Summerfest Preview

WHO’S COMING TO AMERICAN FAMILY INSURANCE AMPHITHEATER AT THIS YEAR’S SUMMERFEST SUMMERFEST?

Photo courtesy of Summerfest.

JUNE 23

JASON ALDEAN

BY JAMIE LEE RAKE

As he approaches his second decade in country music, Jason Aldean has proven himself both versatile and reliable bringing a sound that has sealed his brand. Debuting in 2005 in a kitsch mode with the goofy “Hicktown,” written by Big & Rich’s John Rich, Aldean quickly ramped up to more poignant fare depicting the travails of farm life with “Amarillo Sky” but wasn't above making a move like Kenny Chesney into working agricultural themes into romantic odes such as “Big Green Tractor.”

Amid establishing himself as a troubadour of the agrarian heartland, the Macon native started offering up party-starting anthems including “Johnny Cash” (neither sounding like nor quoting its titular man in black), “Tattoos on This Town” and, entirely fittingly, “My Kinda Party.” With heavy guitar tones and the kind of roughneck bombast befitting the most raucous of glam metal outfits a couple decades prior, the rarely un-hatted Aldean fulfilled the lyrical prophecies of Hank Wiliams Jr. and Travis Tritt by putting rock and drive into commercial radio country to an arguably unprecedented level. And even as he was fashioning the template for bro’ country proponents like Brantley Gilbert, Aldean could duet with American Idol alum Kelly Clarkson a modern country equivalent of a power ballad. A more recent partnering with firebrand country traditionalist Miranda Lambert yielded an effective iteration of the heartbroken drinking song.

JUNE 24

JUSTIN BIEBER

BY JAMIE LEE RAKE

In a business where most don’t, Justin Bieber has lived up to his hype. And it’s not like the Canadian singer's initial media buzz in the late ‘00s wasn't justified. When he was barely into his teens posting YouTube videos highlighting his mellifluous tenor voice and multi-instrumental prowess, Bieber attracted a savvy manager in Scott “Scooter” Braun. A recording deal ensued and the fan army, currently numbering upward of 40 million on Twitter alone, began to amass.

Early singles rode the last wave of the tween pop that Radio Disney marketed to middle schoolers at the turn of the century. But Bieber has done well by a musical maturation into more explicitly R&B-adjacent rhythmic bangers addressing grown-up concerns like domestic love and where he buys marijuana. Along the way to having thrice been named one of Forbes' top 10 most powerful celebrities, he has also played well with others: his cameos on songs by Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee and Dan + Shay have resulted in, respectively, probably the most successful Spanish language songs ever on English language radio and a sizeable country music crossover.

Photo: (Admat)

JUNE 25

LIL WAYNE, WU-TANG CLAN AND WIZ KHALIFA

BY ALLEN HALAS

A trio of hip hop heavyweights will take over the American Family Insurance Amphitheater to close out the opening weekend of Summerfest 2022. The bill of Lil Wayne, Wu-Tang Clan and Wiz Khalifa would be a highlight on just about any festival calendar, but the show is unique in the sense that it is the only time these three acts are together this summer. The Big Gig has done this before with hip hop, including Lil Wayne as part of a previously assembled bill with Snoop Dogg and Schoolboy Q in 2019. That show was a spectacle in its own right, and the Saturday night show is certain to be a memorable time as well.

While Lil Wayne is considered the headliner here, Wu-Tang Clan will be using the Summerfest appearance as preparation for their upcoming “NY State of Mind” tour, beginning in August. It’s the legendary collective’s first appearance at Summerfest as a unit, boasting Method Man, Raekwon, GZA and many more superstars, and their first Milwaukee appearance in three years as well. Wiz Khalifa is no stranger to the festival, though, with a 2021 show in the amphitheater alongside Miley Cyrus, and an infamous headlining slot on the ground stages in 2011 that was certainly among one of the festival’s biggest crowds of all time. No matter what generation of hip hop you claim, there’s an act for you on June 25.

Photo courtesy of Summerfest. Photo courtesy of Jason Landis.

JULY 1

MACHINE GUN KELLY AND AVRIL LAVIGNE

BY ALLEN HALAS

Photo courtesy of Summerfest. Cleveland rapper turned pop punk poster boy Machine Gun Kelly headlines the American Family Insurance Amphitheater during Summerfest’s second weekend, and he’s bringing a resurging star from a previous wave of the genre with him.

MGK is riding high, after 2020’s Tickets to My Downfall marked a dramatic shift in his sound, followed up by the recently released Mainstream Sellout. The genre overall is experiencing a resurgence, thanks in part to hybrid hip hop acts embracing the sound and nostalgia events like the When We Were Young festival, announced for Las Vegas later this fall. When he’s not comingling with fiancé Megan Fox or making cameos in Jackass Forever, he’s working with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker on a hybrid of styles that involves the emotion of pop punk with the swagger of hip hop, creating earworm singles for the TikTok generation.

Joining MGK on the Milwaukee date of the tour is Avril Lavigne, who initially made her mark 20 years ago with her Let Go album, and two decades later is touring behind comeback album Love Sux, her first release in three years. While the new material skyrocketed up the Billboard charts in February, undoubtedly many fans will be more familiar with the earlier iteration of Avril, who has reinvented her sound over the course of the last two decades. Emo-tinged rapper ian diorr will round out the show, behind the release of his On to Better Things album at the beginning of the year.

JULY 2

HALSEY

BY JAMIE LEE RAKE

It has been a long, fraught road from spoofing Taylor Swift to pop stardom for Halsey. As a bullied teen of multi-cultural parentage, the singer born Asley Nicolette Frangipane parodied the country-turned-pop chanteuse's fling with former boy band heart throb Harry Styles. Without many more steps between, a debut album, Badlands, hit the market and generated hits such as “New Americana.”

Singing that song on an opening slot for a mid-2010s tour by anodyne pop alt rockers Imagine Dragons set Halsey up as something of a pop-stirrer in atmospheric synth pop guise, what with lyrics extolling Public Enemy’s agit-prop hip-hop and smoking dope as touchstones of commonality and nostalgia for the current generation. Featured spots on singles by Justin Bieber and the dance-pop duo The Chainsmokers’ 2016 chart-topper, “Closer,” set the stage for Halsey’s most successful single as a solo act yet, “Without Me.”

If it sounded unusually tender and vulnerable coming from someone who built a reputation on toughness and cultural disruption, well, that’s what a break-up—in this case, with rapper G-Eazy— can do. None of those preceding successes offered preparation for Halsey’s fourth studio album. last year’s If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power. The set delivers an emotionally complex, sonically expansive meditation on Halsey’s first pregnancy and childbirth while touching on related themes such as body autonomy.

JULY 7

ROD STEWART

BY DAVID LUHRSSEN

In the early ‘70s, with his bedroom eyes framed by an explosion of blond hair, Rod Stewart was everyone’s notion of a louche British rock star. Although he toured in his own turbojet, accompanied by an entourage, he also seemed like just a mate tossing darts— and tossing back a pint—down at the pub.

Now, at age 75, Sir Roderick Stewart looks back on a long and varied career. He honed his gritty, expressive voice in London’s ‘60s blues scene before becoming the powerhouse singer in the Jeff Beck Group. He divided his time in the early ‘70s between The Faces, a high-spirited hard rock band, and a solo career that melded vulnerability and affection with folk-rock arrangements on hits such as “Maggie My” and “You Wear it Well.”

In the late ‘70s he became Mr. Celebrity, dating model-actress Britt Ekland and striding up the pop and disco charts with “You’re in My Heart,” “Hot Legs” and “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy.” More recent decades found him collaborating with Sting and Bryan Adams on “All for Love” and recording songs by Oasis and Primal Scream before turning to the past for inspiration. In the new century, he recorded several albums of numbers from the Great American Songbook, including “They Can’t Take that Away from Me” and a duet with Cher on “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” He also found time to reunite The Faces and sing “What a Wonderful World” with Stevie Wonder.

Stewart was knighted not only for selling records but for raising money for charities.

Photo courtesy of Denise Truscello.

JULY 8

BACKSTREET BOYS

BY JAMIE LEE RAKE

Boy bands had been around before Backstreet Boys and their presence on pop charts the world over continues today. But the global reign of BSB from the mid-1990s into the turn of the century may represent a highwater mark in the idea of a group of young men assembled by family ties or friendship singing commercial songs directed primarily at adolescent girls.

Two of the original Boys, Brian Litterell and Kevin Richardson, are cousins. Manager Louis Pearlman's savvy molded and guided the quintet's raw talent into the kind of R&B-adjacent, often danceable sound and imaging that captured the hearts, imaginations and disposable incomes of legions of girls and not a few boys, from backstreets or elsewhere, too.

Calculation in maneuvering BSB from a professional European launch to U.S. and global dominance didn’t make for cynical music, however. With the contributions of international pop maestros such as Max Martin, Denniz Pop and other producers, the group fronted a glimmering sort of maximalist sound that still influences the Top 40 today. As they have matured into manhood and other boy bands have emerged, BSB have maintained higher profiles than many of their peers such as being the boy band with the most Billboard Top 10 albums.

JULY 9

THOMAS RHETT

BY JAMIE LEE RAKE

Photo courtesy of Summerfest.

It’s likely not Thomas Rhett’s fault that he simply exudes “nice.” With a beard that’s not too scruffy and not too groomed, his photogenic social media magnet of a wife and their passel of kids, Rhett embodies the kind of gregarious thirtysomething with whom it would be easy to start up a conversation at a bar or, at least as likely, a Little League game.

Rhett also turns out to be the kind of nice guy fit to become one of the biggest hitmakers on country radio for going on a decade. If that niceness also means that Rhett’s repertoire of #1 singles includes a tendency to shiny pop—including a go at unreconstituted disco—that have done him no favors among country traditionalists, true enough. But on his sixth and latest album, Where We Started, he sounds to be inching toward his music’s roots. Having a writing hand in most every one of the songs probably has something to do with Rhett’s increasing textural depth but so might his willingness to sing about subject matter outside of his wheelhouse of inveterate romantic, family man and second-generation country singer (his dad is ‘90s star Rhett Akins). Especially affecting is his reminiscence of singing for and commiserating with death row inmates.