Lollapalooza summer music festival

Final thoughts on Lollapalooza 2014

I'm going to offer up two statements to gauge your interest in Lollapalooza. See how you react. Lorde is curating the Mockingjay – Part 1 soundtrack. Keep Calm and Chive On. If you had to tab over to Google to understand any of that, Lollapalooza is probably not the music festival for you. If one or both of those sentences elicited a "Fuck, yeah!" either verbally or deep within your myelinating brain cells, dude, you are so going to rage in Grant Park. As I wrote in my final thoughts in 2013, Lollapalooza has largely become a festival for high school and college students. I criticized C3, the company that puts on the fest, for not recognizing that. This year, the promotors wisely catered more to adolescents. There was an official tank top for sale that read OFF TO LOLLA LAND, a hashtag slogan decided upon via a Twitter contest. The row of food vendors along Columbus Drive, dubbed "Chow Town," eschewed the watermelon gazpacho of the past to focus more on burgers, pizza and cheese fries. In fact, I'm pretty certain they could shovel out nothing but cheese fries from a cauldron with few complaints. Likewise, it's more and more of a pizza-and-cheese-fries bill, musically. There are very of-the-moment pop acts from the upper echelon of the current iTunes chart like Lorde, Iggy Azalea, Bleachers, Kongos, Childish Gambino. The first two could have and should have been headlining. Is there any doubt Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Ariana Grande or Magic! could have drawn a larger crowd t

Mud people at Lollapalooza 2014

Rain at Lollapalooza is nothing shocking. It's just a fact of life with music festivals, which mostly take place atop baseball fields: There is going to be mud (as you can see here in 2012). On day three of Lollapalooza 2014, it rained. And rained and rained and rained. By my count, there were at least four downpours, at 1pm, 3pm, 5pm and 6pm. It was some strait up Orlando BS. Some of us took shelter in the trees or cowered under umbrellas with the disposition of wet cats. Some of us (and even some of those ubiquitous celebrity signs) opened their arms to the skies and treated Sunday like a water park. Or, well, a mud park. Big crowds at Chromeo, Cage the Elephant and, of course, Perry's Stage just kept on ragin' in the slop. RECOMMENDED: Check out more photos and coverage from Lollapalooza

Lolla street style

Lollapalooza might not lure the crazy costumes of a Spring Awakening or North Coast Music Festival, nor does it present quite the wild hipster safari of Pitchfork. But that's okay, that means you see more summer looks in Grant Park you might want to rock in your day-to-day life. We wandered the grounds of Grant Park to find festival chic.  RECOMMENDED: Check out more photos and coverage from Lollapalooza

A visual history of Lolla acts

Though originally a small, crazy, travelling rock festival, Lollapalooza chose Chicago as its permanent home in 2005. From that first Saturday in Grant Park, Lollapalooza became the city's favorite summer event. Every year there are more acts and more stages, and over the last ten years the Lollapalooza has transformed from a Chicago-local weekend to one of the biggest and most popular music festivals in the U.S. We took a look at the ways in which the demographic of Lollapalooza has changed since its settlement in Chicago, to explore how the festival has developed since becoming a part of our city. What once was a bastion for '90s alternative has diversified with greater numbers of hip-hop, pop and electronic acts. Genre of Lolapallooza artists | Create Infographics It's no suprise to see the continued dominance of indie and alternative rock from 2005 to 2014. In 2014, though, hip hop and electronic music are much more heavily feautured, and are placed higher up in the lineup. Lollapalooza 2005 saw an entirely rock and alternative rock-based headliner list with the Pixies, Widespread Panic, Weezer and The Killers. This year, The Kings of Leon share their space with Eminiem, Outkast and Skrillex.  Gender of Lollapalooza frontmen | Create Infographics So. Lollapalooza is still not quite up to date on gender equality. Still, female representation has slowly increased over the years, and this year a female solo act, Lorde, features just seventh on the lineup. Nationality of Lol

Sunday faces in the crowd

By day three of Lollapalooza, you have stopped caring about your appearance. You have hardly slept. You are covered in sweat, lotion, dirt and your BFFs' beer spills. Your shoes—if you are still wearing shoes—are toast. Add to that the downpour that swept through Grant Park Sunday afternoon, which left people soaked and (often intentionally) coated in mud, and you have a true mess. (Don't they know there's tons of goose shit in that mud?) In spite of all that, or perhaps because of all that, the people watching on Sunday is always top notch. So take a stroll with us through the grounds of Grant Park for a final peek at Lollapalooza fandom and the best acts on stage, like Chance the Rapper, Childish Gambino, Skrillex and more. RECOMMENDED: Check out more photos and coverage from Lollapalooza

Saturday faces in the crowd

Lollapalooza 2014 carried onward into day two with better-than-average weather and larger-than-ever crowds. Tens and tens of thousands clad in tank tops and flower headbands (and some in more sophisticated outfits) turned out for Outkast, now deep into their formulaic reunion tour, as well as "Summer" hitmaker Calvin Harris and Foster the People.  As always, the mix of music on offer, the low median age of the crowd and a liberal amount of booze made for some fantastic people watching. Can Saturday's crowd top Friday's array of half shirts and American flag tees? Let's take a peek at the fans in Grant Park and the performers onstage. RECOMMENDED: Check out more photos and coverage from Lollapalooza

Friday faces in the crowd

Lollapalooza kicked off with the strongest single-day lineup of its weekend bill. The ladies in jorts and the guys in American flag muscle shirts didn't let a little rain deter them from catching the stellar acts, from Iggy Azalea, who was clearly booked long before she became a E! News regular, to Lorde who played later in the evening. RECOMMENDED: Check out more photos and coverage from Lollapalooza

What to eat at Lollapalooza Chow Town

Lollapalooza 2013, Friday photos

Lollapalooza 2013, Saturday photos

Lollapalooza 2013, Sunday photos

Lollapalooza 2013, The Killers photos

Lollapalooza 2013, Nine Inch Nails photos

Lollapalooza 2013, The Postal Service photos

Lollapalooza 2013, Mumford & Sons photos

Lollapalooza 2013, Phoenix photos

Lollapalooza 2013, The Cure photos

Lollapalooza 2013, Heard on the street

Lollapalooza 2013, Street style

Lollapalooza 2013, Great T-shirts

What to eat at Lollapalooza

The best and worst stage banter

Free shows during Lollapalooza weekend

Mumford & Sons: interview