Rock Werchter 2023

[Aech2ElectricBoogaloo]

How's Liam gone from playing in a tent below Editors and Pixies at Pukkelpop last year to 15k people to headlining Rock Werchter? 

[The Black]

Guessing/calling it: Robbie Williams to be announced as headliner this Friday.

Makes sense as he has a performance in Antwerp on Thursday and the remaining headliner according to Ken19 was to be announced at the end of January.

[Ohad]

11 minutes ago, The Black said:

Guessing/calling it: Robbie Williams to be announced as headliner this Friday.

Makes sense as he has a performance in Antwerp on Thursday and the remaining headliner according to Ken19 was to be announced at the end of January.

Liam G isn't the said headliner?

[ParanoidTourist]

13 minutes ago, The Black said:

Guessing/calling it: Robbie Williams to be announced as headliner this Friday.

Makes sense as he has a performance in Antwerp on Thursday and the remaining headliner according to Ken19 was to be announced at the end of January.

I wouldn't mind RW actually. I prefer him instead of Stromae.

[Archi]

The show from Robbie Williams is soldout since a while. Since its announcement? And he has a lot of shows/festivals already announced for next Summer. Added to the fact he's playing in Croatia on June 27th and 28th. I don't see him playing in Belgium the day just after. And going back to Greece on July 1st.

About Liam Gallagher, he's on the same line as RHCP like RW always does. But we can't consider him as a co-headline. Same feeling as Greta Van Fleet put on the same line as Metallica last year. Some acts sound like co-headline (The Killers in 2022), some doesn't.

[ParanoidTourist]

How about Arcade Fire? Could they be the missing co-headliner on Thursday?

[Jefb]

1 hour ago, Aech2ElectricBoogaloo said:

Iggy Pop, Liam Gallagher and Pup is all I'd go see from those 30 names. Stromae is really headlining that Thursday on his own? What a dissapointing year. 

Inform yourself before you start complaining. If you look at the poster, it is clear that we still have a name to go on Thursday next to Stromae

[Muppetmark]

Sigur ros 3rd down in the barn looks really low for them 

[Nicklord]

4 minutes ago, Muppetmark said:

Sigur ros 3rd down in the barn looks really low for them 

They're low on every lineup I saw so far. I don't know why to be honest

Edited January 25, 2023 by Nicklord

[Akujin]

6 minutes ago, Nicklord said:

They're low on every lineup I saw so far. I don't know why to be honest

On Mad Cool they are above The 1975 and Franz Ferdinand and 5th overall. I think that is a pretty decent spot.

[ParanoidTourist]

26 minutes ago, Nicklord said:

They're low on every lineup I saw so far. I don't know why to be honest

Yes it's strange! I remember the days when they played below Radiohead on main stage. 

[ParanoidTourist]

We can forget Foo Fighters. It seems they just announced exclusive gigs for Rock am Ring/Rock im Park. 

[Death By Sexy 2.0]

1 hour ago, ParanoidTourist said:

How about Arcade Fire? Could they be the missing co-headliner on Thursday?

So far, AF is only playing in EU in august and september. 

[Archi]

11 minutes ago, ParanoidTourist said:

We can forget Foo Fighters. It seems they just announced exclusive gigs for Rock am Ring/Rock im Park. 

The announcement from RAR is so much better than Werchter with less names. Damn, Foo Fighters >> Liam Gallagher and the others.

[Kaboom Boxer]

Really surprised by the negativity in here. I’m delighted with the new names and excited to see who the final headliner will be. 

[ParanoidTourist]

5 minutes ago, Kaboom Boxer said:

Really surprised by the negativity in here. I’m delighted with the new names and excited to see who the final headliner will be. 

I agree! Just listening to the unknown names as well and it´s pretty good. I´m even happy with good old Liam. 

[matrainertje]

21 minutes ago, Archi said:

The announcement from RAR is so much better than Werchter with less names. Damn, Foo Fighters >> Liam Gallagher and the others.

No.

[49Lawson]

4 hours ago, Jefb said:

We´re talking about Rock Werchter. They do this every year like that. 

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to digest I don’t think that they do really. When I first started going Werchter used to be unrivalled as the line up of the Summer, they pulled off combinations that were unthinkable anywhere else in Europe. 

These days I feel like they’ve almost got greedy and they prioritise profit over quality. As it’s been mentioned, LG didn’t even headline that Hear Hear event last year, which was the brain child of someone trying to make even more money instead of just combining those bands into the Pukkelpop line up. Last year Werchter tried to add that Boutique event alongside Classic and it was a shambles, they ended up combining the two together which they could have been in the beginning. I feel that they’ve stretched themselves too thin, and there’s possibly a massive glut of festivals fighting for too few bands. And Werchter seems to have gone down the rabbit hole a lot of UK festivals have where instead of booking bands coming through and letting people work their way up the line ups they fill the slots with one hit wonders and try and appeal to the TikTok crowds. It’s a bit of a shame to see really as it feels like it’s fell away from what it was. 

Robbie Williams would make sense as the Thursday headliner as the Barn looks to be a counter programme to a poppier day. 

This point particularly isn’t a slight on Werchter, but I can’t believe if you look at the bands touring that no major festival has been able to pull together something special

 

[Nicklord]

I definitely agree that the lineups are now worse than before but I don't think it's because of the reasons you mentioned. There are almost no one hit wonders and names for the tiktok crowd, from everyone announced only Gayle fits that I think with her abcdefu song

[Ferda]

10 minutes ago, Nicklord said:

I definitely agree that the lineups are now worse than before but I don't think it's because of the reasons you mentioned. There are almost no one hit wonders and names for the tiktok crowd, from everyone announced only Gayle fits that I think with her abcdefu song

Gayle's actually quite good live, seen her at R&L last year and she was great 🙂

Edited January 25, 2023 by Ferda

[49Lawson]

17 minutes ago, Nicklord said:

I definitely agree that the lineups are now worse than before but I don't think it's because of the reasons you mentioned. There are almost no one hit wonders and names for the tiktok crowd, from everyone announced only Gayle fits that I think with her abcdefu song

Yeah I’ve had another look and I’ve realised I haven’t really worded that bit well, and the TikTok criticism is probably unwarranted. I just can’t put my finger on it but it just doesn’t feel like a Werchter line up 

[Dietediet]

3 hours ago, Nicklord said:

They're low on every lineup I saw so far. I don't know why to be honest

Their recent European arena show apparently sold like shit. Doesn't quite give them a strong negotiating position.

Source: a few days before the Brussels show, they decided to turn it from a standing to a seated show, reducing capacity by quite a bit. And even then they had sufficient space left to continue selling tickets.

[Floyd_Ams]

Very happy with Iggy and Royksopp! Liam and Interpol are very nice additions too. As it stands now there is a potential nightmarish clash for me though. RHCP and Wardruna. Damn, I want to see both! Hoping it won't be the case in the end.

Other than that a lot of new names to discover from today's throw, which I always consider a good thing. After a first listen to some of them, PUP, Spoon and Squid caught my attention. Not bad at all! 

[tmolvik]

9 hours ago, 49Lawson said:

Now that I’ve had a bit of time to digest I don’t think that they do really. When I first started going Werchter used to be unrivalled as the line up of the Summer, they pulled off combinations that were unthinkable anywhere else in Europe. 

These days I feel like they’ve almost got greedy and they prioritise profit over quality. As it’s been mentioned, LG didn’t even headline that Hear Hear event last year, which was the brain child of someone trying to make even more money instead of just combining those bands into the Pukkelpop line up. Last year Werchter tried to add that Boutique event alongside Classic and it was a shambles, they ended up combining the two together which they could have been in the beginning. I feel that they’ve stretched themselves too thin, and there’s possibly a massive glut of festivals fighting for too few bands. And Werchter seems to have gone down the rabbit hole a lot of UK festivals have where instead of booking bands coming through and letting people work their way up the line ups they fill the slots with one hit wonders and try and appeal to the TikTok crowds. It’s a bit of a shame to see really as it feels like it’s fell away from what it was. 

Robbie Williams would make sense as the Thursday headliner as the Barn looks to be a counter programme to a poppier day. 

This point particularly isn’t a slight on Werchter, but I can’t believe if you look at the bands touring that no major festival has been able to pull together something special

 

The answer is Live Nation... 😉 As long as they can increase profits they will, so as long as they sell out they won't see any reason to spend more money than they have to. However a festival isn't any better then their actual line-ups and their reputation, so if people prioritize otherwise and stop buying tickets early because they don't trust the line-up to be good, it will probably change.

That being said, and as mentioned by other posters, the way music is being consumed now will make it harder and harder to create those line-ups. Maybe currency (especially towards the dollar) also plays a part, which I definitely know it does for smaller festivals now... 

[Ken19]

11 hours ago, tmolvik said:

The answer is Live Nation... 😉 As long as they can increase profits they will, so as long as they sell out they won't see any reason to spend more money than they have to. However a festival isn't any better then their actual line-ups and their reputation, so if people prioritize otherwise and stop buying tickets early because they don't trust the line-up to be good, it will probably change.

That being said, and as mentioned by other posters, the way music is being consumed now will make it harder and harder to create those line-ups. Maybe currency (especially towards the dollar) also plays a part, which I definitely know it does for smaller festivals now... 

Some time ago we've had Jazebel, a very reliable user. He said, and he was correct: if you program a festival, most of the time not your plan a, b, c, d will happen, but your plan e. 

Of course, friday Peppers weren't supposed to headline. The situation from july 2022 was not the same situation november 2022. And with the Peppers, Liam was not supposed to play that spot. Sometimes your plans fall apart. Think of Eddie Vedder in 2019 for example. 

A major headliner changed her plans and is in Europe in august. You can see how Sziget and Rock en Seine did some adjustments. Or Foo Fighters, that was really close, they decided to stay in the USA. One weekend RAR exclusive was a good option for them. 

After corona, in the business there was a vibe that the next years would be easy. With a lot of acts available. The war and energy crisis changed a lot. Festivals had to adapt themselves. Even frontrunners like Primavera and Glastonbury don't have the headliners they wanted originally.