A farewell to Pitchfork Music Festival
by Ethan Ellis
November 13, 2024
I attended my first Pitchfork Music Festival on July 17, 2011. It was a day of music that changed the course of my life, and I’m sure I’m not alone. On Nov. 11, 2024, Pitchfork announced that after running for 19 years the festival would not return in 2025. This decision, which was “not made lightly,” brought back memories of music discoveries galore, as well as some sobering realities of a world without this one-of-a-kind festival.
In 2011, I was 14 years old and had to attend Pitchfork with my older sister as a chaperone. Sure, TV on the Radio played a headlining performance that I still consider one of the best sets of my life, but the entire day was filled with formative nuggets. The first act I saw that day, psych-rockers the Fresh & Onlys, became a regular talking point for me and my high school friends. Odd Future and Shabazz Palaces rewired my understanding of rap music. I was blown away by Deerhunter, who inspired my first high school band. Most importantly, I discovered a love for standing outside in 95-degree heat and experiencing underground music played in the open air.
In all, I attended 12 Pitchfork Music Festivals at Chicago’s Union Park. In 2012, I was awestruck at the front railing watching Feist and later discovered the art of the mosh pit via Japandroids. Many of the greatest shows of my life—Ought in 2015, Sufjan Stevens and FKA Twigs in 2016, Robyn in 2019—occurred there. The park’s triangle of green space in Chicago’s West Loop is where Pitchfork made its home every July. Leading up to the festival, the Chicago Tribune’s wry, and at times brutal, set-by-set reviews of the festival were mandatory reading. After, my friends and I watched every festival video posted to Pitchfork’s YouTube page, trying to spot ourselves in the crowd. Aside from weddings of close friends, it’s the weekend that I looked forward to the most each year.
Pitchfork and I have both changed a lot in the past decade. After I graduated from high school, I left Illinois in 2015 to attend college. Around the same time, Pitchfork.com came under new ownership and a new editor-in-chief. At the festival, VIP sections grew, sponsors shifted from local brands to national corporations, and pop and R&B became better represented to reflect new editorial tastes. While Chicago was changing, Pitchfork Festival, and my relationship to it, still felt reliably authentic. By 2024, that triangle of green space filled with three color-coded stages still had the same layout as it did in 2011. Every year, the lineup was a wonderful hodgepodge of old favorites, new discoveries, and bands I wanted to learn more about. As I walked through the front gates on the festival’s opening Friday afternoon each July, it always created a familiar feeling. For those next three days, I was in a musical utopia, and it felt like I was 16 all over again.
Pitchfork Music Festival is not the only multi-genre music festival, but its curation was second to none. New music festivals are popping up catering to niche audiences with specific genres or eras in mind. Examples include Making Time festival’s electronic focus, Just Like Heaven capturing late-aughts nostalgia, and Best Friends Forever reuniting second-wave emo acts. Meanwhile, the major festivals—the Lollapaloozas and Coachellas of the world—operate like all-you-can-eat buffets. There is variety, but it’s often overwhelming. While Pitchfork was not cheap to attend, its cost remained low—and value remained high—relative to major festivals. Pitchfork’s three-stage approach felt more like a tasting menu. You got variety, but you were forced to broaden your palette.
It was near-impossible to attend this festival and not come away with new personal discoveries. Pitchfork brought out ambient acts like Bitchin’ Bajas to open up the main stage. As an 18-year-old, I might never have chosen to see Marshall Allen and the Sun Ra Arkestra at a large festival, but Pitchfork’s limited counterprogramming approach set me up to hear the legendary jazz group—and they blew my mind. In 2024, outsider folk musician Joanna Sternberg and mercurial post-punks Model/Actriz played on main stages to the largest crowds of their careers. I remember dancing with abandon to Factory Floor—which started a lifelong love of electronic music—in 2014, Ought and Preoccupations got me hooked on the angular ferocity of post-punk in 2015, the Hotelier taught me to stop hating emo in 2016, and in 2022 I finally became switched onto hardcore through the Armed.
Following Pitchfork Music Festival’s demise, the people I feel worst for are new generations of young music fans and aspiring musicians who won’t experience what I did during my formative years. Chicago’s many wonderful local music scenes offer too few all-ages shows, especially with lineups featuring cool, underground, and critically acclaimed acts from across the country. As a high school student, I only got to attend a few shows outside of Pitchfork. Before she became known as Snail Mail, 15-year-old Lindsey Jordan caught St. Vincent’s set at Pitchfork in 2014. I attended Pitchfork with members of the “jambient” band Purelink. Over the years, Pitchfork became a jumping-off point for young, local acts from Chicago like up-and-comers Horsegirl and Steve Albini acolytes Lifeguard. Adults have more choices at their fingertips. I’ll probably be flying out to Philly next year for the well-curated Making Time Festival. These kids can’t.
In the grand scheme of things, the death of a music festival is inconsequential. However, it’s a reminder that institutions we might take for granted as constants can disappear in an instant. In the meantime, let’s enjoy what we still have by supporting our local artist communities, our local venues, and even our local public radio station. I hope there’s someone who sees the death of the Pitchfork Music Festival as an opportunity to create something new, and, maybe, something even better.
Ethan Ellis is a PhD Student in Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.