At turbulent time for fests, can Charlotte’s Lovin’ Life avoid a sophomore slump?
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Weekend of music: Lovin’ Life Festival and Kendrick Lamar in Charlotte
Enjoying tremendous success as a brand-new musical festival presents an inherent challenge, one that the Lovin’ Life Music Fest now must confront: Can it meet the high bar it established in its debut?
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Noah Lazes knows a little something about struggling to find the right place for a major music festival in Charlotte — and about achieving lasting success with one, as well.
For seven years, from 1998 to 2004, the annual spring music festival he founded called CityFest Live! bounced around a pre-development-boom uptown grid as Lazes lassoed a laundry list of major acts, including Bob Dylan, Foo Fighters, The Roots and The Black Crowes.
So when he first heard that Bob Durkin’s events and production company, Southern Entertainment, was working on staging its inaugural Lovin’ Life Music Fest in and around First Ward Park, he was immediately skeptical.
“I was very apprehensive about that site,” says Lazes, who like Durkin became a significant player in Charlotte’s nightlife scene in the 1990s (and who is perhaps best-known here for developing the original N.C. Music Factory). “I told Bob, ‘Uhhhh, are you sure you’re gonna be able to pull it off?’ When I did it on that site, I had 10 other parking lots — because they were parking lots. Now they’re buildings. It was very different. When CityFest happened over there, we had a lot of room to spread out. So I thought it might feel a little too tight.”
Lazes was diplomatic about his concerns. The vast majority of skeptics were far less forgiving.
From the moment the first Lovin’ Life was announced in December 2023, the haters trolled it relentlessly. They mocked the name. They scoffed at the lineup. They blasted everything from the ticket prices to the way information was being communicated to the initial edict requiring festival-goers to purchase any water they wanted to drink (that rule was eventually relaxed).
Naysayers seemed like they couldn’t wait for the the festival to fail.
By almost every measure, however, Lovin’ Life’s debut was a tremendous success. Although everyone was entitled to their own opinions about the appeal of the headliners, Post Malone, Stevie Nicks and Noah Kahan clearly stimulated strong ticket sales that ultimately produced a sellout; and over three days and nights last May, the event itself proved overwhelmingly crowd-pleasing, from the hit-filled performances to the snafu-free production to the picturesque, yes-he-did-pull-it-off setting in the heart of uptown Charlotte.
“I gotta tell you,” Lazes says, “for a first-year event, a fifth-year event, or a 10th-year event, it was run very, very well. I was very impressed.”
Yet enjoying tremendous success as a brand-new musical festival presents an inherent challenge — one that Lovin’ Life now faces in Year 2: Can it meet the high bar it established, or will there be a sophomore slump?
Lovin’ Life 2025 vs. Lovin’ Life 2024
We won’t know for sure how the 2024 product compares to the 2025 version of Lovin’ Life, of course, until the last concertgoer leaves the festival grounds after the event ends on Sunday, May 4.
So for now, we can only compare things this year to where they stood at this point last year.
Organizers are mainly sticking with the formula. The festival name remains as-is, despite being a somewhat easy target (see: The Charlotte Ledger’s recent April Fool’s Day story that referred to a phony spin-off festival called “Toleratin’ Life”). The overall layout and the playbook is only undergoing minor tweaks. And while many entertainment companies seem to constantly be raising prices, Lovin’ Life tickets have mostly stayed in line with Year One, and actually started off lower when Year Two sales began last November.
In fact, the only major difference is a fresh lineup of more than 50 acts that includes just a couple returnees, although for the second straight year the list has garnered its share of negative feedback.
Last year, for example, Durkin says despite booking one of music’s brightest stars in Malone, younger fans complained about older artists like Nicks, then 75, and the group of 80-something guys known as The Beach Boys getting prime stage time.
This year — despite the festival securing Gwen Stefani (of No Doubt and “The Voice” fame), new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Dave Matthews Band, and two 2025 Grammy nominees for Best New Artist in Benson Boone and Teddy Swims — some have expressed disappointment that Lovin’ Life wasn’t able to again snare a Malone-level star.
“You don’t have anything like that this year,” says retired journalist Mark Kemp, formerly a music editor of Rolling Stone who later served as entertainment editor at The Charlotte Observer. “Basically there’s no ‘wow’ factor.”
Durkin concedes the first point — “I mean, I definitely think last year we had ... maybe bigger names” — but not the second.
“We couldn’t be more excited about the lineup,” he says.
“Everyone has their own opinion, right?” Durkin continues, with a laugh. “I mean, music, that’s the great thing about it. It means something to everybody and something different to everybody.”
Lazes is quick to defend Durkin, saying: “It’s very easy to criticize from the sidelines. Get in there and try to throw the ball, and I’m gonna tell you, it ain’t easy to throw it a hundred yards every time. Which is what fans are asking for when they’re asking for Post Malone every year. Yes, it was awesome that we got him essentially at the peak of his career ... and I think you’ll end up with more and more of that as the festival gets more legs and more reputation.”
But Lazes adds that there’s no guarantee — because “the competition,” he says, “is immense now.”
Coachella, Jazz & Heritage, Stagecoach and more
The major-music-festival landscape is packed tightly all year long, but especially in the springtime.
The recently wrapped Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival had Lady Gaga, Green Day and Malone. The 10-day New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival starts April 24 and features dozens of headliners, including Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band and Luke Combs. Stagecoach begins April 25 in California, with Zach Bryan, then Jelly Roll and Combs. The Governors Ball in New York (Tyler, The Creator, Olivia Rodrigo, Hozier) and the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival (Combs, Tyler, The Creator, Rodrigo, Hozier) in Tennessee have their weekends carved out in June.
Those are just a few of many on the circuit. So, yes, it’s immensely competitive. It also can be turbulent and extremely unforgiving.
Atlanta’s legendary Music Midtown — which has hosted Kendrick Lamar, P!nk, Billie Eilish and Malone, among others, over the years — has been on hiatus since the 2023 edition; it was hampered by COVID but also safety concerns it couldn’t control, as well as growing competition from festivals like SweetWater 420 Fest and Shaky Knees.
Shaky Knees was held the same weekend as Lovin’ Life last year, when it boasted Foo Fighters, Kahan and Weezer (a 2025 Lovin’ Life headliner). This year, Shaky Knees made a surprise shift to September.
Meanwhile, the big Gulf Shores, Ala.-based Hangout Fest — another May staple, with past headliners including Lamar, Malone and Red Hot Chili Peppers — was replaced by promoter AEG this year with Morgan Wallen’s country-focused Sand in My Boots festival.
Adding to the challenge? Power players like Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza famously putting “radius clauses” into contracts stipulating that artists can’t play other festivals within a certain number of miles (usually 300) and within a certain number of days (usually at least 60).
But as their organizers jockey for position and vie for A-list talent, festivals big and small are also fighting a common threat.
For one, production costs — porta potties, police, equipment and power to run it, food, merch, insurance premiums, etc. — keep rising, as does artist pay. Although Lovin’ Life doesn’t publicize how much it takes to secure talent, Lazes says “the price is through the nose. ... Many individual artists will get paid more for their one set than we spent on talent for the entire weekend at CityFest.”
Then there’s the fact that demand among consumers seems to be falling.
Coachella, New Orleans’ JazzFest, Governors Ball and other big-name festivals that for years sold out within days experienced noticeably slower sales in 2024, and have tried to goose them by offering payment plans to ease the burden of pricey tickets.
Oh, and on top of all of these other forces, Lovin’ Life faces an additional adversary: Kendrick Lamar.
Kendrick Lamar, artist of the moment
Partly by coincidence, but mainly just due to what made sense for the artist and the promoter, the most celebrated rapper on the planet — who already this year has headlined the Super Bowl Halftime Show and won five Grammys, including for Record of the Year — is playing Bank of America Stadium on May 3.
That’s Night 2 of Lovin’ Life, which will be headlined by the rock band Weezer.
Said Durkin: “We’re vying a little bit with that show for hotels“ — as well as, more specifically, concertgoers’ attention. “It’s not optimum. The city, too, they were a little bit surprised, I guess, by that, because it’s a lot of the resources and city services. We hoped that one weekend that there wouldn’t be a show there, but if there is ... the more people in town, it’s just more hotel rooms being filled, more people spending money, I guess.”
It’s hard to tell how much impact Lamar is having on Lovin’ Life ticket sales, which Durkin has characterized as ranging from “good” to “great” — about where they were last year at this time.
In 2024, he said, roughly half the tickets were sold in the last month, and it was the weekend-of that the fest sold out. He predicts the pattern will be the same this year. “If the weather is getting nice, people start seeing what’s going on, with two weeks to go, all their friends are going, it’s all over social media, then everyone will be like, ‘I gotta go. I can’t miss this.’”
But whether Lovin’ Life sells out or not, it’s easy to imagine uptown swarming with more concertgoers at one time than ever before, between the 20,000 or so at the festival and the roughly 50,000 headed to BofA for Lamar.
If both events go as expected, the big-budget-concert double-whammy will serve as a big win for the city. One that Lovin’ Life will be able to take significant credit for.
“What an asset for Charlotte to have another real festival again,” Lazes says. “It just really, I think, cements us as a regional destination.”
“Would it be nice to have some more talent sprinkled in there? Yes. Unquestionably,” he continues.
But he also is certain that Durkin has paid — and gambled, for the benefit of fans — a fortune to bring to the city the acts that he got.
“These things are so much work and so much risk,” Lazes adds. “They are so expensive to produce. They do lose money in early years. It takes years to get ’em to turn a profit. Every year, (with) the talent, there’ll be lulls up and down, but hopefully every year their festival grows — gets a little stronger, a little better, a little stronger, a little better.”
“And I’m really hopeful that Charlotte will get out and support … again this year.”
“Because if we don’t, it will go away.”
Uniquely Charlotte: Uniquely Charlotte is an Observer subscriber collection of moments, landmarks and personalities that define the uniqueness (and pride) of why we live in the Charlotte region.
This story was originally published April 23, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "At turbulent time for fests, can Charlotte’s Lovin’ Life avoid a sophomore slump?."
