January 12, 2009

Rumored for Coachella: Britney Spears?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


mojo-photo-britcoachella.jpg

The lineup for America’s premier music festival has generally been announced towards the end of January, and so right about now, speculation, rumors, and blog insanity is reaching a fever pitch. I’ve been feeding the flames myself, posting the first fake flyer (complete with dream headliners Daft Punk, the White Stripes and David Bowie) back in December (along with some early whispers) but now somewhat-journalistically-reputable blog LAist has posted a list of “confirmed” and “rumored” artists, and they snuck in one head-slapper: right there between Blur and the Comedians of Comedy, it’s Britney Spears. Da-wha? Turns out, as Idolator discovered, Brit-Brit (blargh!) has dates confirmed in the LA area Thursday, Friday and Sunday nights, and the Coachella venue in Indio is only a few hours’ drive (or a quick helicopter ride) away. Madonna was one thing, but does anybody actually like Britney Spears’ music? And, more importantly, will she bring tour openers (and possibly the worst musical act in America today) The Pussycat Dolls with her?

After the jump, the LAist confirmed and rumored lists.

Confirmed Artists: the Airborne Toxic Event, the Bug, Buraka Som Sistema, Crystal Castles, Drop The Lime, Fleet Foxes, Flying Lotus, Girl Talk, the Hold Steady, the Killers, No Age, Noah and the Whale, Late of the Pier, Los Campesinos!, Peanut Butter Wolf, the Presets, Sébastien Tellier,Themselves, Tinariwen

Confirmed DJs: DJ Gina Turner, DJ Hipnotic Starr, DJ Luis Segura, DJmorales, DJ Zegon [hooray, DJs Zegon and Gina Turner together at last!!!]

Rumored Artists: Animal Collective, Basement Jaxx, the Black Keys, Black Lips, Blur, Britney Spears, the Comedians of Comedy, Four Tet, the Gaslight Anthem, Glasvegas, Gui Boratto, Gus Black, Heartless Bastards, Hot Little Pony, José González, Keane, KONGCRETE, Mexican Institute of Sound, Monotonix, Morrissey, Mr. Lif, N.A.S.A., Neil Young, OutKast, Plump DJs, the Pretenders, the Prodigy, the Replacements, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Roni Size Reprazent, the Smiths, the Thermals, Turbonegro, We Are Scientists, White Lies, the White Stripes

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate