Travis Scott removed from Coachella 2022 lineup
The lineup change follows last month's deadly Astroworld event
Aux News Travis Scott
Travis Scott will no longer perform as a headliner at next year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The lineup change comes after last month’s mass casualty event that occurred during the rapper’s set at his festival Astroworld, and resulted in the deaths of ten attendees.
The festival’s producer, Goldenvoice reportedly cancelled Scott’s performance. First confirmed as a headliner in 2020, he was set to lead the festival alongside Rage Against The Machine. In the wake of Astroworld, a Change.org petition was created, demanding his removal from Coachella’s lineup. So far, 60,000 people have signed the online petition.
Per Variety, Coachella informed Scott’s longtime agent, Cara Lewis, of its plan to remove Scott from the roster and pay a kill fee for the cancelation (typically 25%). Apparently, Lewis had been adamant on keeping the slot, which would have marked Scott’s return to the stage.
According to Consequence, Scott even offered to play the festival for free, and was still turned down by the company. It’s unclear who will replace Scott, but Coachella revealed Swedish House Mafia as its third headliner in October.
In the weeks following the tragedy, Scott has issued a formal apology and offered to pay for the victims’ funerals, but his offer was mostly turned down. Last week, in his first interview since Astroworld, the rapper sat down with Charlamagne Tha God where he said he had no idea people were injured or dead until the police press conference late Friday, November 5.
In addition to the lack of concerts for the foreseeable future, Scott has also been named in a pile of lawsuits alongside event organizer Live Nation and Drake, summing up to $2 billion in damages. The rapper has filed a request to dismiss several of the lawsuits.
The Coachella festival is scheduled to take place on the weekends of April 15-17 and April 22-24 at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, California.
14 Comments
Frankly, I’m astonished that he doesn’t cancel all of his upcoming shows and take a long time off after something like this. Maybe there’s too much money and insurance and whatnot involved. Who knows.It’s strange though, the whole thing must have been traumatic for him as well, unless he’s an actual sociopath (which I don’t believe). It seems insane to still want to perform when you were at least in part responsible for people dying while you were performing. I think I’d be in a mental hospital right now if that was me.
I can kind of see the argument for him getting back to performing as soon as possible to get beyond it. I think taking a break afterwards might actually be worse, as it means accepting blame for the deaths, something that would be really, really hard to do (look how hard Alec Baldwin is trying to deflect the fact that’s partially responsible for accidentally killing someone). This is only from his perspective though, as I can’t imagine being a family member of one of the people killed seeing him just moving on like nothing happened.
the whole thing must have been traumatic for him as well
Well, Alec Baldwin is still out and about.
That’s what I thought of too. Why are they jumping up and down to make statements? Are they getting some cockamamie legal advice?
I mean, Baldwin is a classic case of just not knowing when to drink that shut the fuck up juice. He’s constitutionally unable to lay low. It’s not in his DNA to.
Oh, jeez, I mean bummer, but he’s making it hard to think anything else.
TBF, Baldwin wasn’t 100% responsible for his thing, not to mention he wasn’t all like, “Oh, I just shot two people with live rounds. Oh well, let’s keep filming! Make sure I’m only using live rounds from now on!”
I can imagine a veteran performer wanting to get back out there and show that they can perform without it becoming a tragedy – particularly if they don’t consider what happened their fault, as seems to be the case for Scott. Eagles of Death Metal were performing again within a month of the terrorist attack at the Bataclan, and that was with 90 dead and probably a fair bit of PTSD among the band. Jason Aldean performed on SNL within a week of the Las Vegas shooting. Pearl Jam only took a month off after there were nine deaths in the mosh pit during their set at the Roskilde Festival.
I’ll take a free funeral; if it’s still on the table.
OK, but you still have to listen to Travis Scott for 45 minutes. No backsies!
I would think he’d be too busy with his lawyers to perform for a while.
His lawyers are going to perform in his stead!
How much longer must this BIPOC artist be made to suffer for the failures of white society?