Khruangbin (2024)

One Liner:  Funky instrumental goodness

Wikipedia Genre:  psychedelic rock, surf rock, funk, instrumental rock, dub, rock

Home: Houston

Poster Position: Headliner!
Both Weekends.
Saturday at 6:20 (sure, makes total sense for them to be before non-headliners from the 3rd row).

AmEx Stage.

Thoughts:  Last here in 2018, and at the time I remember them feeling like a revelation - like, there was nothing like this going on anywhere I feel like.  Now, these are multiple other copies of them on this same poster.  But still, while back in 2018 I thought these folks were off the reservation, I still found it absolutely freaking cool.  It is like these cats are trying to make funk instrumentals for spaghetti Westerns to use.  And I do not mean that as an insult in the slightest.  I'm truly digging what this band is laying down.

By now, much of their catalog is familiar, and local radio stations like KUTX and Sun keep them in the roatation.  This isn't the top track, but its still the one I want to present to you first, because it is flipping tight and the one I recall being the biggest one first.  I need Killer Mike to lay a track down over the top of it yesterday.  This is "Maria Tambien," with just over 53.4 million streams.

By the way, that speaking stuff in that video doesn't belong - that is not in the real version of the track, but is for some reason included in the official video...  But the key to these tunes is that bass.  Hot damn, that bass is a reason to get up in the morning and face the day.  Gimme some more of that stuff.

The name though, I don't even understand how to say it.  Wikipedia says the following: "When asked to play their first gig, [bassist] Laura Lee, who was learning to speak Thai at the time, decided they should name themselves after her favorite word, "khruangbin," which means "engine fly" or "airplane" in Thai. Speer admits that, had they had the foresight to predict the band's success, they may not have chosen a name that was so difficult to pronounce. Though the band's name is notoriously challenging to say, it symbolizes the international set of influences that shaped the band's formation."  This video (with a very annoying screaming woman in it) shows how to pronounce it.  

Krung Bin.  Someone please make that lady shut up.  No need to scream at the top of your lungs while this guy is trying to explain the band name.  Criminy.

Four albums, 2015's The Universe Smiles Upon You, 2018's Con Todo El Mundo, 2020's Mordechai, and 2024's A LA SALA.  There are also some other EPs and remixes and collaborations in there, but those are the four official releases.  Oh, and lots of official live albums.  I like the second album quite a bit more - the first one has more of a psych/surf vibe, where the 2018 album feels more solid and more funky.  The "Maria Tambien" song up above is from the new album, but their most popular streaming track is from that first album, this is "People Everywhere (Still Alive)" with 116.2 million streams.

Tasty funky little nugget of goodness.  Just let that one rip and feel the groove.

Also, how fucking cool do these cats look in this video.

That is the good shit right there.  That simple drumming to keep it moving.  The complex bass climbing and descending and bouncing around, and then the ringing, plucking, insistent guitar.  That first track is freaking goodness.  The video is 50 minutes long, so I get it if you're not going to go that far, but just check out the opener.  No, you need to see the second one too.  I want to make sweet love to this music.  Not like listen to it while I make love, I want to actually bone this music.

Also, the fact that the bassist and guitarist share a hairstyle is kind of messed up.  On her, looks great, especially when she breathes into the mike.  On him, scary Moorish molester man.  They are apparently just wigs.

It is wild that they are from Houston - doesn't feel like it matches, until you think about how ethnically diverse and weird Houston really is.  Sure, it is the Energy Capital of the World of whatever, but it is also a major melting pot of cultures and languages and ethnicities.  Well, Mark Speer (guitar and vocals) and DJ Johnson (drums, keyboard, vocals) met playing in a gospel band at a Methodist Church in Houston, and over drinks realized that they both shared a deep love for music.  In 2007, Speer met Laura Lee Ochoa (bass guitar and vocals) and he taught her the bass, and then she joined the band Yppah, where Speer was already the guitarist.  After a tour, they were motivated to keep it going and started the new band.  And it worked out swimmingly.  "The New York Times wrote that Khruangbin's sound was so distinct and popular that "there now exists an entire subgenre of music broadly known as 'Khruangbin vibes.'"

Let's go a little more into the music itself.  2020's Mordechai had the unfortunate fate of many pandemic releases.  More very fun, cool, funky, eclectic tracks - some instrumental and some with words - that could frequently act as a very good rap background if someone cool was so inclined.  "Father Bird, Mother Bird" has the sound of one of those cool BadBadNotGood tracks that Ghostface Killah used to rap over on that Sour Soul disc.  Love this track - smooth as silk and fully laid back.  The top track is a great one - "Time (You and I)" with 73.1 million streams (impressive!).

Got that tight wacka wacka action from the guitar, some funky bass machinations, and overall a damn good groove.  I just put it in a playlist for my sister the other day - I think it matches her very well.  Also, that video is amazing.  

Then they hooked up for two EPs with fellow ACL posterboy Leon Bridges, to make the fantabulous 2020 EP - Texas Sun - that is super yummy.  Texas Sun came out just right before the pandemic, and something about it just nailed a vibe that we needed in my household at the time.  The kids would roll their eyes at this tune by now, because of how much we played it, but it is freaking beautiful.  "Texas Sun," with 259.7 million streams (by the way, up from 246.7 million in the last month when I wrote the Leon Bridges review).

The combo of that voice with those groovy, funky, intertwining instruments, is just rad.  Seems really bad to have distilled the sun into that little ball and then just look at it with your wife. Your ophthalmologist will be sad.  Also, while I'm not sure, I am pretty certain that at least one of those shots in the video was out in or near Alpine, Texas, and I love Alpine, Texas.  Maybe it's just more El Paso.  And then, in 2022, the Khrungbridges fired out Texas Moon.  Not anything on there as good as this, but still solid.

In 2022 they released a disc with the African singer Vieux Farka Toure called Ali.  When it was released, I was joking to myself, in the car, that KUTX's playlist is just Khruangbin in different iterations.  By themselves, with Leon Bridges, with Toure, probably with like Megan Thee Stallion and Dolly Parton.  But this one has a completely different style than the collaborations with someone like Leon.  Toure is a Malian guitarist, the son of another famous Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure (thus the album name, because this is a set of his dad's tunes).  And so, the funky worldliness of Khruangbin gets a boost from the African sounds of Toure to make a really nice combination.  It is a chill gem of long grooves and relaxed funk.  The top track is "Diarabi", which has been on the radio a lot around here.   It has 12.5 million streams.

Would be dope as hell with a cool rapper freestyling over the top of that.  No clue what he is saying in the lyrics, but the smoothness of the overall track is cool as hell.  Now just set Kendrick loose over the top to talk about his childhood and we're cooking with gas.  Good disc.

Finally, you get 2024's A LA SALA.  You'd never know that this wasn't the same album they put out in 2020.  Not that I know the hustle, they found a lane and they are sticking to it, but it is exactly more of the same.  Maybe a little more chill, if that is possible, with less of the upbeat numbers as last time.  Great vibe music - although if I am being honest, a few times through this one and my brain has wandered and wished I could put some music on.  Which is not a great sign.  3 songs crack 10 million, with "May Ninth" being top of the pile at 20.4 million.

Not sure if I like the singing ones or the pure instrumentals, but either way, they really use the smeary little vocals like they were just another instrument in the quiver.  Yeah, good vibe here, something nice to hear at a restaurant while you chat.  Otherwise, this final feature is a little less than exciting for me.  I want more of the Leon Bridges combo action I think.

Oddly, they have a track on the new Childish Gambino album that is just a straight Khruangbin song.  No rap.  Nothing other than these guys just doing one of their usual funk jams.  Strange.

But yeah, I'd go vibe along with this.  I very well might end up doing that, being that Saturday's headliners are otherwise underwhelming.

Red Hot Chili Peppers (2022)

One Liner: One of the greatest rock bands ever (IMO), and boasts the prime time funk of Flea.

Wikipedia Genre: Funk rock, alternative rock, funk metal, rap rock
Home: Los Angeles, CA

Poster Position: 1
Both Weekends.  Sunday.

Thoughts:  I freaking love the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  I've heard people griping because they were here a few years ago and they are old and blah blah blah.  They are one of the most exciting bands I can think of to fill my eardrums, and live they usually bring the house. I've seen them four times now, and although they rarely play anything older than Blood Sugar Sex Magic anymore, that doesn't mean that they won't dip deep into the catalog this time.  Please?  Maybe?  As I've done in the past with some of the major headliners, I'll go through the RHCP catalog and list them in order of badassery.

Before I get to it, I wanted to mention that if you dig the Chilis, you should definitely go read the autobiography that Anthony Kiedis put out a few years ago called Scar Tissue.  It is a crazy ass look into his personal history, from a wild childhood (including humping his Dad's girlfriend) to drug binges (including stuff that should have killed him repeatedly) to groupie love, as well as some cool insight into how and why he wrote some of the greatest songs the band has ever made.  It also helped to understand a little bit about the tortured history of the guitarist position in the band.  Short history:

• Hillel Slovak.  Founding member, with the band up to Uplift Mofo in 1987 (with a small break or three), died of heroin overdose.
• Jack Sherman.  Helped out in the early days when Slovak left the band to move forward with another band called What Is This?  Was pretty much just on the first album.
• John Frusciante.  The best of the group (for my money) who was on Mother's Milk, Blood Sugar, Californication, By the Way, and Stadium Arcadium.  Took a break in the mid-90's before leaving for good.  But then not actually being gone for good, because he is back now.
• Dave Navarro.  The Jane's Addiction guitarist who filled in for Frusciante in the mid-90's, but actually did a great job with the band on One Hot Minute.
• Josh Klinghoffer.  Most recent guy, who had been with a bunch of minor bands and then had been playing with the Peppers on their Stadium Arcadium tour as a backing guitarist, but when Frusciante quit again, he just stepped in.  I feel kinda bad for the dude now, because he just got kicked to the curb once Frusciante came back.

And since I've pimped for the Kiedis autobiography, I have to mention that I was not able to finish Acid for the Children, Flea's book.  I think Flea is freaking amazing, but the book is just so weird that I found it offputting.  Like, instead of telling stories in a normal narrative fashion, it is very freeform and off-the-wall.  Maybe I'll finish it someday.  Anyway, on to the albums.

1.  Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991).

A formative album for me.  My sister, Sharon, had put me on to the band with Mother's Milk, which I also love, but this one hit me right when it mattered most, right at the right time in my music formation, to find the coolest bass player in the world mixed with freaky, funky, weird lyrics.  I was weird in high school.  I guess I am still weird, being that I write a billion words about music that only like 8 people read, but back then I was in band and theatre and lacrosse and these dudes were a great complement to the more straight-forward rock of grunge but they were infinitely weirder, which was very appealing.  So, this album was a massive hit, and it very well might be everyone's favorite Chili's album, but even beyond the "Give it Away" and "Under the Bridge" hit tunes, I don't understand how the opening track ("Power of Equality") can't make you just want to jump up and freak.  Or the semi-scary sexual storytelling of "Apache Rose Peacock" and "Sir Psycho Sexy."  Or the feels of "Breaking the Girl."  Or the total abandon of "The Greeting Song."  Flea is the reason that this band is the best thing ever, and he is prominently featured and makes this whole album the best thing.  Like, what other band makes things like "Mellowship Slinky in B Major" with their bassist just weaving around like that?  Love it.  I've got the album art on the wall in my office right at this moment.

2.  Mother's Milk (1989). 

The interview snippets in the midst of that video above for "Good Time Boys" are fantastic. Easy call for the second best album for me, as if BSSM had never existed, this would have always been the best Chili's album ever.  This is where they finally honed the wild punk style of the first few albums into the right combination of punk and funk and rock and freak. Their cover of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground" is the best stuff, but "Subway to Venus" and "Knock Me Down" are both awesome.  The cover of "Fire," nonstop blast of flames that it is, also rocks out. "Pretty Little Ditty" was sampled by that shitty "Butterfly" song from that shitty band Crazy Town, which despite both that band and song being crap, was kind of cool (although the version of that song on the copy of Mother's Milk that you can stream on Spotify is wrong, it is not the same version as was included on my CD of this album from 30 years ago).  And even though I think the Lakers suck, I still can't hate on the fact that these guys made an awesome homage song for their team and released it like a regular track to the album.  No one does stuff like that anymore.  Most of this album just jams out and is fun as hell.  Do it.

3.  Californication (1999). 

Without looking, I would have bet that this was their most commercially successful album, with several legit hits.  From reviewing Wikipedia, it looks like that is questionable.  Blood Sugar sold the most U.S. copies at 7 million (Californication comes in right behind that at 6 million), and while this one charted well, it did not do as well as Stadium Arcadium which hit number 1 in every market tracked on Wikipedia, as did the new one Unlimited Love.  But, where this album won the race is in worldwide sales, as it apparently sold more than 16 million worldwide, versus 13.8 for BSSM or 7.6 million for Stadium.  But this one boasts more hits than the others, with "Scar Tissue," "Around the World," "Otherside," "Californication" and "Road Trippin'" all charting well.

From what I remember about last time they came to ACL, they leaned hard on this album and Stadium Arcadium, so I might expect to hear some of those hits again. The chorus of "Scar Tissue" is one of my favorites from them - the longing tone of voice and guitar going along under "with the birds I share this lonely view," it just works out perfectly for the feel of the song.  There are a ton of official videos for this album, so if you feel like going down that wormhole, you can get a bunch of them on YouTube.  I'll just give you the one above for the title track (although that video does not age well with those jenky video game graphics). And with this album, even beyond the hits, you've got great rockers like "Get On Top."  When trying to consider where to rank albums, my instinct was that this one should go lower, but its just too good.

4.  One Hot Minute (1995).

I'm already in a bind here, because honestly I could have put any of the next few into this slot.  But I gotta put them in order, so I'm giving this one the slight edge.  This is the one album with Dave Navarro, so from what I've heard they rarely (if ever) play any of the songs from this one live, so we never get to check out the genius of "Walkabout" or "Pea" in person.  I think it also helps that I listened to this album a million times during college when I had a lot of spare time to appreciate tunes, so this one has a happy memory space for me. Even the late tunes on the album like "Shallow Be Thy Game" jam out.  This is why I listen to the Chilis, to get my funk out and jam.

5.  The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987).

That video features quite a few boobs and a lot of Flea's bare butt, so fair warning here. The greatness of this album is the raw fury and my nostalgia for how I felt at age 15 (or whatever) yelling along to "Special Secret Song Inside" ("I want to party on your puuuuuuuusssssay") or "No Chump Love Sucker" ("How could I ever Have kissed that bitch, So what if she's GOT BIG TITS!!!"). For young Jack, those lines were highly fun to furtively boast, sotto voce, in my bedroom alone, or full voiced in my car.  This was also probably my first real exposure to a Dylan song with "Subterranean Homesick Blues."  This one just has the most frantic tracks, I think, with "Love Trilogy," and "Skinny Sweaty Man," and "Me and My Friends."  I have some good memories of this disc in high school, cruising around in my friend's Bronco II and jamming this thing.

6.  By the Way (2002)

This one was up at #4 for a while in early drafts of this post, but after listening to all the albums a few more times, I think I get sucked in to the two fantastic tunes on here and think the entire album is better than it is.  Namely, "Can't Stop" is one of the best tunes that the Chilis have ever put together (#3 currently on their popular songs listing on Spotify, with 775.4 million streams). "By the Way" is great, "Dosed" is really good too.  But the album has a lot of tunes that I'd call filler. On that weird ass video up above, I'm hearing hand claps in the chorus that I've never heard in listening to that song a million times.  That is strange.  I'm not saying this album is bad or anything, in fact it is really good, but it just can't beat out those ones up above.

7.  Unlimited Love (2022).

I'm unapologetic about loving the Chilis.  I know they have some unfortunate songs on their catalog (although I have to say that when "Party on Your P***y" came out I was like 11 and that shit was deeply funny to me) but overall their aesthetic of funk and groove and rock and goofiness ties deeply into what I want all of my music to be.  And also, they got their best guitarist back!  So I was pumped about this release.  And while the bass is funky and slappy, and the guitar solos are meandering and jagged (in all the right ways), and the drumming is as tight as ever, the lyrics are sooooooooo dumb.  Like, a song called "Aquatic Mouth Dance" is just not what I needed to try to defend this thing (but that bass solo in there is tight).  The lead single, "Black Summer," sounds great, but it makes zero sense (and that is even while setting aside the weird accent that Anthony uses).  The second track - "Here Ever After" - is one of those that seems like it is just free thought association.  "I don't know 'cause I got big temper,

Stick close to my rainbow side, Candy corn and that dancing leopard, That’s all, folks, that's all" or "I don't know, but it’s finally just one more mile, Peaches are sold and all givin' up on that Humpty style."  Mmmmmkay.  Maybe that means something to Anthony, but it just sounds like he's scatting random words over the otherwise good bump and tumble tune.  Other random lines pop up all throughout - "superstars don't do the dishes!" or "I just want to lick your face!" or "the smile of a knife is seldom befriending" or "platypus are a few."

BUT - I honestly don't care.  I like a lot of music where the lyrics are dumb as crap.  I've written before about Greta Van Fleet having dumb lyrics, or the Foo Fighters just shoving a bunch of trite sayings together and calling it good.  In the end, I love Flea's bass and I like Anthony's weird sing-rap meandering and I like Frusciante's spacy slashing and I even like Will Ferrell's no-nonsense drumming.  I'm here for the groove, man.  And you definitely get that groove in "Black Summer" or "The Great Apes" or "She's a Lover" or loads of other tunes on here.  "Poster Child" totally sounds like something that could have been on Blood Sugar.  The bass is funky and the guitar has that slinky, freaky, pedal-tweaked sound that makes this sound like I need to listen to it in a convertible while cruising a strip.  "The Heavy Wing" for sure sounds like a Chilis song that I had heard before this album came out.  It could have used a trim for sure - 17 songs for 73 minutes is pretty damn long - but I'm still digging the groove.  Y'all know me.  I'm in.

8.  The Getaway (2016).

Reviewed this one back in 2016, and its only grown on me since.  I keep hearing "Go Robot" on the radio and its such a cool track, funk bass flailing and then some disco-fied Duran Duran sounding synth breakdowns.  I think this album may crawl up the hierarchy of albums over time, but this is where it falls for me for now.   I love the opening of the album, with the title track, where I can see Flea making that hissing cymbal sound with his mouth while contorting his face around the mike with each hiss.  "Dark Necessities" is also a good tune, although I've tried to parse the lyrics out and have no clue what the hell is going on there.  I talked about "Dreams of a Samurai" before, with its Radiohead-leaning sound, and I still like that one too.

8.  Stadium Arcadium (2006).

(I'm sorry Noah!)

My big beef with this one is just with the filler stuff.  If they would have cut down the album into a single disc of the strongest songs, this one could be really great, like top four, but instead when you listen you get two hours and thirty-one freaking minutes of tunes.  It's just bloated.  That being said, "Snow (Hey Oh)" and "Tell Me Baby" especially that second one, are awesome. Give me more of the nonsense spewing lyrics over the funk roll. "chilichilibittysomething about nittygritty life can be a little shitty something Boston and Kansas City jibba jabba pennies!"   "Dani California" is good too, but overplayed enough to have less punch for me now.   And I like "Slow Cheetah" too.  Weird that this album is already 16 years old - seems newish to me.  Hell, even the silly ass "Hump de Bump" is pretty fun - "nothin' but a two beach comber!" - that nimble bass is freaking awesome.  So I gave you that one up above. AND, that video is top notch with some fly dancing, homeless trumpet guys, Chris Rock, Craig Robinson, and a terrible looking grill on Kiedis.  But on the first disc, after about "Torture Me," the majority of those songs just stop holding my interest and kind of fart away into the wind.  Same with most of the second disc, just unnecessary.

But, Spotify has a 30 minute long spoken commentary about the album that is kind of cool.  The character Dani California ends up being from both the songs "Californication" and "By the Way," which is a weird thing to decide, but such it is.  Frusciante apparently crafted his guitars based on the original Wu Tang album's vocal rhythms, which is also weird.  The interesting thing about their commentary is that the first half is only them talking about the best songs - "Snow," "Tell Me Baby," "Dani," and "Stadium," before they start to get into the lesser tunes.  Although Flea says that "Wet Sand" is a top five song for him.  And there is a part at about 19:20 when you can hear Kiedis getting all excited about Flea talking about how the guitar and bass made an organic thing like a tree. Anyway, "Tell Me Baby" is a jam.

9.  Freaky Styley (1985)

So, Freaky Styley is pretty low on my totem pole, I suppose, but it has some tunes on it that I remember with great nostalgia.  I went to youth camp with a bunch of girls from a Houston Catholic school (and had massive crushes on like 40 of them at any given time), so "Catholic School Girls Rule" was a favorite.  The best tune on here is the cover of "If You Want Me to Stay," which is still so freaking perfect.  It's chilled, but they do it perfectly.  And then "Yertle the Turtle" is a classic that I find myself singing to myself at random times.  "Yertle the Turtle oh marvelous me, for I am ruler of all that I see."  But this album is from the time when Kiedis is still doing a lot of the rap-style singing and the band is significantly more raw and unfinished sounding.

10.  I'm With You (2011).

Honestly, in just re-listening to this album, I think its better than I remember.  But the "hit" from it, "The Adventures of Ran Dance Maggie," is pretty weak, so mentally I think that the whole thing is weaker than it really is.  I say that, but then the stream counts on the album show that it really never got off the ground in comparison to other recent RHCP albums.  The Getaway's top song has over 354 million streams and the three tracks with the lowest streams are still averaging over 20 million streams. On the other hand, this album's top song only has 118 million streams and it has six songs with streams under 15 million.  And its been around for much longer.  But giving it another shot right now, its actually super funky and deserves more attention.  If I were to make a guess as to why it hasn't been more on my radar, I think it is the same malaise that has affected almost all albums that have come out in the past five years - if I didn't buy it and just streamed it, then I probably jammed it a few times and then moved on to the next new album.  Which sucks, but is kind of reality.  I'll keep working this one into my brain for a while here.

11.  Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984).

That video is amazing for several reasons.  First, Alan Thicke joking with these morons. Second, how freaking young are these dudes!  Third, Kiedis sounds like the worst lead singer ever in the history of the world.  Thank God he figured out how to sing (and rap with some semblance of tune).

This album definitely doesn't deserve to be the "worst" of the group, but if I'm being honest about it, most of this album is just not that great.  The best track, the reason that this whole thing worked out, is "Get Up and Jump."  I hear them trying to come up with the top-notch funky punk that comes out later, but most of this album has more in common with the terrible rap-nu-metal from the mid-90's than the best stuff the Chili's have to offer.  But you can hear cool bits and pieces that will come together later.  The guitar licks on "Buckle Down."  The frenetic bass flow on "Get Up and Jump." The silliness on half of the tunes. "Mommy Where's Daddy" always used to make me grin - "give daddy a kiss, girl, awwww Dad."  But, with all the good stuff these guys put out after this, no need (in my opinion) to go this far back into the catalog.

So there you have it.  No reviews of the EPs or singles ("Soul to Squeeze" from the Coneheads soundtrack or "Love Rollercoaster" from Beavis & Butthead), and no mention of how amazing their version of Hendrix songs are - "Castles Made of Sand" was always a good one.

There is also something out there I had never known about before, a group of B-Sides from I'm With You that was called I'm Beside You.  Spotify doesn't provide it as a full album, but as a series of singles with neato artsy covers.  "Hometown Gypsy" has a fun country-ness to it.  "Pink as Floyd" comes on slowly, but then sounds cool.  Glad I found those for some new action!

While this could change dramatically by the time October rolls around, a look at their current set-lists shows that we are likely to get another set that is light on the old school classics, with their most recent five European shows looking like this:

3-Jul	5-Jul	8-Jul	9-Jul	12-Jul
Intro Jam	Intro Jam	Intro Jam	Intro Jam	Intro Jam
Around the World	Can't Stop	Around the World	Can't Stop	Around the World
Dani California	Dani California	Dani California	Dani California	Dani California
Charlie	I Like Dirt	Universally Speaking	Scar Tissue	The Zephyr Song
The Zephyr Song	Scar Tissue	Charlie	These Are the Ways	Aquatic Mouth Dance
These Are the Ways	These Are the Ways	These Are the Ways	I Like Dirt	Snow ((Hey Oh))
Your Song (Elton John)	Snow ((Hey Oh))	Snow ((Hey Oh))	Snow ((Hey Oh))	These Are the Ways
Snow ((Hey Oh))	Nobody Weird Like Me	Aquatic Mouth Dance	Here Ever After	Throw Away Your Television
Aquatic Mouth Dance	Here Ever After	Suck My Kiss	Hard to Concentrate	Otherside
Wet Sand	Don't Forget Me	Hey	Tell Me Baby	Nobody Weird Like Me
She's a Lover	The Heavy Wing	Otherside	She's a Lover	Whatchu Thinkin'
Right on Time	Tell Me Baby	Whatchu Thinkin'	Right on Time	Black Summer
Black Summer	Black Summer	Pea	The Heavy Wing	Soul to Squeeze
Californication	Californication	Soul to Squeeze	Black Summer	The Heavy Wing
Give It Away	It's Only Natural	Black Summer	Californication	Californication
Under the Bridge	Give It Away	Californication	What Is Soul? (Funkadelic)	Give It Away
By the Way	I Could Have Lied	Give It Away	Give It Away	Sir Psycho Sexy
	By the Way	Under the Bridge	I Could Have Lied	They're Red Hot
		By the Way	By the Way	By the Way

So, the only old tunes are: Give It Away, Under the Bridge (only twice!), Nobody Weird Like Me (twice), I Could Have Lied (twice), Suck My Kiss (once), Sir Psycho Sexy (once).  Play Higher Ground, man!

I suspect that an ACL show will lean heavy on the hits and not dive out into the ether of the catalog, but here's to hoping that they go deep into Mother's and BSSM.

P!nk

One Liner: Pop rock star from 20 years ago

Wikipedia Genre: Pop, pop-rock, R&B
Home: America

Poster Position: Headliner!
Both Weekends.  Saturday.

Thoughts:  I mean, my immediate and honest thoughts here are as follows: WTF?  Pink feels about as likely to be top three for the ACL lineup as Kelly Clarkson or the Spice Girls.  Is she even still making music?  The last time I remember knowing about a song she made was back when Charlie's Angels was in the theaters.  There it is, 2001's M!ssundaztood has "Get the Party Started," is the only song on her discography that I recognize by the title and could sing a bar of.  "What About Us" sounds familiar, but I couldn't even hum a bar for you from memory.  Which is freaking wild, that someone like that is #2.  She's been around for 22 years and has a single song that a casual fan knows!  I'm sure you, dear reader, are deeply familiar with her catalog, but I'm absolutely shocked that she is #2 on the poster.

I just did a search for artists like Pink, and allmusic.com says she is similar to Demi Lovato, Fergie, Gwen Stefani, Icona Pop, Jessie J, Katy Perry, and Kelly Clarkson.  Of those, you could make a case for Katy Perry being a top artists on a big festival lineup in 2022, but the rest would be a hard no.  Really weird.

Anyhoo - you didn't come here for my lack of knowledge and incredulity.  You came here to figure out who the hell P!nk is, because you also have no clue how she got here.  Let's get into it.

Her real name is Alicia Moore.  She was originally part of a group called Choice, but then went out on her own in 1995.  Despite what I said above about her being a jenky #2 artist, Wikipedia says that she has sold over 60 million albums worldwide and is one of the "world's best-selling music artists."  She trained as a competitive gymnast until she was 12.  And started performing in Philly clubs when she was about 14 years old.  Since then, she's won multiple Grammys and other awards, she's sung the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, got a Hollywood Star, named People Magazine's most beautiful, and done a bunch of other major artist things.  I think I'm just in the dark about her, apparently.

She definitely has a distinctive voice - super powerful, but at the same time it is raw and husky at times.  Loads of emotion in her voice.

2000's Can't Take Me Home was her debut, and it actually has a totally different feel than her current most popular tracks.  Double platinum as well.  The opening song - "Split Personality" very much sounds like some late 90's R&B, like Aaliyah or TLC.  The top track even steals the harpsichord sounds from "Scrubs."  This is "There You Go" with 31.9 million streams.

That is really weird to hear, after all of her top tracks are so rock-lite-centric.  "Sometimes it beez like that."  But nothing about that song sounds familiar - well, other than it sounding like TLC rip off.

But then 2001's M!ssundaztood (that is a really hard title to type) shifted a little to add some more guitar and rock attitude.  This album went multi-platinum with more than 13 million albums sold world-wide.  Which is a buttload!  Three big tracks on there, from "Don't Let Me Get Me" (66.9 million streams), "Just Like a Pill" (144.8 million), and the only track that I knew before I started this, "Get the Party Started," with 156.3 million.

See - no more pink hair and rapper/basketball cute guys, now it's all about sexy, blonde, punky hair and alternative-rocker-looking cute guys.  Genuinely fun song for sure.  I don't think I had ever heard "Like a Pill" in my life.  Super generic pop rock.  But all three of those songs apparently went to #1 internationally.  Oddly, some of these tracks have less than 4 million streams.  Maybe this disc came out before streaming and so most people are just picking and choosing the ones they remember, instead of listening to the whole thing.

2003's Try This is even less popular, with several songs stream totals under 2 million.  And yet, this album won her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.  She beat Avril Lavigne, Michelle Branch, Bonnie Raitt, and Lucinda Williams.  Four of those definitely do not seem like rock artists.  The opening track is the top one with another pop rock track called "Trouble."  It's actually pretty good.  The second track surprisingly sounded familiar to me, called "God is a DJ."  Kind of reminds me of Sheryl Crow's later songs.  18.1 million streams.

Now she's dropped the spiky party hair and is going with more of a London pompadour/mullet thing.  That chorus is just awful.  "If God is a DJ, life is a dance floor, Love is the rhythm, you are the music."  Like something I wrote in poetry class in 4th grade and got an F on.  There is still some R&B hidden among the pop rock here - like "Catch Me While I'm Sleeping," but you can tell that she has mainly transitioned into the rock lane.  But I can also see why no one is going back to listen to these old songs.

2006's I'm Not Dead includes a track with the Indigo Girls (not the most popular track) and two big tracks.  "U + Ur Hand" has just over 100 million streams and "Who Knew" boasts 192.8 million.  The title of the album makes me think that people had either thought she was dead or she felt written off because fame had passed her by.  Not sure which.  Here is her quote about the album title: "It's about being alive and feisty and not sitting down and shutting up even though people would like you to."  Yeah man, stick it to the man, man.  Here is "Who Knew."

Now we are to the big Madonna hairdo for this POWER BALLAD action.  Can't recall ever hearing this one either, but its more of the light rock stuff that I bet still gets played on Magic 95 and Bob FM every day.  "Nobody Knows" sounds like she was trying to crib off of the Beatles.  The Indigo Girls one is actually a little hardcore - singing directly to President George W Bush about how shitty he was for womens' rights when he had daughters of his own.  "U + Ur Hand" is just an awful song.  I get that she's going for another woman empowerment song telling the guy to go home and get it on with himself, but it's just a deeply terrible mix of garbage faux-rock tune mixed with her overbearing lyrics.

2008 brought us Funhouse and her third biggest track - "So What."  Another #1 song on the charts.  Also, the album overall has a lot more streams than those earlier discs.  Only one song under 10 million streams.  Never heard "Sober" (127.8 million streams) or "Please Don't Leave Me" (110.4 million).  Likewise, nothing rings a bell about "So What."  413 million streams.

Back to the punk hair thing.  That video is just deeply obnoxious, just trying so hard to be punk when she is just so not punk.  "So what, I'm still a rock star, I got my rock moves, and I don't need you."  I got my rock moves.  Yep.  She sings that repeatedly.  Dammit, and then ten minutes after hearing this my brain sang "nanananananana I'm gonna start a fight."

You know what I just realized?  P!nk is the Chili Peppers for the ladies.  Half of the appeal of the Chilis is that they just rock out and sing dumb lyrics and are a fun time to party.  P!nk is just doing the same thing but with lesser musicians involved.  This is music for ladies who just want to jump around to a rock song and sing about how guys suck or they wanna party, but they don't want the rock song to be too rock-y or loud.  Like, Metallica let normal kids like me think they were in to metal for a minute, or Green Day made me believe that I liked punk for a moment.  But then I tried real metal and was immediately frightened back to my old stuff.  That is the same here - a lady like my wife, who never wants to hear screaming or heavy guitar can pop these tunes on and feel vaguely rebellious and excited by the rock, but not be frightened.  I'm sure you had already known that, but this is the inoffensive (but acts like it is offensive) party rock band for the ladies to enjoy.

2012's The Truth About Love shows her embracing the streaming age by including 17 songs and over an hour for the runtime.  But it also includes her biggest tune and another with over 415 million streams.  This was her first album to hit #1 on the charts.  The monster hit is with Nate Ruess, who you might remember from the band Fun, because he was the lead singer of that band who had the huge hit or two with Jack Antonoff.  This is "Just Give Me a Reason," with 896.7 million streams.

I feel like I had to have heard of that song previously, but before just listening to it again, I very honestly could not have sung any of it.  Also, since I apparently have been very into hairdos this whole time, she is now in the weird tubular pompadour thing at this stage.  Not a bad song.  Cheesy love ballad and all, but a good catchy tune and their voices sound really good together.  "Slut Like You" is a deeply cheesy slice of schlock.  "Beam Me Up" sounds like more Sheryl Crow.  I really hope we are almost done with these albums, as I'm deeply tired of super-generic soft rock by now.

2017's Beautiful Trauma has another big one - her second biggest streamer.  And overall, the album looks to have been a hit - the lowest streamer is just below 20 million streams.  Has a track with Eminem on it, and that makes me think that a lot of these songs sound a lot like those bad Eminem songs that sort of include a rock element while he raps - like the "Love the Way You Lie" one with the lady singing parts and then Eminem rapping parts.  P!nk does both the rapping and the singing in this comparison, but the bad backing songs are the same.  "What About Us" was the hit from this album with 619.3 million streams.

Now we are doing a poofy hair pouf and then the shaved head thing.  Sounds very much like a show tune.  Like someone in Hamilton should be belting this to the sky as a group of freed slaves dance in the background.  The song is a little more of an electronic tune than most of the others on this album, and seems to be a protest song about people who are being forgotten or marginalized.

Damn.  One more album.  2019's Hurts to Be Human.  Has a few tracks with over 100 million streams, including the big one at 346 million, "Walk Me Home."  A few cool collaborations on here too, with Chris Stapleton and Khalid the two big ones.  Here is that "Walk Me Home" one.

Almost a country vibe in that one.  And again, a show tune vibe.  Definitely never heard that song before.  Deeply uninteresting.  A lot of electronic stuff here now - maybe she left the lite rock thing behind in favor of the newer sound that the kids are in to.  Which is honestly even suckier than the lite rock.  But she is good at being a chameleon and moving to the next sound that might keep her in the public eye!  "The Last Song of Your Life" sounds like she is channeling Carole King.

Here is a good set of quotes from her Wikipedia page:  

"James Montgomery of MTV describes her as "a fabulously fearless pop artist" who can "out-sing almost anyone out there. She can out-crazy Gaga or Lily. She's the total pop-star package, everything you'd want in a singer/entertainer/icon. And still, she remains oddly off the radar. Such is the price of busting borders". Entertainment Weekly said: "She essentially invented the whole modern wave of Pop Diva Domination: You can draw a straight line from "Get This Party Started" to Katy Perry, Kesha, pre-messianic Lady Gaga, and post-weird Rihanna." Glamour Magazine wrote: "When Pennsylvania-born Alecia Moore debuted in 2000, pop was dominated by long-locked blonds like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Jessica Simpson. Pink changed the game. Without her, the last 13 years of big-voiced, tough chick music is hard to imagine."

Shows you what I know!  

Her most recent release is a live album called All I Know So Far: Setlist.  Which is an odd title.  And an odd set of tunes.  She doesn't play a bunch of the biggest songs, but she covers Cyndi Lauper, No Doubt, Bishop Briggs, and Queen.  But you don't get "Get the Party Started" or "What About Us" or "U + Ur Hand" or "God is a DJ."

I am definitely not interested in seeing her play live. I'm sure I'd have a good time if I just released myself from my skepticism and allowed myself the pleasure of goofy lite rock anthems, but I'm just not feeling it at all today.

Billie Eilish (2021)

One Liner: Dark pop phenom at only 19 years old.

Wikipedia Genre: Pop, electropop, indie pop.
Home: L.A.

Poster Position: 1
Both Weekends.

Saturday at 8:30 on the Lady Bird Stage.

Thoughts:  The nice thing for me is that she was just here in 2019, and she hasn't released much new music in the interim!  So I can pretty much just use the same post I did in 2019 and let that do the talking for me.  I'll update streaming numbers and maybe talk about a new track down below, but otherwise, welcome back to last ACL!

Major "pop" star, but with pop music that tends towards the dark, moody, emotional end of the spectrum instead of the "California Gurls" end of the performance world.  The first few times that I ever heard a song by her, I had no clue that it was a new artist, I thought "you should see me in a crown" was Lorde.

Even just the start of the track is cool, with that sliding sharpening of a knife sound.  AND THEN YOU SEE THE VIDEO AND YOU HATE EVERYTHING BECAUSE SPIDERS!!!  YUCK-O-RAMA.  That track has 576.8 million (up from 185.9 million in 2019) streams, which means it isn't even in her top five tracks overall on Spotify.

This article calls her a "generational icon," which I suppose is probably true.  She does this stuff semi-DIY, with her brother the only other listed collaborator on her whole album, which seems like a very Millennial way to do things, to eschew the hit producer and do your own badass thing.  And then seem totally surprised when its a big deal.

Her first hit single was "ocean eyes," which I have heard more times than I can count because my youngest daughter loves that song and wants to hear it all the time.  754.a million streams (up from 269 million in 2019) on Spotify.

So, she was freaking 14 when she made and uploaded that song.  Which is absolutely wild.  If you would have just played me the song without naming the artist, I would have guessed it was Lana Del Rey.  Has that same breathy, torchy singing style.

She put out an initial EP back in 2017, but finally released a full album in 2019.  I reviewed it and was surprised that it is actually better than I expected.  When all I had to go on was that EP (which I don't much like, other than "crown") I figured it would be more pretty poppy love song stuff like "ocean eyes," but I was very wrong.  Here is my review of the album.

Its a very weird album - you get bangers like "crown," then you get tender suicide balladry like "listen before i go," then you get kinda funny dance pop like "bad guy" (which shifts tempo near the end to become a totally different track made of trap beats), then you get weirdly funny stuff like "wish you were gay."  I have no clue how to actually pigeonhole this album or tell you what to expect.  I guess the thing to expect is something different from any other current pop album, and a lot of dark lyrics that can be a bummer, even while they sound lovely.

Wikipedia says her real name is "Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell," which I can't say I entirely believe.  But then this interview with her from the BBC agrees with the same, so I guess that is the word on the street.  Also, her brother Finneas, who wrote "ocean eyes" and produced her album, was an actor on Glee and I really wish I could remember who Alistar was on the show.  Nope - just went and watched some clips on YouTube, I definitely stopped watching Glee by the time those other new people came onto the show.  Did Glee keep going after everyone left for New York or whatever?  I guess so.  I, however, did not.

Her most streamed track is bad guy, with a whopping 1.7 billion streams.  That is insane.

Here's another creepy one - "when the party's over," with 1.1 billion (up from 364.1 million in 2019) streams.

It is apparently a thing with her to make her videos awful and horrible and disgusting.  Very pretty song, but that video is disturbing.  I know I said only one more, but let's do one more.  This is "bury a friend," which has 786 million (up from 252.7 million in 2019) streams.

I was going to say - oh good, she isn't putting something foul in her mouth!  A real video!  But no, she's still getting shoved and prodded and messed with and injected with 15 needles...  Radio has been playing this one, and it is truly a weird song to hear on the radio tucked next to The Black Keys and Imagine Dragons...

As far as the live show experience goes, I honestly hated the show in 2019.  My daughters were really excited to go see it, and I even went so far as to buy them little collapsible stools so that they could see the stage over the crowd.  It was packed like no other show I've been to in recent memory, but when the music kicked in, it was honestly boring.  She tried to hype of the crowd, and then she's sing some whispery ballad.  At one point she demanded that most pits be created, and the kids obeyed and made weak little mosh pits that ended after about 10 seconds. If you want to see for yourself, take a look (from I Heart Radio in 2019).

Mediocre sound on that video, but I will tell you that the crowd enjoyed singing along at top volume so it won't much matter.  Maybe she'll be releasing a new album before October?

She released a new song in 2021 "Your Power," that leaves behind the pop hardness and aims for gentle ballad (and a sad ass song about a broken relationship).  78 million streams.

Definitely trying for a different thing than "bad guy" or "crown."  Don't love it.  I don't have any interest in trying to see this show again.  Maybe my girls will and I'll be stuck in the mass of bodies again, but hopefully they'll have outgrown her and we can go to Stevie Nicks or Miley Cyrus.

Let's also throw this out there - Rainn Wilson, from the Office, doing a trivia interview with Billie Eilish.  Kind of funny (and she has a DEEP Office memory).

Robyn

One Liner: Swedish dance pop star (who stays under the radar here in America)

Wikipedia Genre: Electropop, synth-pop, dance-pop, R&B (early).
Home: Stockholm, Sweden

Poster Position: 1

Weekend Two Only.

Thoughts:  I know that she is massively popular, from the way that Rolling Stone breathlessly discusses her moves.  She's been around for a while, with her first hits coming back in 1995 (when she was 16 years old), and several Grammy nominations over the years.  No Grammy wins, but several GAFFA awards and some Grammis (the Swedish Grammys, not even making this up).  Pitchfork has both of her last two albums as Best New Music and loves her loads.

I originally wrote this post as a stream of consciousness sort of thing, written as I streamed through all of her albums.  But decided I needed to re-write it to make it a better explanation of her music.  It is a kind of weird progression.

Robin Miriam Carlsson first popped up as a teenager, with her presumptively named Robyn Is Here.  1995.  This music is totally different from her more recent albums.  That early stuff is some wannabe TLC crap - like sassy R&B with some vocal bending fireworks.  Although, this early album contains the two songs in her whole catalog that actually rang a bell to me.  
Most of the songs on that debut album are in the 200k range or so, except for one that appears to be the big hit, "Show Me Love," with 22.5 million streams.

Oh, hey, I know that song.  Weird.  I never would have connected that song to the same electronic dance lady that her newer albums show.  I swear I downloaded this track on Napster or something in the late nineties (as well as the other track from this album "Do You Know (What It Takes)").  According to Wikipedia, this was her last charting single on the Hot 100, where it topped out at #7.  Which is kind of depressing, that her last charting singles happened in 1995 when she was just starting, so no charting tracks in the 24 years since then...
Wikipedia also says that this song appeared on the Sabrina, Teenage Witch soundtrack.  My middle daughter has been watching reruns of that show on Netflix for the past few months and my God that show is terrible.  Pretty OK song.  Significantly better than the rest of this album.  Several of these songs have made me actually cringe.  The title track just made me say "ugggghhhhh this fuckin' sucks" out loud in my office.

From reading articles about Robyn, she seems like a cult favorite.  Like there are people who have decided that the normal American pop star singing this same brand of dance music is not cool, but because Robyn is Swedish and a little under-the-radar, they're very into her.  That might be the thing with RS and Pitchfork as well?

1999's My Truth is also in that mid-90's R&B wheelhouse.  Like some generic ass Aaliyah shit.  Definitely not my jam.  I'm going to say that is my least favorite of all of these albums.  Which is almost hard to say since the first album is so bad.

She took a little break here, as the next album is 2005's Robyn.  But here you can definitely feel an adjustment in her sound and a new direction.  The 2005 album is making me think of the Gwen Stefani album from around that time - Love Angel Music Baby - she has an almost rap style to her lyrics, and is doing some jokey stuff like "Konichiwa Bitches" and the "bombdiggybombdidangdiggy" type scatting in "Cobrastyle."  And she goes with a weird, and kinda funny, angle.  Tracks like "Bum Like You" or "Robotboy" are funny.  The top track from that 2005 album is "With Every Heartbeat," at 29.8 million streams.

I'm very split by all of this.  On the one hand, the longing in those lyrics, and the weird violin chunk in the midst and those atmospheric synths, I like it.  Actually, shaft that, I like this song.  It's a little earnest, out of line with a lot of the rest of this album.  But right after that track, I get "Who's That Girl," which is generic and not good.

The difference between the old Robyn - all crossover R&B and vocal gymnastics with no humor - and the new Robyn - dance pop girl with some funny lyrics - is jarring.  I much prefer the new version of her to this wannabe-background-singer-for-Puff-Daddy-garbage.

Now, another big gap - seems to be her thing to take a long break between each disc.  Also, she did a weird release thing with this one.  Body Talk is the 2010 album, but she apparently released it in three Body Talk EPs throughout the year, that were then joined together later into the full album.  Although, Spotify only has Body Talk Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 available.

I gotta say, this album just misses me entirely.  So much of it is a very generic-seeming, one-note aggressive dance music with high BPM that gets very exhausting to me. Like "Hang With Me," where the beat is just a very basic thump bap thing with some Tron ass synths over the top.  It feels like I'm supposed to be European and sweaty and ready to dance until exhaustion.  It's exhausting.  Better than the crappy R&B, but not by much.  Until the last song on Part 2, which is an empowerment anthem over strings.  I will say that there is one different track - Snoop Dogg shows up on one track and does his best to keep up, like a small dog leashed to an interstellar space shuttle powered by rainbows.  Actually makes me think of some weird Gorillaz track.  I do not enjoy this album.  

Overall, the album kind of makes me think of late-career Madonna, where she uses too many effects on her voice (that doesn't need it).  Looking at something like "Cry When You Get Older."  Nothing seems interesting or new or different, they all just have a sameness and generic dance-beat sense to them.  But, her biggest hit is on this album - "Dancing On My Own," with 133.5 million streams.

What am I missing?  That just seems like the most generic dance beat ever to me.  And the lyrics are good - nothing special, just another unrequited love song.  Pitchfork somehow called this album and 8.7 and said it was Best New Music.  "However, the highlight from this Year of Robyn remains the gorgeous "Dancing on My Own". What's especially remarkable is that there was any room for improvement: The track appears here as an amped-up "radio remix" with bonus synths giving the lovelorn chorus an extra wallop."  I guess I'm absolutely missing the boat here - don't hear this as gorgeous or remarkable. 

Her 2018 album Honey was the fourth most popular album of 2018 on year end lists.  I tried it out and was pretty meh about it.  "This one might be a consensus pick, I know that RS had creamed itself over how amazing this album was.  From my view, its aiight.  Kind of a throwback to music I never really liked in the 90's.  One big positive for the album?  Only 9 songs and 40 minutes.  I'll pass."  I've tried it a few more times in the past two days, and my opinion hasn't changed.  But, as I finish the hell that is Robyn is Here (and the a cappella version of "I Wish"), I'd take these new songs all day in comparison.

Honey has that stream count that is indicative of an artist with buzz who people don't actually end up liking.  The first track has 23.7 million streams.  Then the stream count drops off a cliff to the 4 million range, and continues dropping (except for the album closer, which has 12.8 million streams).  That very much looks like the kind of thing where someone reads that this new album is amazing, hears the first song, and moves on with their life.  I was going to give you that final song on the album, but it has a very different vibe from the rest of the album - kind of sounds like that Blood Orange guy - so I'll give you the first song instead.  This is "Missing U," with 23.7 million streams.

It's fine.  I just don't see anything in there that feels vital or new or interesting.  The beat and synths feel uninspired, just more electronic redux of sounds we've heard in the 80's and 90's, and while her voice is really nice, I just don't see anything here to draw me in.  

Which makes me feel weird.  Why is there widespread critical acclaim for this album, and she is up on the headliner space of this ACL poster, and yet nothing in any of this holds any interest to me at all?  I keep listening to see if something changes, but it just doesn't.  I don't get it.

The Killers [EDIT]

One Liner: Massively popular alternative dance rock in the Oughts, even with no new music they ought to be fun.
Wikipedia Genre: Alternative rock, indie rock, post-punk revival, new wave, heartland rock
Spotify Says Similar To: The Strokes and Kaiser Chiefs
Home: Las Vegas, NV

Poster Position: 1
Slot: ?

Thoughts:  I know these guys weren't the first to make dance rock a thing, but I feel like they were one of the first to take the guitars and crunch of the alternative rock/grunge scene and add heavy synths to turn alternative rock into a dance party.  Their debut, 2004's Hot Fuss, was the soundtrack to quite a bit of those years when I lived in Waco, and the rest of the world loved it as well, making it a multi-platinum smash worldwide.  The Wikipedia page on the album describes all of the accolades it has received since - top ten greatest debut albums of all time, top 100 albums of the 2000's, 500 greatest albums of all time, etc.  So, all that to say that this band is massively popular.  However, in the music world, its all about what have you done for me lately.  Hot Fuss was in 2004, then Sam's Town was 2006 (which was very popular, but not as hot as the debut).  After that, you had Day and Age (2008) and Battle Born (2012), and neither of those two albums caught on with the public in any significant way.  Five years later, there have been rumors of new music, but nothing has come out (that I know of).  So, I guess my hope is that we hear the hits, and if that is the case, then this is going to be a great show.  Let's run through those hits.

From Hot Fuss, you've got four huge hits (and the rest of the album is damn good as well) led by "Mr. Brightside" at 286 million streams, then "Somebody Told Me" at 127 million, "All These Things That I've Done" at 73 million, and "Smile Like You Mean It" at 38 million.  Its funny, in my mind, I would have said that "Smile Like You Mean It" was the hit of those four. Shows you what I know.  I'll give you two of those. First, the disco-fied dance rock of "Somebody Told Me."

101 million views of that video too.  So, this one starts with a pretty straight-forward rock groove, but then when the chorus hits is when you realize that this isn't just another mid-oughts rock band.  It's the hooo-hooooh's and the disco drums, and synth scrim at the end. I don't think anyone was doing that sort of thing at this time (although a bunch of bands were doing it as soon as they heard this track).
And then "All These Things That I've Done," which is a different tone, but has the great chanting bit in the middle that will probably fun to yell along to in the park in October.  Really, the entirety of this song, even before the Soul/Soldier bit, it very singable.  This would be a good karaoke song, now that I think of it.

You gotta watch out for those KillerSluts with their boomerangs, man.  They will take you down. And I always love anything filmed in the neon graveyard of Vegas.  I wish I could average the number of plays on Spotify for an album without doing it manually, but screw it, I'll take the 4 minutes: 52.8 million streams average for this album.  Lowest stream count is 5.2 for the final track.
Sam's Town kicked out two big singles - "When You Were Young" at 107 million and "Read My Mind" at 44 million.  I'll give you the first one.

The Killers do pretty solid video work.  And that song is a good one - more like a massive U2/Springsteen arena-rock jam than the stuff from Hot Fuss.  17.5 million average streams for this album's songs (way lower than Hot Fuss).  Lowest is 3 million for the second to last song.

Day & Age just had the supremely weird "Human" as its big single:

I say supremely weird because of the chorus - "are we human, or are we dancer?"  WTF does that mean?  "my sign is vital, my hands are cold."  Uh, what?  But if you just go with it, you get a snappy rock song that is pretty fun.  But I still want to know, why can't I be both? Why?  I AM A HUMAN DANCER, DAMMIT!  The album also had a relatively big hit with "Spaceman" at 37.7 million streams.  Average streams for the songs on this album are 20.4 million per, with the low end being 4.2 for the last song.

Finally, you've got 2012's Battle Born.  No songs from this album make the top ten most popular tracks on Spotify for the band, and the top track has 36 million streams.  Here that one is, "Runaways."

I seriously don't remember ever having heard that song.  Brandon Flowers makes it pretty obvious that its a Killers track, but literally that doesn't ring any bells at all.  Sounds like a good 80's rock jam, "Heat of the Moment" mixed with Bryan Adams with a sprinkling of Journey - or something like that.  Average streams for the songs are 12.3 million, with the lowest at 5.2 million for the 8th track.  So this album definitely has the lowest streams on Spotify - I'd say it isn't bad (I just ran through it a few times) but it just sounds like they are still trying to recapture the excitement of ten years ago when the world has moved on to new sounds.  Except for "From Here on Out," which sounds like some weird Oak Ridge Boys/Eagles attempted countrification of their sound.  Not OK.

But let's think about the music world in these two different decades.  In 2004, the BIllboard top song was Usher/Lil' Jon's "Yeah!" and the top rock-ish songs were Hoobastank's "The Reason" and 3 Doors Down's "Here Without You."  [as an aside, interesting how rap heavy 2004 was, I didn't recall that]  Those rock songs are extremely earnest, sappy ass rockers about love, using violins but mainly being driven by modern rock-style drums, guitar, and bass.  And then The Killers came along with the synth-y blast of "Mr. Brightside" and made a real shift in the next few years of alternative rock music. But when Battle Born came out in 2012, you've got "Somebody I Used to Know" by Gotye as the top track and a bunch of electronic-heavy songs up top in the Billboard charts, with the top "rock" tracks honestly non-existent.  You could try to count things like Fun's "We Are Young" or The Wanted's "Glad You Came," or One Direction's "What Makes You Beautiful," but I wouldn't count any of that as rock.  Maybe 60-something songs down the list when you get to The Lumineers' "Ho Hey," but certainly no songs that I would consider to be the classic style of rock.  So now these guys are trying to do the same old thing in 2012 that was successful in 2004, and it obviously is just missing the mark for most people.

I have a feeling that I'll need to make some pretty hard calls for the headliners in October.  The Chili Peppers are my can't-miss-show, then Jay-Z probably comes next, then Ice Cube.  After that, I'd love to see The Killers, Chance, and Gorillaz, but I know that it won't happen, some of those guys are going to be up against each other.  But I'd like to see this show anyway.  I bet it would be fun.

Recommend?  Yes.

[EDIT 6/26/17]  So, my friend and frequent reader Joseph alerted me to the fact that The Killers have released a new single, "The Man," just recently.  At 3.3 million streams already, its getting heard immediately, but when Joseph told me to go hear it, he was not complimentary, saying the following two nuggets of commentary: (1) "Remember Hot Fuss? Remember how Sam’s Town wasn’t as good but was still interesting?  Now go listen to their new single…it is GARBAGE.  I hate it with the power of my entire soul" and (2) "It's three+ minutes of the worst."

Already over a million views of that YouTube video.  These guys still command an audience. So, here are my thoughts.  The tune starts out pretty promisingly, funky beat and sweet sound.  I am fully ready to like it.  AND THEN THE LYRICS START AND JOSEPH WAS RIGHT AND HOLY SHIT THAT IS AWFUL, SO AWFUL.  A sampling:

• The Chorus: "I got gas in the tank, I got money in the bank, I got news for you baby, you're looking at the man, I got skin in the game, I got a household name, I got news for you baby, you're looking at the man."
• It's like all of the worst things about current music and rap distilled into that one chorus. I don't know if he is trying to be ironic or be funny, if he is, it misses the mark entirely.
• Verse Two: "When it comes to Friday, I always earn, Don't try to teach me, I got nothing to learn, 'Cause baby I'm gifted, You see what I mean?, USDA certified lean"
• Oh, God, if I have to hear a big group of 20 year olds sing the words "USDA certified lean" at this show, I'm going to have to gouge my eardrums out.
• The Breakdown: "Who's the man? Who's the man? I'm the man, I'm the man Who's the man with the plan? I'm the man."
• Oh, and after this, there are samples of a cork popping and a cash register cha-chinging.

This does not bode well for the new album that is apparently soon to come out.  Let's all pray for a sudden desire to postpone that album in favor of making all future shows a Hit Fuss-only redux.