2014 Music Festivals Announcement Round Up
Music festivals in America and abroad are beginning to hit critical mass. It's our generation's sign of approval to any artist if they find themselves on a bevy of festival lineups come summer, they're doing something right. Perhaps the most prevalent "music for the people" approach in the industry, festivals allow acts both large and small great opportunities for exposure and listeners the chance to attempt to take it all in. The spring/summer of 2014 is shaping up to be one of the largest festival seasons in recent memory and event organizers have wasted no time announcing jam-packed lineups that look more like an iTunes playlist than a real concert experience. We gathered together lineups from festivals from coast to coast and even beyond to give you the most full, in-depth guide to diving into festival season, check them all out on the following pages.
Grading The 2014 Grammy Winners
So, back in December, around the time the Grammy nominations were officially announced, I wrote a post titled "Grading The Grammys" where I gave my two cents on what I thought of the nominees, who I thought should win and who I thought actually would win. The music industry equivalent to filling out an NCAA tournament bracket in March, I watched yesterday as my picks were scuttled fairly quickly. Using the mentality that it is better to recognize many rather than few and spread an award rather than smother one artist with them, my choices for Grammy winners was a bit different from what actually went down last night in LA. Read on to see who I thought would win, who actually did and how that makes me feel, here below.
Record of The Year
Nominees:
- "Get Lucky" - Daft Punk & Pharrell Williams
- "Radioactive" - Imagine Dragons
- "Royals" - Lorde
- "Locked Out Of Heaven" - Bruno Mars
- "Blurred Lines" - Robin Thicke Featuring T.I. & Pharrell
Actual Winner: "Get Lucky" - Daft Punk & Pharrell Williams
My Prediction: “Royals” – Lorde
Breakdown: I read somewhere in the lead up to this year's Grammys that the award show could very quickly devolve into a sort of Lifetime Achievement Award for Daft Punk, who did have arguably the song of the year in "Get Lucky" which seemed to be on an endless loop throughout the Summer. "Royals" certainly had its own run, but looking back it was somewhat ridiculous to think she could overtake Daft Punk.
Kanye West Announced as X Games Austin Headliner
[youtube id="Gid-tqzvTGw"]
UPDATE: Tickets for X Games Austin are now available here, along with a full lineup that includes The Flaming Lips, Slightly Stoopid, Mayer Hawthorne, Gary Clark Jr., Wavves, Bad Religion, Cash Cash, Candyland & FMLYBND, along with the previously announced headliners.
The 2014 installment of the annual X Games competition was sure to be a little more weird this time around as the yearly action sports festival lands in Austin, Tx. Things may prove to get even more strange after 'Yeezus' himself, Kanye West, was announced as this year's headlining music act yesterday. The larger-than-life Chicago hip-hop star who took to wearing leather kilts and gaudy gold chain masks onstage during his three-month long Yeezus tour in support of his most recent album, was added to the event along with Mac Miller, Dillon Francis and Pretty Lights. It seems as though there is a perpetual festival always happening in Austin, regardless of day or time, and they just keep getting bigger. Adding West is a great move, too, for X Games organizers as their big-air and death-defying tricks seem to have lost the hold they had over the country less than a decade ago. The influx of the arguably the world's largest star should prove to help ratings a bit. The games will pitthe best in RallyCross, BMX, Skateboarding, Moto X, and now, Stadium Super Trucks against each other from June 5 -8 in Austin, Texas, information available here.
[Album] Pretty Lights: "A Color Map Of The Sun Remixes"
Earlier this year, 32 year old electronic dance music artist Pretty Lights released his first full-length studio album comprised fully of his own self-produced tracks. The project, which was released on July 2, charted at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 upon its debut and solidifying the DJ as a real artist to be dealt with amongst the greater music landscape. Never one to be finished with anything, given the intrinsically infinite amount of options available to DJs today to distort sounds, Pretty Lights decided to remix his entire album with the help of some friends.
EDM high-flyer GRiZ takes a spin on a few tracks, most notably adding his unique, soulful horns and crafty mixing to "Vibe Vendetta", which is the perfect complement to the original. Pretty Lights also taps EDM big names such as Datsik, Opiuo and heRobust to round out the re-worked music. All in all, the second take on the project is an impressive building on earlier work and progresses each track to a sonically different area than they originally occupied. Check out the preview stream of the project below and be sure to scoop the full release, due out December 10.
[iframe id="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/playlists/15540939%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-7qfu6" mode="normal" align="center"]