1980s heavy metal band Quiet Riot to open SunFest
Buy discount tickets now
SunFest, Palm Beach County's biggest music festival, is going to get a lot louder, and anyone who wants to attend has until next week to buy lower-priced advance tickets before they increase.
The 1980s heavy metal band Quiet Riot will play the opening night of this year's SunFest at the downtown West Palm Beach waterfront.
Quiet Riot, who sang “Cum on Feel the Noize” and “Metal Health (Bang Your Head),” is replacing The Fixx, festival organizers said Thursday.
They will perform at 8 p.m. on May 3 before Billy Idol and after SloFunkPump.
Early-bird tickets for SunFest 2024 will end soon
Advance ticket prices for SunFest 2024, West Palm Beach's annual downtown waterfront nonprofit festival happening May 3 to 5, will end Thursday, April 25, before rising to gate prices.
The advance price of single-day admission is $82.
An advance two-day ticket is $140, and a three-day pass $155.
Early-bird tickets can be bought online at sunfest.com/tickets.
SunFest 2024 music lineup, hours and location
This year's headliners include Nelly, Billy Idol, Cole Swindell, Yung Gravy, Third Eye Blind and Rebelution.
When: May 3 through May 5
Hours: Friday, May 3, from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.; Saturday, May 4, from noon to 11 p.m.; Sunday, May 5, from noon to 10 p.m.
Where: SunFest takes place along the Intracoastal Waterway in downtown West Palm Beach, located at 101 S. Clematis St.
The festival grounds are on Flagler Drive in between Banyan Boulevard and Lakeview Avenue.
Taylor Swift blew it. I'm talking about her song, “Florida!!!” on her new album, The Tortured Poets Department.
I had high hopes that this would be something more than another angstridden breakup postmortem. I imagined that it would define our state in a similar way that Jimmy Buffet's “Margaritaville” defined the Florida Keys.
I didn't expect Swift to be excessively jolly or carefree. Rhapsodizing about blowing out a flip-flop is not her vibe.
But she led us on with those three exclamation points. Swift is not an abuser of exclamation points in the naming of her song. So, three exclamation points hinted at something special, only to end up like this:
I need to forget, so take me to Florida I’ve got some regrets, I’ll bury them in Florida
Tell me I’m despicable, say it’s unforgivable
What a crush, what a rush, f— me up Florida
Oh, no. Another breakup song.
Also, that end-of-the-line motif for Florida has been flogged to death. At this point, calling Florida a haven for people running away from something is like complaining about the snowbirds.
It's about as overworked as the proverbial alligator in the swimming pool, or the road-rage driver on I-95. She might as well have written a song called “It's the Humidity” or “Too Many Bugs on the Windshield.”
The song has the obligatory hurricane reference, which serves as yet another opportunity for morose self-reflection.
A hurricane with my name, when it came
I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away
Barricaded in the bathroom with a bottle of wine
Well, me and my ghosts, we had a hell of a time
There are some lines about cheating husbands, and “friends who smell like weed or little babies.”
But there's nothing authentically Florida here. There are no Waffle Houses in this song. And there's no line about too many mangoes and not enough pickleball courts.
And the affordability crisis in Florida just gets one verse:
Little did you know
Your home’s really only a town you’re just a guest in
So you work your life away