SweepingTheNation

I get the feeling there's something as yet unannounced that weekend in the US, the Flaming Lips' new dates have a notable gap around then too. I had Shame down as topping Far Out but I don't think they'd have either as Mountain headliner. It's interesting, I don't know how many here also follow the End Of The Road forum but one of the big problems people have with their first announcement is the lack of options for Woods subs/Garden headliners - they have Angel Olsen and Ezra Furman, and then next listed is Arooj Aftab who is acclaimed and Grammy-winning but last year played third from top of the Saturday on Walled Garden. If anything Green Man so far seems to have the opposite problem, between those international acts in Europe and the likeliest British contenders there's no shortage of potential second tier acts but we keep running short of ideas for likely big headliners.

Which begs the question of how they and we have ended up in a position where a festival that usually makes its first announcement in January has delayed until 1st March, which also happens to be the day a stylistically GM-friendly act of an anticipatory level that would be able to put an announcement embargo in place are announcing a festival headliner *and* putting pre-sale tickets on sale for their own big gigs the dates of which overlap with Green Man, if it's not to announce that band. It feels a little too thorough to be coincidence. I've still got a feeling the headliners are going to be disappointing compared to the names some seem to be expecting, especially if "Other Stage" headliner refers to Orbital.

Aaaaaanyway... we've not even talked about potential other headliners. The possibility of Orbital is very interesting, and if that's the case I assume they'll be Saturday with Boygenius Friday (as their London date is Sunday), but it'd be someone dancey on Saturday regardless which means there'd have to be another marquee experienced headliner on Sunday but with a lot of names being ruled out I'm not sure who that would be right now.

Popularity is still popularity, though. And it's not TikTok that makes promoters feel Boygenius are already popular enough, album or not, to have a 20,000 capacity outdoor gig in London based around them and to headline a day-long 15,000 strong festival in Scotland (their headlining Connect is basically an open secret and they're announcing on Wednesday morning too) God, if it's not already (and this is partly my fault, I admit) this thread is going to be insufferable if/when it's actually announced.

Just to point out Boygenius are fifth billed overall for their day at Coachella, above Charli XCX, just below Rosalia and Eric Prydz. Nobody seems to be questioning that positioning for a festival five times the capacity of Green Man.

Might be coincidence, I know, but before the two dates (for which presale starts on the 1st) were announced by there was a good strength rumour Boygenius were playing one other festival - and look at the date of their announcement:

I do think some people are underestimating how many people in the Green Man demographic already know of Boygenius, not least because whoever is promoting the Gunnersbury Park gig is clearly expecting enough people to know about them to sell 20k tickets from scratch. Even if they haven't heard their records all GM need to say is "Phoebe Bridgers has formed a supergroup with these two singer-songwriters you may also have heard of, their upcoming record is all over the music press and 6 Music, this will be a huge deal by August; also, here are three other headliners and a full supporting line-up."

It's likely they'll also all be playing solo songs in the set, as they did during their late 2021 US tour. (I'm doing what I'd been cautioning against and just assuming a huge name, aren't I? Call it rebound from the EOTR forum's Future Islands Wars)

So they're playing at a level of venue that headliner size bands do - and that's comfortably the smaller of their two announced UK gigs - but they aren't headliner size? The idea that they aren't regarded as a huge deal for what in the whole scope of the UK festival summer is a mid-size event doesn't add up.

March 31st, the announcement of which was promoted with a Rolling Stone cover. Also, one of their members sold out four nights at Brixton Academy not long ago.

Playing a park with a capacity larger than EOTR's on the Sunday of Green Man weekend.

Their London date is 20,000 capacity Gunnersbury Park. If they aren't headline level for a festival that isn't much bigger, who that they could realistically get is?

Again we really shouldn't get our definite hopes up, but ticket presale from 1st March... (There's also a rumour they're playing Connect the following weekend)

Were supposed to headline EOTR in 2020 and 2021, so I guess they're wrapping up touring Dragon New Warm Mountain... with their August US dates and are (hopefully) on a priority future promise to them. Yo La Tengo headlined in 2019, no way they're back so soon.

FWIW I'm guessing that if Lorde does anything else in the UK it'll be APE or Connect, but I doubt she was ever on GM's radar anyway. It's kind of interesting that they're announcing much later than usual and we usually have some solid idea of at least one headliner before the confirmation but we don't at all this year. We half-assumed First Aid Kit because they had talked about playing an August festival but they're doing South Facing.

All of which also applies to Liam Gallagher. He's certainly a risky booking for GM but maybe Fiona wants to shake up the demographic. (Seriously, though, we've already been through "surely it'll be Pulp?", "surely it'll be Bjork?" and "surely it'll be Aphex Twin?", let's not have another one at the faintest suggestion and get people's hopes unrealistically high)

Unknown Mortal Orchestra on Friday, according to the press release for their new single/video.

Wait, while I'm not outright saying she won't, why has she got to be doing it any more than Loyle Carner or Jessie Ware being announced for the same? (Special Interest too, though)

Creep Show, John Grant's collaboration with Cabaret Voltaire's Stephen Mallinder that was supposed to play EOTR 2020, have been announced for Latitude.

The National are actually playing MSG on the 18th, while Bon Iver has US festival dates for the weekends either side of GM (and no, before anyone says it that doesn't obviously mean either are flying over in between/afterwards for one date at a festival they have no attachment to)

Her dates that start on 1st September are her Cornucopia show, which are designed for arenas with surround sound and integrated visuals/set. I'm starting to get vague thoughts of last year's Secret Garden Party, where none of the bill was made public in advance and their headliners - Metronomy, London Grammar and Self Esteem if memory serves -were very reasonable for the size and price but because people who claimed to be in the know had maintained it was going to be the Chemical Brothers and Florence & The Machine there was uproar. (They announced this year's headliners in December.) Not that it'll be anything on that scale but especially with some events this year you hear rumours and have ideas about who might be available, and then...

Ironic thing is tickets didn't even go up by as much as many other similar sized festivals year on year. (Perhaps that's half the problem) Mind you, when 2019 was announced there seemed to be a disproportionate amount of upset about Metronomy headlining, and they've gone on to headline even bigger festivals.

I mean, there's still people coming onto this topic to complain about it nearly three weeks after the announcement was made. I know today they featured Future Islands, and I do find it fascinating that they're the one name people are zeroing in on when they've played larger sold out venues than virtually everyone else and have at least one big UK booking around the same time (I know it's not as easy to convey the lack of sub/second level depth that we've been talking about)

"We want to launch the festivities for Green Man 2023, including a first peek at the charitable projects of the Green Man Trust." In new context it seems like a London corporate event to launch everything the festival organisation does except the "musical artists" bit. It's not like they're promoting it generally.

Green Man announcement on 1st March, likely just before EOTR's second.