Superstars take over iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas
The Heart wants what it wants. And this year it wants Miley Cyrus, Coldplay, Pink, The Weeknd, Kings of Leon, Chris Stapleton, Big Sean, Kesha and many more. What the Heart wants … Las Vegas gets.
Boasting a power lineup, the seventh annual iHeartRadio Music Festival barrels through T-Mobile Arena on Friday and Saturday, with Ryan Seacrest and radio personality Elvis Duran playing co-hosts and traffic cops amid the musical onslaught. Joining the aforementioned artists on the overstuffed main marquee: Thirty Seconds to Mars, David Guetta, Harry Styles, DJ Khaled, Lorde, Niall Horan, Thomas Rhett and iHeartRadio Rising Star James Maslow, formerly of the Nickelodeon-born boy band Big Time Rush. As long as they’re overstuffing all this all-star stuff, add in “special guest collaborators” Macklemore, Khalid, Bleachers and Bebe Rexha.
However, at iHeart, more is never enough, so they just pile on … even more. That spills over into the in-between event at the Daytime Village at Las Vegas Village, across from Luxor, on Saturday before the big acts take the stage at the arena for the closing-night blowout. Among the daytime performers: Migos, Halsey, Flume, Little Mix, French Montana, Kelsea Ballerini, Judah & The Lion, Hey Violet, Cheat Codes, All Time Low and Miley’s kid sister, Noah Cyrus.
Bringing the action to a larger audience, The CW will live-stream both the evening and daytime performances on cwtv.com and on the CW app, while an edited special will air on the network itself Oct. 4 and 5, from 8 to 10 p.m. That will have to suffice for many fans as this year’s festival at T-Mobile is sold out, though an announcement on iheart.com states that “individual seats may still be available” at axs.com. Fans also competed for tickets and a chance to hang with individual artists via multiple contests.
Repeating last year’s scheduling collision, the iHeartRadio Festival hits Las Vegas the same weekend that Life is Beautiful takes over downtown, promising an aural explosion that should rock Vegas to its party-hearty core.
Contact Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@reviewjournal.com. Follow @sborn1 on Twitter.
