After a minefield run of hits and misses over the years, we were left with a pretty great feeling about the annual KROQ Weenie Roast following last year’s installment. The show saw Stone Temple Pilots surprise the world with new frontman Chester Bennington (of Linkin Park) as The Black Keys tore shit up righteously, and everyone from Imagine Dragons to Silversun Pickups delivered rock-driven performances that made for a hell of a great day.
Festival Fails: Horrors, Hilarity & Humiliation
This year? No such luck. While Phantogram and Fitz and The Tantrums are sure to rock proper, the rest of the lineup for the 2014 KROQ Weenie Roast is a greatest-misses run through the shit you urgently slap at the buttons on your car radio to avoid. Avicii, the man who inflicted EDM-country on the world, leads a lineup that includes Coachella disappointments Foster The People, unwelcome reunited joke act Fall Out Boy, inescapable douche-drowning chumps The Neighbourhood, preening snotty darlings The 1975 and Bleachers, who sing that atrocious song that’s singlehandedly been responsible for over 74,000 automobile deaths in the past 3 weeks as people desperately attempt to get their “I Wanna Get Better” song out of their ears. Allegedly.
Yeah, that one.
With the exception of Arctic Monkeys, Lorde and Nirvana exclusively playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Come as You Are,” this year’s lineup is strongly indicative of what amounts to the entirety of KROQ’s current daily programming. With a staggering amount of exciting new music being released faster than we can listen to it, there is no longer any marketable excuse to continue hammering the same 8 goddamned songs into everyone’s heads.
Have fun, kids! We’re sitting this one out.
