“Life Is Beautiful” is hopeful — very hopeful — that life will be carefree for festival-goers by September, when Las Vegas will host what could be the first major post-quarantining music festival in the West. Ticket buyers returned that optimism in major numbers by selling out three-day passes for the annual festival “in record time” Friday, organizers reported.
The possibly immunized herd is set to gather Sept. 17-19 in downtown Las Vegas, with Billie Eilish, Green Day and Tame Impala as the headliners. Eilish had also been set to perform at the canceled 2020 edition of the festival, but for the most part, the lineup is completely different from what had been to go down last fall.
Although Life Is Beautiful didn’t give an exact time frame for how long it took all-weekend passes to sell out — other than “immediately” — or how many were sold, it was by any measure quick, as the tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. and the fest’s announcement went out two hours and 20 minutes later.
Single-day tickets have not yet been put up for sale. Information on those is said to be forthcoming.
Other significant names performing include A$AP Rocky, Haim, 6lack, St. Vincent, Modest Mouse, Glass Animals, Illenium, Young Thug, Fisher, Noah Cyrus, Brittany Howard, Dillon Francis, LANY and Ludacris.
The three-day passes started at $330 plus taxes and went as high as $2,995 plus taxes, for the top-tier “All-In” passes.
“We have always put the health, safety, and security of our community first,” said Lauren DelFrago, festival director, when the lineup and on-sale date were announced Wednesday. “As we prepare to produce the 2021 festival, we feel a heightened sense of responsibility to our staff, partners, performers, and attendees, and continue to work closely with local and state officials to ensure a safe return to live music.”
Few of the festivals that were set for spring and summer months have announced postponements, cancellations or other contingency plans yet, although many are known to be waiting on further vaccination news and rates before confirming plans to try to move to the fall. One major festival set for June, the CMA Music Festival, has announced it canceled plans for 2021 altogether.
The lineup for Life Is Beautiful certainly sends a signal of which artists that are regulars at festivals are willing to book one-off dates at present, since touring outside of a festival circuit this summer and early fall is still seen as an iffy prospect, with no guarantee that different states’ reopening timetables will coincide.
