Summerfest loss
Another headliner has canceled their date at this year’s music festival.
Summerfest is still on for September 2021, but the largest music festival in the United States has lost a second headliner.
Originally, pop star Khalid had been booked for a one-off show at the Milwaukee music festival’s upgraded American Family Insurance Amphitheater for 2020. But like nearly every major event last year, Summerfest was called off because of the pandemic. It was the first time the festival had been canceled in its 53-year history.
Khalid rescheduled the show for June 24, 2021. But in February, the festival was postponed from its original window to September, to allow for more time for vaccinations and for coronavirus cases and hospitalizations to go down.
Khalid, however, is not available during the festival’s September timeframe, according to a press release issued by the festival Wednesday. “We hope to see him next year,” reads the release.
Tickets for the Khalid show will be refunded through the point of purchase.
Khalid is the second amphitheater headliner originally booked for 2020 that canceled plans to play the festival in 2021. In January, pop star Halsey called off her summer tour, which included a Summerfest stop.
But in the last few months, bookings for Summerfest in September “have started to open up,” Bob Babisch, Summerfest’s longtime vice president of entertainment, said at a Board of Directors meeting last month for Summerfest parent company Milwaukee World Festival Inc.
“We have holds on most of the dates going into September,” Babisch said. “A lot of our (previously announced) amphitheater shows are moving to new dates.”
Summerfest is scheduled for Sept. 2 to 4, 9 to 11 and 16 to 18. There are six other amphitheater 2020 headliners that moved to 2021: Guns N’ Roses, Justin Bieber, Luke Bryan, Chris Stapleton, Dave Matthews Band and Blink-182. Whether they’ll play this year, next year or cancel has yet to be announced.
All of those previously announced Summerfest shows, except for Blink-182, are stops on nationally routed tours through arenas, stadiums and amphitheaters.
That might happen in some cases — artists with Milwaukee dates like Maroon 5, Michael Bublé and Tame Impala have pushed their arena and amphitheater tours off to late summer and fall. But in general, arena tours are going to be one of the last things to really return, Billboard’s Dave Brooks told the Journal Sentinel last month.
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