Lollapalooza Coming Back

After being cancelled last year due to poor ticket sales, Lollapalooza will return this summer. However, the former traveling festival will be stationary this year, taking place July 23rd and 24th in Chicago's Grant Park.

Organized by Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, Lollapalooza began in 1991 before taking a five-year hiatus from 1998 to 2002. Last year, the festival was to visit sixteen venues with two dates of different music for each stop. But facing potential losses of millions of dollars, organizers pulled the plug. Morrissey, Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, the String Cheese Incident, the Flaming Lips, the Pixies, Wilco, Modest Mouse and the Polyphonic Spree were among the more than thirty bands who had signed on for last year's bill.

"My heart aches along with the bands, and all our employees, whose hard work developed one of the most exciting tours this nation was to see," Farrell said of last year's cancellation. "My heart is broken."

Performers for this year's event will be announced in late April.

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Song Stories

“Tonight's the Night”

The Shirelles | 1960

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."

More Song Stories entries »

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