Who Is Going To Headline Our Festivals In Five Years Time?

Hello, I'm Ryan. I work a shitty day job and in between serving yuppies caramel macchiatos and wiping smeared ketchup off plates, I daydream and fanboy over today's musicians. I'll probably never get to share a milkshake with Kanye West or play dress up with Lady Gaga, but I would like to be able to ask Justin Timberlake to start "bringing sexy back"

Teenage Fanclubbing #3 - Who Is Going To Headline Our Festivals In Five Years Time?

Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the fifth, fabulous - but surely not final - year of Blur’s comeback tour. Despite not having released any proper new material in a decade - "Fools Day", "Under The Westway" and "The Puritan" were presumably doled out as jack off commiseration prizes in the vein of "Her Majesty" waving at tax-paying peasants at herJubilee - Blur are headlining both Coachella and Primavera Sound.

Sure, the main purpose of the internet these days may be to produce meme lists that make us collectively say - “damn, we’re really old” - as we click through images of the Friends cast eating cheesecake in 2013. But, looking over festival line-ups of the past few years, it’s apparent that the bookers are on the same wavelength. Modern festivals are like if the cast of Friends came back, but instead of writing new episodes they went and recorded new versions of all the old ones. The characters would all be awkwardly old, depressing shrapnels of the great that they had once been. The hype and need to fuel nostalgia would give purpose to the first episode. The rest would seem like uncreative, unoriginal cash-ins. An inside joke on us all.

It’s this recyclable notion that’s been peppered through the outdoor festival scene, threatening to perpetuate them as future schmaltz indebted love-ins. This year, the line-ups for both Coachella and Primavera featured headlining artists that have been playing over twenty years. TWENTY YEARS. Bestival have got Elton John, even Sugar Ray organised their own cruise alongside fellow SMTV Live era artists Smash Mouth, Spin Doctors and Sugar Ray.

In an economic period built upon jelly foundations, festivals are turning to big name, old bands to headline their bashes. It’s a safe bet and it doesn’t take an NME journalist to work out that Pulp headlining Reading last year would draw in more people than, say, MIA. But, financially sound festivals should be taking a leap. Glastonbury has sold out already despite no line-up announcement. However, with rumours of The Stones headlining, a Beyonce moment doesn’t look likely.

The bookers aren’t entirely to blame, though. They’ve helped push some contemporary artists toward centre stage - Queen B, Jay Z and Kanye West all spring to mind - yet they aren’t being given much fodder by the music press. Thanks to the immediacy of the internet, bands aren’t given enough time to nurture and grow. We’re fed up with new bands of the day, artists of the week and yearly shortlists of the ten next great artists to inject our ears with audio spunk. Shamefully, like the girls who peaked in high school, these artists disappear. Instead, we’re left with an inevitable future of hate-fucking their mildly successful, but ultimately, chai tea and a bubble bath boring friends (Mumford & Sons and Kasabian.)

One day all the old bands will die.

It’s true. They’ll all be dead. When the last great compact disc artist gets cremated, will festivals become a holographic musical version of Madame Tussauds? Will we traverse ten years back to the days of Travis headline slots in a V Festival continuum? Or can anyone save us from the impending doom of a Mumford & Sons Glasto?

At the risk of delving into a Catch 22, there’s certainly a few artists capable. If Frank Ocean's SNL performance is anything to go by, another great album and he’ll comfortably captivate the attention of thousands of stoned teens for a couple of hours. Foals - who, having just released their third consecutive stellar album - surely deserve the step up. Vampire Weekend, are teetering on the edge of the main stage spot with the release of their third LP set to determine the final push. Arctic Monkeys have already made the leap and just need to keep doing what they’re doing. I’d even go as far as to say that in a couple of years, Tame Impala will be worthy. Yet, they themselves, represent the current trend of festival wistfulness. A want to return to a time when music meant something more than a scruffy wristband and a feature on Girls.

Festivals are in danger of becoming reductive. They will become museums devoid of any new memories. There will be no Nirvana at Reading, Pulp at Glastonbury or Stone Roses at Spike Island. The latter two have already reformed to headline events and Kurt will probably appear as a hologram soon.

Can festival promoters start booking some new talent? We’ve overdosed on nostalgia for too long and a Mumford frequented future sounds wrist-slashingly depressing.

Follow Ryan on Twitter @RyanBassil