5 headliners get grades for music summer festivals

Another sweaty, songful music festival season has come to an end. Over the past few months, up-and-comers Elle King, Azealia Banks and Flume made waves on the circuit, while midlevel acts The Weeknd and Tame Impala cemented their star status with dynamic

Florence and the Machine heads the class; Drake gets a D-plus.

DRAKE

FESTIVALS: Coachella, Governors Ball

HOW THEY FARED: He’s the undisputed champ of a feud with rapper Meek Mill, but back in April, Drake was considered a loser on the festival circuit. He sleepwalked through his top-billed Coachella slot, and his awkward smooch from Madonna overshadowed his performance, which The Desert Sun likened to running through a checklist of hits for an “overhyped, underwhelming” hour and a half. Music website Consequence of Sound asked whether he was the “worst headliner in Coachella history.” Probably a stretch, but his merely OK set at New York’s Governors Ball in June didn’t do much to convince us otherwise.

GRADE: D+

PAUL MCCARTNEY

FESTIVALS: Firefly, Lollapalooza

HOW THEY FARED: Veterans rocked the festival circuit this summer, but none more than 73-year-old Paul McCartney, who earned mostly positive notices in June for his 32-song set at Firefly in Dover, Del. Although he “started off sounding a bit hoarse,” he loosened up as the show went on, Philly.com noted, tearing through Wings and Beatles hits. He also reached into the Fab Four catalog at Lollapalooza with Helter Skelter and Get Back. The Chicago Tribune lamented that his “voiced showed signs of fraying,” but he “still provided a lasting memory or two.”

GRADE: B+

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE

FESTIVALS: Coachella, Governors Ball, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza

HOW THEY FARED: On the opposite end of the spectrum from lackluster Drake, some headliners can be too excited. Such was the case with British frontwoman Florence Welch, who leaped from the Coachella stage and broke her right foot. After some recovery time and her album release in June, Welch was back for Governors Ball, prancing across the main stage for swelling anthems Dog Days Are Over and What Kind of Man. It was a rapturous intensity the festival MVP echoed throughout the summer, according to The Huffington Post and The Tennessean.

GRADE: A

LANA DEL REY

FESTIVALS: Sasquatch!, Governors Ball

HOW SHE FARED: People don’t go to a Lana Del Rey show for her charisma. As Consequence of Sound noted of her Sasquatch! headlining set in May, “she’s less of a performer and more of an aesthetic,” which didn’t stop the likes of The Oregonian from praising her performance that weekend. But she’s not the kind of singer whose magnetism can keep a crowd spellbound when sound issues strike — a hurdle she faced at Governors Ball, causing fans to file out. Although we were unengaged by most of her set, Billboard wrote that her “smoky, if thimble-sized voice” couldn’t reach the whole audience, but “it only added to the attention she commanded.”

GRADE: C+