Dance Acts Must Work Harder to Headline Festivals

John Summit recently sat down with Billboard‘s Kristin Robinson for an episode of her On the Record podcast to talk about life as a high-flying dance star.

While acknowledging that the dance world functions differently than many other areas of the music industry — from how dance labels work as tastemakers to how the scene is fueled largely by singles rather than albums — Summit also talked about being one of the rare dance artists to headline a major multigenre festival.

Speaking to the question of whether dance artists need to “prove themselves more than pop artists” in order to earn this headlining multigenre festival slot, Summit said, “Yes, and you still see the comments of all the pop fans being like ‘Who the f–k is John Summit?’ And I was like, ‘Damn, I thought I was doing pretty well’, but I still have a lot of heads to turn still. I’ve kind of touched the pop realm, but I still think I’m just fully in dance music though, because I still haven’t had like, a Billboard [Hot] 100 track or anything. They chart in dance music, it’s just a different world.”

Later in the interview he comments again on the befuddled reactions among pop fans when the Lolla lineup was announced, saying that “Then the dance music fans [were] like ‘What are you talking about?’ We’re just totally in our own world [in dance], which I think is pretty awesome.”

Summit will headline Lollapalooza on July 30, with Lorde, Charli xcx, Smashing Pumpkins, Olivia Dean, Jennie, Tate McRae and The xx also headlining the three-day fest. The occasion marks something of a full circle moment for Summit, who grew up in the Chicagoland area and told Billboard in 2023 that seeing deadmau5 play Lolla in 2011 was the moment he knew he wanted to work in the genre too.

“I feel like everyone always has that moment when they’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is my genre,’” Summit said. “That’s when I knew I wanted to be a part of electronic music.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Summit says that after his recently announced North American arena tour wraps, “I don’t know when I’m going to play America next at all. I’m going to take a long break,” adding that he and his team are also narrowing down the number of shows he’ll play in Las Vegas. Listen to the complete interview below.