Charli XCX surely has to headline Laneway.

Plus, every other hope and dream I have for the looming summer festival season.

It’s wild. It’s wet. It’s stormy. Right now, as I look outside my window, it’s completely and utterly miserable. It’s so foggy I can’t see more than a few metres down the driveway. I have a cough. I don’t even want to think about going outside.

We’re not even halfway through winter, and imagining yourself at a music festival is a hard thing to do when outside looks like the video game Silent Hill.

Yet, in a little over two months, our summer festival season kicks off with Listen In on October 4, the first show of another huge, sweltering summer of music. It’s shaping up as a big one, and I’ll be covering it, in depth, right here in this newsletter.

This one’s going to be different. Rather than boom times of last year, it’s likely to shrink a little. Things will change. There’s no Nest Fest. Splore’s taking the year off. Morningside Block Party seems unlikely to return. While some have already announced line-ups, there are many more festivals yet to announce whether or not they’ll be back. There may even be new events in the works we don’t know about.

So, as winter’s icy grip continues to keep a tight grip on our emotions, we have to find a way to survive. What better way is there than dreaming of that moment you get to stand in a grassy field with a cold beer in your hand and the hot sun on your face and a brilliant artist on the stage in front of you? And hopefully that artist is Charli XCX?

I have hopes. I have dreams. I have wants. And I have needs. Here’s everything I require to make the looming summer festival season a good one…

Someone needs to stage a mid-2000s nostalgia festival.

I’m thinking Passion Pit. I’m thinking Miike Snow. I’m thinking Warpaint, Grizzly Bear, Sleigh Bells, Phantogram, M.I.A, MGMT, Santigold, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Death Cab For Cutie. I’m thinking The Naked & Famous, The Mint Chicks, Pluto and Betchadupa all reunited. I’m thinking an Aotearoa version of Just Like Heaven, the Pasadena music festival that lets people party like it’s 2005. It’s time. It’s … just … time.

We need more metal bands to come here.

Remember when Slipknot and Metallica were going to play dual stadium shows but then cancelled on us? Same. I need Tool here immediately. Same goes with Deftones and Nine Inch Nails. I want a sludgy stoner-rock megashow featuring Mastodon, Beastwars, Kyuss and Fu Manchu. Look at this Riot Fest line-up that resembles a Big Day Out poster from 2007. 100% would attend. I need to cut loose. We all do.

Can Ludacris fly through the sky, please?

I’m only going to Juicy Fest if I’m guaranteed that this will happen.

Charli XCX should absolutely headline Laneway.

This needs to happen for many reasons. Charli XCX has played Laneway before but never as headliner. In Brat, she’s just released the year’s best album. And she hasn’t been here since 2020. Also, she rules. Could it top the last one? Big ask. But maybe.

For the love of god, get Travis Scott here.

Currently on tour in Europe, Travis Scott’s Circus Maximus shows have the vibe of gladiator sports in Roman Empire times. I don’t know where they’d put this show – it seems too full-on for the conservative confines of Eden Park – but I’d love to see it in action. As long as it’s 100% safe and fully security controlled, of course.

Please don’t book The Game.

For obvious reasons.

Finally, can the rain stay away just this once?

Last year, Elton John, Laneway, Lorde, Shapeshifter and many other events were complete wash outs. Northern Bass was hit later that same year and barely managed to stay afloat. Just once, our music festivals are due for a long, hot, dry summer. They need it. They deserve it. We all do.

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Everything you need to know.

• Pitchfork calls it a “monumental catastrophe”. “Totally hollow” is how Vulture ($$) describes it. The Cut says she’s “stuck in 2016”. And, in a one-star review, The Guardian asks: “What regressive, warmed-over hell is this?” I did not enjoy listening to Katy Perry’s comeback single ‘Woman’s World,’ but I am enjoying the scathing coverage. Her PR team must be panicking as much as Joe Biden’s is.

• While we muck around debating whether or not to build a new stadium in Auckland, one capable of hosting the kinds of mass-scale shows we keep missing out on, the Philippines has got itself sorted. In Manila they’re beginning work on a “Taylor Swift Concert-ready stadium” due to be completed by 2028. Say what you’re going to do, then do it. It’s easy. Come on Auckland, let’s get it done.

• We haven’t had much to celebrate in the way of music journalism this year, but a local website has made it to its 20-year anniversary. Under the Radar talks to RNZ talks about the local music website’s history, its slow-build success and surviving the “dark days” of Covid.

• Speaking of music journalism, Stuff has a lovely feature on Jess B and her debut album Feels Like Home, which took her four years to make. “I think it was about finding a home in terms of my place in the world, my place in the industry, who I actually am, my identity and growing into that,” she says.

• If you can handle another story about Diddy, I thoroughly recommend you make sure you’re sitting down for this New York Times Magazine ($$) exposé. “I had reason to fear for my life. What happened was insidious. It broke my brain. I forgot the worst of it for 27 years,” writes former Vibe editor Danyel Smith.

• Finally, I am very much enjoying Charm, Clairo’s new album that wraps you up in a warm blanket, places you by a fireplace, passes you a bag of marshmallows, then soundtracks this scene with an album of deliciously cosy winter vibes. Check out ‘Glory of the Snow’ first, but I could have picked any of Charm’s 11 songs. We have a new Album of the Year contender.