Primavera Sound 2022 Lineup Has Every Band
Barcelona’s much-loved Primavera Sound Festival has had a wild ride over the past year. The festival’s big 20th-anniversary edition was supposed to happen in 2020, and that obviously got cancelled for pandemic-related reasons. Primavera planned a big return for the early summer of 2021, and then that got cancelled, too. Last month, news came out that Primavera’s organizers were planning to stage a two-weekend festival in June of 2022. Today, the festival has unveiled the lineups for those two weekends, and those festivals are going to be positively nuts. Between both weekends, Primavera now has basically every halfway-notable band in the world booked to play.
A lot of artists are booked for both Primavera weekends, but there’s enough variance that you could easily go to both festivals without worrying about sitting through the same set twice. And the sheer size of these lineups is almost overwhelming. Just in the headliner bracket, the first weekend has Massive Attack, Pavement, Gorillaz, Tame Impala, Beck, the National, the Strokes, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds, Jorja Smith, and Tyler, The Creator. The second weekend has many of the same acts — Gorillaz, Massive Attack, Tame Impala, Strokes, Jorja Smith, and Tyler — as well as Lorde, Dua Lipa, Megan Thee Stallion, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Interpol.
Beyond just the headliners, the lineup is stacked. Weekend one has Bauhaus, Bikini Kill, Einstürzende Neubáuten, Kacey Musgraves, Earl Sweatshirt, Jawbox, Disclosure, Beach House, Charli XCX, Mavis Staples, Sharon Van Etten, King Krule, Jamie xx, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Yo La Tengo, 100 Gecs, Dinosaur Jr., slowthai, Caroline Polachek, girl in red, and IDLES. The second weekend keeps many of those artists and adds Run The Jewels, the Jesus And Mary Chain, M.I.A., Playboi Carti, Sky Ferreira, Jay Electronica, Big Thief, Slowdive, Jessie Ware, Mogwai, Brittany Howard, Courtney Barnett, Clairo, and Romy, among others.
The lineup is so full that even the bottom of the undercard has artists who I consider to be huge names. You have to squint hard to even read their names — thanks in part to some weird design choices — but down there you’ll find Japanese Breakfast, High On Fire, Napalm Death, Turnstile, the Weather Station, Les Savy Fav, the Armed, Lightning Bolt, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Beach Bunny, Rapsody, Shellac, A. G. Cook, Jamila Woods, Jenny Hval, Squid, and Black Country, New Road, among many others. This shit is wild. You can find all the relevant details here.