Austin City Limits Music Festival has officially announced the 2015 bill after much speculation cause by a lineup leak.
Photo by Shelley Neuman
Austin City Limits Music Festival has announced its hotly anticipated lineup for 2015.
Foo Fighters, Drake, The Strokes and Florence + The Machine are among this year's headliners. Other acts on the bill include The Weeknd, alt-J, Hozier, Alabama Shakes, Disclosure, Sturgill Simpson, TV on the Radio, Billy Idol, Deadmau5, G-Eazy, A$AP Rocky and many more.
Most artists will be performing during both weekends of ACL Fest, October 2-4 and 9-11. However, The Strokes and Alabama Shakes are scheduled for the first weekend; Florence + The Machine will play the second weekend.
Unsurprisingly, the official lineup exactly mirrors a leaked lineup that hit the Internet on Sunday. Equally unsurprising is how many acts the 2015 lineup shares with Coachella, a phenomenon CultureMap reported on in January. Repeat headliners include Drake, Tame Impala, The Weeknd, alt-J, Hozier, Alabama Shakes, Brand New, Run the Jewels and Father John Misty — just to name a few.
ACL Fest's two-weekend run is October 2-4 and 9-11 at Zilker Park. Tickets go on sale promptly at 10 am on Tuesday, May 5. Three-day passes are $250 and one-day passes are available for $100.
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To purchase tickets and view the full ACL Fest 2015 lineup, visit the festival website.
Billie Eilish in Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D.
In 2021, at the tender age of 19, singer Billie Eilish was already the subject of a documentary, The World’s a Little Blurry. At that point, she had only released one album, so the film threatened to feel too early for such treatment. The ensuing five years have only made her a bigger star, though, so in many ways that movie now feels prescient for the person on display in the new concert documentary with the unwieldy title of Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D.
Directed by Eilish and blockbuster filmmaker James Cameron, the film takes viewers inside Eilish’s 2024-2025 tour in support of her latest album, 2023’s Hit Me Hard and Soft. Filmed mostly at her series of shows in Manchester, England, the movie is a showcase for Eilish’s music, but it also serves as a smaller exploration of the type of person she is, as well as the impact she has had on her legion of fans.
The draw of the film is the use of Cameron’s beloved 3D technology, which he has employed in each of the three Avatarfilms. Unlike in those films, where the 3D has the odd effect of making the visuals too realistic for their own good, the technique brings an intimacy to the large-scale show that underscores the unique bond the singer has with her supporters.
Eilish and Cameron go back and forth between performances at the concert to behind-the-scenes sequences, detailing the enormous effort it takes to put on a show like that and how Eilish spends her time getting ready for it. As in The World’s a Little Blurry, this film continues to portray the singer as down-to-Earth, someone who yearns to maintain the connection to her fans that she’s had since she released her first single, “Ocean Eyes,” 10 years ago.
And as the many emotional songs in Eilish’s concert playlist prove, the feeling from the crowd is mutual. While Eilish has multiple bangers like “Bad Guy,” “Therefore I Am,” and the Charli XCX collaboration “Guess,” it’s the sad songs like “Everything I Wanted,” “Happier Than Ever,” and the Oscar-winning Barbieanthem, “What Was I Made For?” that hit the hardest. The depth of feeling emanating from her many sobbing fans singing along to crushing songs cannot be understated.
For audiences of the film, though, it’s the breadth of camera angles and shot choices that make it truly dynamic. There are cameras everywhere, including in the crowd, inside a cube at the center of the stage that rises and descends, following Eilish as she traipses every inch of the long, rectangular stage, and even a small one Eilish uses to bring an extra personal touch to the in-arena screen. Combined, they capture the complete energy of the concert, something that is not always the case in a film of this type.
Eilish has almost as many movies — two — as she does albums — three — which borders on overkill for a singer of her age. But both her music and the movies show her to be a person who knows the responsibility of being a celebrity, someone who understands that her fans are the reason she’s famous at all. Her career may go up or down from here, but it’s clear she’s already made a huge impact on those who love her most.
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Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft - The Tour Live in 3D opens in theaters on May 8.