HAS THE HYPE OF SWEDISH HOUSE MAFIA RUINED THE TOMORROWLAND LINEUP.

Written By Shane Price

Has the hype of SHM (Swedish House Mafia) actually killed this year's Tomorrowland line up?

Its seem these days that festivals having a bit of a warm-up hype is the way to do it, phase 1 - phase 2 line ups. It works, keeps us guessing but keeps us interested. It seems in the last few months a line up is only being perceived as “great” by a lot of people if “Swedish House Mafia” is named.

For example, this year Tomorrowland is jam-packed full of great acts, amazing stages, The debut of The Holosphere by Eric Prydz, things that no other festival will get the chance to do, yet the hype is still to this day only if SHM is going to be named.

When Tomorrowland put up a video about a new release people were picking this video apart to say that they saw three dots if you pause the video at a certain time, every comment was SHM. This all ended up being about Tomorrowland radio, which is actually such an insane achievement for a festival to release, yet it was shadowed by the fact it wasn’t the Swedish being named.

Myself, I was drawn in by the hype, I was loving it, but after more than 12 months of only 1 set being played, no new songs being released and to what it seems to be festivals holding back release dates just to build hype. I am over it and I am sick of hearing about SHM.

BUT, before you think I’m on the hate train, do I want to see them perform? 100 per cent. Do I think this would be a life changing set? 100 per cent. Would I be pissed off, if after all this hype, all this talk, they didn’t play at Tomorrowland this year? 100 F&$KING per cent. But I am not going to let this dictate if I think the line up is already nothing short of amazing.

I've done some of the biggest and smallest festivals in the world, from seeing Jacks Beats circa 2012 in Sydney, Avicii at Tomorrowland 2013 all the way to KYGO at Sziget fest, these sets never had one-tenth of the hype that SHM has. They absolutely blew me away, wondering if I was ever going to get to see sets as amazing as this again in my life.

After reading some posts on FB about this situation it seems that a lot of people have followed suit, yeah, of course, they would be happy if they played, but this constant secret build-up has basically dampened some of the happiness out of festival line ups for them. It also seems that the people who don’t care much for the have taken even more of a dislike.

All I can say is that these guys have created some massive hype, a really, really well deserved hype. But how much longer are we going to have to go through festival line ups being dominated by “hype” and not actually the amazing acts already named?

Fingers crossed we get some new released songs, something fresh, something to make up for this extreme wait we are currently in.

Only time will tell if this is the year of Swedish House Mafia great return!