Early this morning Fake Shore Drive founder Andrew Barber posted a photo of what appears to be the lineup for this year’s Lollapalooza. Barber discovered the picture—a shot of a Lollapalooza 2013 poster—on EDM Chicago’s Twitter feed, and it went viral this morning. Since then the Lolla lineup has gone from “questionable” to “legitimate.” Barber received confirmation that it’s the official bill, the Tribune‘s Greg Kot spoke with several industry insiders who verified the lineup, and I also spoke with a source who confirmed the thing as authentic. And as we wait for the folks at C3 to officially announce the Lolla lineup—scheduled for a week from Tuesday—we can gab about the leaked information.
As far as the actual meat of the lineup is concerned, this year’s Lollapalooza is a bit of a glass half-full, glass half-empty scenario. It’s a top-heavy bill, though one that’s offset by the boring, white-bread bands that take up a large portion of the headlining spots—seriously, the most exciting things about the Lumineers are some tweets that the New York Times‘ David Itzkoff made about their headgear. If you ignore the Lollapaloozzzzzzzza part of the bill (Mumford & Sons, Lumineers, Killers, Vampire Weekend) there’s enough of a stable of solid big names (the Cure, Nine Inch Nails, New Order) and unexpected outsiders (Death Grips?!) to keep me cautiously optimistic. (Also, I hope the “Ghost” that’s on the lineup is the theatrical Swedish metal outfit, but I won’t be surprised if that’s not the case.)