To paraphrase the wise words of one Tiffany “New York” Pollard: Teddy Swims, sweetie, I am so sorry.
The schedule for Outside Lands was unleashed Tuesday, with rising pop superstar Chappell Roan slated to play on Sunday at 4 p.m. at the main Lands End stage — right before Georgia-based white-guy soul singer Teddy Swims.
Now, Teddy Swims isn’t nothing: His breakthrough single, “Lose Control,” topped the Billboard charts in March, and is nearing a billion streams on Spotify. But he doesn’t stand a chance next to the whole femininomenon unto herself. Roan is easily one of the most exciting new artists this year, and potentially this generation.
It’s crazy she’s getting second-tier billing, especially in San Francisco, where two different clubs have hosted Chappell Roan-themed dance parties so far this summer. Her fans are obsessed with her, she rules, and she will almost certainly get a titanic crowd, if her performance at last weekend’s Capitol Hill Block Party in Seattle is any indication.
I’m not alone in thinking this scheduling makes zero sense. Give a quick scan of the Instagram comments on the set time announcement, and you’ll see a small army of people absolutely furious that Roan is not getting higher billing at the fest. “what is wrong with yall?” reads one top comment. “Like you know she’s gonna have the biggest crowd of the whole weekend right?”
Let me play fortune teller for a second here, as someone who’s been to his fair share of festivals and seen this kind of thing happen before. (Solange deserved better than getting upstaged by Mac DeMarco at FYF 2015.)
The organizers have, effectively, put the real headliner on before poor Teddy Swims. That means everyone’s gonna be parked at the Lands End stage, getting sunburns and holding their pee while they wait for Roan. When she comes on, they’ll scream, sing along, do their little “HOT TO GO!” dance, and then leave in a sweaty, jittery mass for the PortaPotties and long waits for Ubers home — just in time for Swims to take the stage. I’m betting most won’t be back for the evening acts, Sturgill Simpson and Post Malone, either.
So who, exactly, is in charge of Outside Lands’ scheduling? Certainly not someone who’s reading the festival’s Instagram comments. It seems like they’ve fundamentally misunderstood that the people who go to festivals — i.e., the young, obsessive, and terminally online — are in the exact nexus of Chappell Roan’s fandom.
This isn’t the first time Outside Lands has misread their audience — although at least they've put Roan on the main stage. On Saturday at last year’s Outside Lands, Lana Del Rey, patron saint of sad and queer Gen Z slash millennial culture, shared a time slot with stalwart rockers Foo Fighters; organizers gave the Foo Fighters the main stage and top billing. Then, as anyone with an active internet connection could have predicted, the crowd for Lana went on for a country mile, far outstripping the Foo fans.
This go-around, Outside Lands was right on the staging — but dead wrong on the timing. Good luck, babes.
