “Don’t Go Yet.”
The news comes just days after the network released this year’s nominees for the 2021 VMAs, with Justin Bieber and Megan Thee Stallion leading the pack. Thanks to his successful Justice release, Bieber holds seven nominations, including nods for Video Of The Year, Artist Of The Year, and Best Pop. Megan follows behind him with six nominations for categories like Video Of The Year and Song Of The Year. This year’s MTV VMAs is set to return to Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the first time since 2013. It kicks off September 12 and organizers expect to invite musicians and fans to join the event in-person.
This fall, Mansfield, Ohio will play host to a festival that has a great lineup if you’re a fan of alternative rock and metal, as it features Slipknot, Rob Zombie, Mudvayne, A Day To Remember, Mastodon, Halestorm, Chevelle, Killswitch Engage, and others. The festival is also focused on tattoos, so if you’re looking to get a some ink, more than 75 tattoo artists will be on hand.
All in all, if you’re into those sorts of things, this seems like a great time. There’s one significant issue, though: The event is called the Inkcarceration Music & Tattoo Festival, the name of which plays off the fact that it takes place on the grounds of the Ohio State Reformatory, which is perhaps best known as a primary filming location for The Shawshank Redemption. As the festival is getting ready for its 2021 installment (on the weekend of September 10 to 12), some folks are talking notice of its allegedly problematic nature.
For example, Kim Kelly, a journalist and author of the upcoming book Fight Like Hell: The Untold History Of American Labor, shared her thoughts, tweeting today, “I get a lot of press releases for a lot of bad music festivals I will never attend, but the emails about this one in particular always make my skin crawl. Prison isn’t an edgy ‘theme,’ it’s torture and enslavement and horror. It’s repulsive to see an event promoted this way.” Other people chimed in and echoed the sentiment.
I get a lot of press releases for a lot of bad music festivals I will never attend, but the emails about this one in particular always make my skin crawl. Prison isn’t an edgy “theme,” it’s torture and enslavement and horror. It’s repulsive to see an event promoted this way. pic.twitter.com/6xdp9RPJCh
The festival previously hosted editions in 2018 and 2019 before making its return this year. Aside from music and tattoos, this year’s event will also feature tours of the prison, as well as a “special engagement” of “Escape From Blood Prison Haunted House,” which is a yearly Halloween event held at the Ohio State Reformatory.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Many people (like Demi Lovato) expressed disbelief at the huge crowds that Lollapalooza drew this year in light of the still-ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The predominant concern is that an event of such a scale would lead to a substantial uptick in COVID-19 cases, but it seems that so far, that hasn’t been the case.
Chicago Department Of Public Health commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady took to Twitter this morning to share some COVID statistics from the two weeks since the festal. In a thread, Arwady reported that there’s “NO evidence” that Lollapalooza was a “super-spreader” event:
“We are now 14 days past the first day of Lolla and we are continuing to investigate cases of COVID. There have been no unexpected findings at this point and NO evidence at this point of ‘super-spreader’ event or substantial impact to Chicago’s COVID-19 epidemiology.
Of the estimated 385k attendees at Lolla, 90%+ were vax’d.
0.0004% (4 in 10,000) of vaccinated attendees have reported testing positive.
0.0016% (16 in 10,000) of unvaccinated attendees have reported testing positive.
As of 8/11, no hospitalizations or deaths have been reported.
As of now, there is a total of 203 cases identified with attendance at Lolla and symptom onset (or if asymptomatic, test date) on or after attendance. 58 were Chicago residents, 138 were non-Chicago Illinois residents and 7 out of state residents.
COVID risk can not be eliminated. We want to stay open as a city, but being open also means being careful — getting vaccinated, getting tested if you have any COVID symptoms, and, for now, wearing a mask in indoor public places. Let’s #ProtectChicago.”
We are now 14 days past the first day of Lolla and we are continuing to investigate cases of COVID. There have been no unexpected findings at this point and NO evidence at this point of “super-spreader” event or substantial impact to Chicago’s COVID-19 epidemiology.
Of the estimated 385k attendees at Lolla, 90%+ were vax’d. 0.0004% (4 in 10,000) of vaccinated attendees have reported testing positive. 0.0016% (16 in 10,000) of unvaccinated attendees have reported testing positive. As of 8/11, no hospitalizations or deaths have been reported.
As of now, there is a total of 203 cases identified with attendance at Lolla and symptom onset (or if asymptomatic, test date) on or after attendance. 58 were Chicago residents, 138 were non-Chicago Illinois residents and 7 out of state residents.
COVID risk can not be eliminated. We want to stay open as a city, but being open also means being careful—getting vaccinated, getting tested if you have any COVID symptoms, and, for now, wearing a mask in indoor public places. Let’s #ProtectChicago.
Would-be concertgoers had better get their shots, as Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), the second-largest concert promotion company in the US behind Live Nation, will be requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination at all of its US venues beginning in October. AEG notably operates some of the biggest venues in the States, including Staples Center, Brooklyn Steel, and Webster Hall, and subsidiaries like GoldenVoice operate festivals including Coachella, Stagecoach, and upcoming fests like Lovers & Friends and Day N Vegas.
Up until now, and until the policy goes into effect, AEG has been allowing entry with either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test within 72 hours of the event date. However, with new infections rising and the emergence of new variants of the novel coronavirus, including the Delta variant, AEG’s leadership wants to protect attendees — and the company’s bottom line — to ensure future events don’t get canceled or postponed as in 2020 when the initial COVID outbreak essentially shuttered the entertainment industry for months.
As AEG COO Jay Marciano explained in a statement:
“We have come to the conclusion that, as a market leader, it was up to us to take a real stand on vaccination status. Just a few weeks ago, we were optimistic about where our business, and country, were heading. The Delta variant, combined with vaccine hesitancy, is pushing us in the wrong direction again. We realize that some people might look at this as a dramatic step, but it’s the right one. We also are aware that there might be some initial pushback, but I’m confident and hopeful that, at the end of the day, we will be on the right side of history and doing what’s best for artists, fans, and live event workers. Our hope is that our pro-active stance encourages people to do the right thing and get vaccinated. We’ve already had to deliver bad news about JazzFest this week; I think everyone can agree that we don’t want concerts to go away again, and this is the best way to keep that from happening.”
In contrast, Live Nation has let artists set the tone, determining vaccination requirements for their own shows. With this move, it’s possible AEG will put pressure on its industry peers to take further steps to protect the public and prevent another potentially disastrous industry-wide shutdown.
Machine Gun Kelly fully solidified his pop-punk pivot with his 2020 album Tickets To My Downfall. Travis Barker played a major role in bringing that project to life, and now the two are linking up once again for Kelly’s next project, the title of which the pair got creative with announcing today.
In a tweet from this afternoon, he wrote, “i’m gonna announce the album title today i’m tired of hiding it.” Then he followed that with a photo of himself and Travis Barker sporting matching forearm tattoos that reveal the album title and captioned it, “‘born with horns’ the album. back for round two…”
i’m gonna announce the album title today i’m tired of hiding it
So, the album is called Born With Horns, and presumably, it will feature more of the pop-punk sound that Kelly settled into on Tickets To My Downfall. So far, the title of Born With Horns is the only confirmed info about it, so we don’t yet have album art, a tracklist, or a release date.
Adopting his new pop-punk aesthetic has certainly been a successful endeavor for Kelly, as Tickets To My Downfallbecame his first No. 1 album after its release. The album also got great TV exposure, as Kelly performed on Saturday Night Liveand he and Barker guested on The Late Late Show.
Keeping track of all the new albums coming out in a given month is a big job, but we’re up for it: Below is a comprehensive list of the major releases you can look forward to in August. If you’re not trying to potentially miss out on anything, it might be a good idea to keep reading.
Friday, August 6
Andrea von Kampen — That Spell (Fantasy Records)
Andrew Rinehart — Have Fun Idiot EP (SonaBLAST Records)
Miley Cyrus has gone through distinct stylistic phases in her career, trying on different musical identities with each album. The Bangerz era was pop/R&B/hip-hop, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz was experimental/psychedelic, Younger Now was country/pop-rock, and now we’re at Plastic Hearts, which is rock/synth-pop. Here in the Plastic Hearts era, Cyrus has become known for her rock covers and reverence for previous generations of artists. That was on full display during her Lollapalooza set last night, which featured a bevy of covers and guest appearances.
Her 26-song set (as setlist.fm notes) began with “We Can’t Stop” before moving into a cover of Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?.” From there, she sprinkled other covers throughout the set, including Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass,” Cher’s “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” Temple Of The Dog’s “Say Hello 2 Heaven,” and Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” Most notable, she was joined by Billy Idol and they performed a couple of his songs together, “Night Crawling” and “White Wedding.”
Speaking of guests, aside from Idol, Cyrus also at various points had on stage G Herbo (to perform “Love Money Party”), Wiz Khalifa and Juicy J (“32”), and The Kid Laroi (“Without You”).
Cyrus posted some clips and photos from the performance and from around the festival, so check those out below, as well as some other videos from the show.
(@BurbzA) 
(@Abdiysl20) 
