Alleged Festival Lineup Leaks Daft Punk as Headliner for 2017 Event
Following the release of The Weeknd’s new single “Starboy” featuring Daft Punk, the robots have resurfaced on an alleged flyer for the forthcoming Lollapalooza Chile music festival.
The picture was posted to the sub-reddit /r/DaftPunk and has sparked a lot of conversation about Daft Punk’s almighty return. The sub-reddit mentioned that Daft Punk’s first tour was in 1997, followed by one in 2007 and if the theme continues, their next show would be in 2017.
While it hasn’t been confirmed to be fake yet, it is strange to use that Daft Punk wouldn’t be on the first line, instead of Radiohead, Metallica and The Strokes.
The timing is what really fueled this one. “Starboy” had just dropped days earlier and gave the internet its first real proof that Daft Punk was active and working again after years of near-total silence, so it’s no surprise fans were primed to believe almost anything with the duo’s name attached. A flyer surfacing on Reddit right in the middle of that news cycle was basically perfect timing for a hoax to catch fire, whether or not that’s what actually happened here.
The “every ten years” theory floating around the sub-reddit was also part of what made this feel believable to a lot of people — Daft Punk’s history of infrequent, almost ceremonial live appearances made a 2017 return feel plausible on a surface level, even without any official confirmation from the festival or the duo’s team. That’s the tricky thing with a band this secretive: there’s just enough real precedent to make even a sketchy leaked flyer worth taking seriously.
It also didn’t help that the flyer itself was pretty well put together. Fake festival lineups usually give themselves away with sloppy fonts or mismatched branding, but this one mimicked Lollapalooza’s actual poster style closely enough that a lot of people took it seriously on first glance, even with Daft Punk’s placement lower on the bill than you’d expect for a band supposedly making a decade-defining comeback. That’s usually the tell with leaks like this — real headliners tend to get top billing, not buried under acts that were already confirmed elsewhere.
Until Lollapalooza’s organizers put out an official lineup, though, there was no way to rule it out completely, and Daft Punk fans weren’t about to let a little healthy skepticism stop them from getting their hopes up after months of near silence from the duo.
Editor’s note: This flyer turned out to be fake. When Lollapalooza officially announced its 2017 Chile, Argentina, and Brazil lineups later that September, the headliners were Metallica, The Weeknd, The Strokes, and The Chainsmokers — Daft Punk was not on the bill.
