What Do the ACL and Lollapalooza Lineups Tell Us about Who's Coming to New Orleans?

The Strokes

We have read the tea leaves and can predict the Voodoo headliners.

My guess for Voodoo headliners: Megan Thee Stallion, St. Vincent, and The Strokes. Alternate pick: DaBaby, but since he’d bump Megan, I hope not. 

That prediction is the product of at least a month treating festival lineups like racing forms, scrutinizing them for crucial data, including the announcement on Wednesday of Lollapalooza’s lineup and Thursday of ACL’s. Since both are produced by C3 Presents, the company that also produces Voodoo, their lineups may give us some clues as to who we might and might not see in City Park on the Halloween weekend. There are acts that they book into multiple festivals, tentpole acts that they only book into specific festivals, and acts that don’t appear to be on C3’s radar. That doesn’t mean they won’t play Voodoo, but if C3 hasn’t booked them elsewhere, they’re less likely. 

The Austin-based ACL has scheduled Billie Eilish, George Strait, Stevie Nicks, Miley Cyrus, Rüfüs Du Sol, DaBaby, and Erykah Badu to headline. Strait is an Austin/Texas-specific booking that wouldn’t make any sense at Voodoo, and Nicks and Badu are possible but it’s hard to imagine that Jazz Fest isn’t more interested in them than Voodoo. 

One act I wouldn’t get my hopes up for is Eilish. Right now, she has four U.S. fall festival dates in Las Vegas, at Governors Ball in New York, Firefly in Delaware, and ACL. It’s unlikely that ACL will book an attraction that could draw fans from the Gulf South and Midwest to also play a few weeks later a few hundred miles away. In the upcoming festival season, she’s going to be one of the few attractions fans will have to travel to see, and no festival wants to compromise that and she probably doesn’t either. 

As for my picks—I feel most solid about The Strokes on Sunday. Voodoo has often booked its most good-time, vaguely nostalgic guitars/drums/bass band on Sunday (think R.E.M., Flaming Lips, Lenny Kravitz, Arcade Fire, The Killers), and guitar rock has long been part of Voodoo’s identity. In a year when that’s in short supply, they make the most sense. 

Megan Thee Stallion is hot, and this is the time to capitalize on that. It will either be her or DaBaby.

I’m not 100 percent sold on St. Vincent as a headliner. I hope she is, even though I’m not sold on Daddy’s Home either, but I could see Miley Cyrus too. Since she’s headlining larger festivals, she would make sense too.

There was a time when the afternoon at Voodoo could feature some gems, but it is increasingly clear that the story of a C3 festival is told in the top five lines, and there are likable acts after that, but they’re value-adds and not there to help you decide if you want to go or not. The Lollapalooza and ACL lineups get thin after the fifth line, and while there are good acts in there, it’s hard to see much to motivate people to show up at 2 or 3 beyond the party. This was the case for the Voodoo 2019 lineup, and with the exception of Janelle Monaé and Lizzo in 2018, it has been the case in the last few years. 

Still, there are acts in ACL’s top lines that could play Voodoo that would be sell tickets. After the headliners, there’s Doja Cat, Greta Van Fleet, Phoebe Bridgers, Moses Sumney, Bleachers, and Band of Horses. Lollapalooza also has, well, lots of stuff. Really, if I was in Chicago, I’d be thinking about other festivals. That said, if there was ever a year when festivals don’t have to sweat ticket sales, it’s this one. There was a time when the live event industry worried that out-of-work fans and those afraid of COVID might dampen demand for tickets, but that has been 100 percent disproved. ACL sold out both weekends the day the tickets went on sale.

Another prediction: now that we have Lollapalooza and ACL lineups, I think we’ll get Voodoo’s soon. The other two are national destination festivals along with Bonnaroo, Coachella, and Jazz Fest, so C3 needed to get them sorted out first. Voodoo is regional, but I suspect that a lot of it is already booked, or the pieces just need to be fit together and finalized.

Finally, in a year when I’m predicting two women headlining Voodoo, ACL has four over two weekends, and Pitchfork Music Festival has one every night, Daytona Beach’s Rockville festival has to be seen to be believed. The festival appears to be run by the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club, with a total of nine women performing among the 69 acts listed, and headliners include Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Disturbed, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Social Distortion and Staind. 

So many dudes … so many dudes … so many dudes …