SUMMER is approaching, and with it music festivals booking legacy acts for lazy nostalgia draws. These acts will stretch out their 15 minutes of fame for an excruciating 40:
Mumford & Sons
Headlining Big Weekend next Sunday like an unwanted folk night at your local, the Gen Z attendees will be baffled by faux shanties from a posh bloke who’s married to a Hollywood actress just to get to that chorus where he swears. A tortuous flashback to a pre-lockdown world when this was acceptable, and that’s just the two hits.
The Ting Tings
There have been four albums released since this couple plagued 2008. The average festivalgoer is familiar with none of them. There will be an enthusiastic singalong to that one about women’s names not being theirs, though some more chemically confused audience members may accidentally segue into Mambo No 5.
The Streets
Mike Skinner’s been busy whinging about politicians and took seven years to make a film, but will turn up in the 4pm slot to do his greatest hits. Again, two of them. His references to kebab shop scraps and scoring girls on attractiveness will be lost to audiences who aren’t allowed to stay in pubs past 11pm, but he will make drunk men blubber with Dry Your Eyes.
Kaiser Chiefs
With a lot of time to fill they could elongate that horrible wailing bit in I Predict A Riot, which is less irritating than football fans chanting Ruby. Despite collaborating with Nile Rodgers, the king of strumming funk chords for too long at a UK music festival, he’s headlining somewhere else and will never come on stage.
The Wombats
Their 2025 album out was completely ignored by the public, so the Scouse trio will whip out that bit that plays over Will’s narrations on The Inbetweeners. And the other one just like it. Or maybe that was a similar band. There never really was much more to them than snippets for TV episodes, which at 25 minutes are longer than the ideal Wombats gig.
Clean Bandit
Trying to remember of a song other than Rather Be is like deciphering whatever the living f**k a Clean Bandit is. The good news is that they have cellos and violins to not only add to the confusion, but sidestep any attempt to please punters altogether. Worked with various high-profile vocalists, but the fee isn’t enough to share with them.
Scouting For Girls
It’s a wonder a band with such a creepy name is allowed by today’s woke crowds, or one that’s this shit. Their Top 10 charting tracks were repetitive enough but they somehow managed four hits in a very small span of time. Will be enthusiastically sung along to by those who were aged 13 to 16 between 2007 and 2010.
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