A Lineup That Makes You Check Your Calendar Twice

There are festival lineups and then there are lineups that seem designed to specifically target you. Hurricane 2012 is the second kind. Die Ärzte—Germany’s most beloved punk band, three decades in and still capable of making a crowd completely lose its mind—headlining alongside The Cure and Blink-182 is already more than enough justification. Then the rest of the bill keeps piling on: Florence & the Machine, New Order, M83, Bat for Lashes, Die Antwoord, Little Dragon, Mumford & Sons, Justice, Beirut, Bombay Bicycle Club. Someone was having a very good day when they made this.

What I love about a lineup like this is how it refuses any single genre logic. You can spend the afternoon with something glacial and cinematic—M83 at golden hour in an open field—and end the night sweating through a Die Antwoord set that leaves you reconsidering your life choices. The festival runs in Scheeßel, a small town in northern Germany that transforms completely for four days each June, the kind of place that only makes sense as a festival ground.

Hurricane has been a fixed point in the German summer long enough to feel like a given. The lineup changes; the mud stays the same. I’ve never not wanted to go.