In 2025, Lollapalooza Has Shed Its Rock Past for Good

Lollapalooza has revealed its 2025 lineup, with Olivia Rodrigo, Tyler, the Creator, Sabrina Carpenter, and RÜFÜS DU SOL serving as the festival’s big four headliners. It’s the first time in Lolla’s history that a rock band of some sort isn’t headlining.

If anything, the “rock” headliner is Olivia Rodrigo this year, whose occasionally-feisty catalogue is inspired by the plethora of bands who’ve closed out Lollapalooza stages in years prior: Rage Against the Machine, Jack White, Arctic Monkeys, Nine Inch Nails. But as undeniable as Rodrigo is, her name feels less like a treat for Chicago’s rock crowd and more like an appropriate companion to acts like Gracie Abrams, TWICE, and fellow headliner Sabrina Carpenter.

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This seems to be the biggest takeaway of the festival’s 29th edition, which goes down in Grant Park from July 31st to August 3rd. The festival has gradually shed its rock-tinged layers in favor of electronic music, hip-hop, and mainly, pop (and alt-pop, for what it’s worth). This is neither a good thing or a bad thing, as Lollapalooza can only afford to scale towards whatever is most contemporary and will bring the highest percentage of attendees. But for a certain festival-goer, this lineup represents that eventual changing of the guard when it comes to rock bands at multi-genre events like Lolla.

Don’t get me wrong: there are definitely some rock bands on this lineup. There are some good ones, too: Chicago’s own Ratboys are hidden within the undercard (perhaps with some new music?), they’ve finally booked the whirlwind Japanese punks Otoboke Beaver, and there’re plenty of rising rock acts that are worth getting to Grant Park at 2:00 p.m. for, like Wunderhorse, NewDad, La Femme, Julie, and Girl Tones.

But as welcome as these groups are on the lineup, they aren’t exactly unified under the larger-font rock names, which are literally just Korn and Cage the Elephant this year. The latter’s billing outside the top line is actually a bit of a surprise, especially considering the selection of alt-rock radio acts that have a sizable overlap with Cage’s fanbase (Wallows, Flipturn, Foster the People). With their 2024 comeback album, Cage the Elephant have once again reaffirmed their status as one of the biggest alternative rock groups around, period. And yet, they’ve been out-billed by Korn, who are more or less on the lineup as a novelty act.

That’s not to say Korn doesn’t have a great output or wouldn’t absolutely rip it at sundown in Chicago, but it’s such a random nod to the now-reappraised nu-metal scene that they look strange on the poster. I’d almost expect them to be paired with the new iteration of Linkin Park, who have pretty much exclusively opted for the Danny Wimmer Presents fests like Sonic Temple and Welcome to Rockville instead of anything put on by C3 Presents or Goldenvoice/AEG.

In fact, it’s those same DWP festivals that are boasting the lions share of active rock bands in 2025, which might explain why fests like Lolla and Coachella aren’t bending over backwards for them. Previously, the acts that would play, say, Florida’s Welcome to Rockville were the harder-edged groups you’d see at Mayhem, Ozzfest, or Warped Tour. This year, they’ve got Green Day, Incubus, Jimmy Eat World, Sublime, Taking Back Sunday, and the aforementioned Linkin Park — all of which could justifiably accompany Korn’s “nostalgia rock” position on Lolla’s 2025 lineup, but are instead now grouped into DWP’s more general “hard rock” scene that’s completely independent from the other multi-genre fests.