Shows, recitals, gigs, concerts: the highlights of 2022 | Before they come with everything from 2023, we remember some memorable ones from last year

► The year the festivals returned

Music festivals are nonsense. For the public they are physically and financially demanding. People who work in any area end up broken: artists, technique, press, production, morphi, security. The food, by the way, is expensive and slow. Going back is a hoot. Whoever says that they had tickets for two days in a row for a festival and did not hesitate to go the second is lying. And yet we love them, they are a basket of wishes with interest that we happily carry. Life for the fat woman: for fattening a collective memory that in 2022 saw the return of festivals, perhaps with more force than ever.

► Lollapalooza (March)

The seventh Argentinian edition of the festival was to take place in March 2020, but due to the pandemic it was delayed two years and ended up being scrapped. At the venue there was a winner: Dillom, who with C. Tangana out went up the schedule and added time to the set, which ended up being one of the most celebrated of the festival. But the changes did not end there, because Lolla was broadcast via streaming and enabled a virtual audience that waved, chanted and also judged as if it were there. That he criticized the sound from a screen and some computer speakers and hit those who played… and those who went to see.

► Quilmes Rock (May)

“We arrive, we burn, we eat, we sing, we leave the party just like that,” Thunder threw in the prehistory of the BZRP Music Sessions. This flow is perfectly applicable to a festival, whose flow is very different from that of a march or access to the field, even from any recital. Do you want to go see bands for 12 hours? Do you want to go for an hour to chat like that? Do you want to go listen from the sidewalk eating a choripán? Come on, machine, nothing stops you. While, Trueno’s crossover with Gorillaz was one of the events of last year, with 65,000 witnesses the same night that La Renga played for 50 thousand in La Plata and Metallica for 60 thousand in the Polo Field.

► Primavera Sound (November)

In the first vernacular edition of the Catalan festival, everything happened, from a closing day in the middle of a ferocious storm to a phenomenal sideshow by Mitski in Vorterix, going through all the contained handle in the small tent of alternative electronics, for the pop bleeding of the new generation of singers, and for Björk’s symphonic show under the moon and the heart-shaped cloud.

► Music Wins (December)

The wide aesthetic spectrum that the lineup covered, always within the indie, was one of the successes of the Music Wins, where music always set the pace of the experience. Outstanding local shows like Simón Poxyran, and international ones like Crumb, !!! or Alvvays, with its fresh, alternative and perhaps a bit pretentious proposal.

Read Joel Álvarez’s coverage here:

► Recitals 2022: alone and alone is worth the same

Outside of the large local, regional and international recitals, in 2022 new call scales were consolidated. Spaces like Niceto Club or El Teatro already seem like “small” things, Luna Park is practically a standard, and the soccer fields returned to being the stage almost on a par with the splendor of the stadium rock of the 2000s, although now with another type of protagonists. Among the predominance of urban music, with visitors like C. Tangana, Bad Bunny or Rosalía and locals like , pop (Bandalos Chinos) and rock (La Renga in La Plata) always find their place among the hot masses.

► La Renga in La Plata (April and May)

After 11 years, the band returned to the Buenos Aires capital with a strengthened sound and new slogans, such as respect for girls. They played three Saturdays and drew crowds with high-flying shows.

► Saramalacara at Niceto Club (May)

Cuteness and sound glitches kiss hard in Saramalacara’s shows, which between smoke, pogo and colored spells, and without any prefabricated gesture, erases all doubt that it leads its scene.

► Sara Hebe at The Teatro de Flores (May)

Increasingly the queen in her field, Sara Hebe returned to shake up her ritual at El Teatro Flores with a true party machine: a brutal setlist, a freaky carnival on stage and the audience in bowling mode.

► Rosalía at the Movistar Arena (August)

The Spaniard gave two impeccable shows, between the adoration of her audience, the artifice of the show, her own and others’ tears and the flags, with a curious social media format and an exhibition of her own brilliance.

► Cazzu at Luna Park (September)

Two and a half years later, the singer was able to do the show that the pandemic had denied her: the head of the local scene reviewed all her records with a simple setting and she in the center, fearsome and attractive.

► Duki in Vélez (October)

The Jordan of the scene put together his all-star game in Liniers, with a crazy band and almost all his friends from the scene. With that company, the Duko emerged as an emotional imp ready for the show.

► Dillom at Luna Park (October)

Between graves, corpses and guests, the enfant terrible stirred with pogo, dance and delirium. The Post Mortem presentation had a phenomenal display, rubber band included, and marked Dylan’s total commitment to his work.

► Chinese Bandalos at Luna Park (October)

Those of Beccar reaped the sowing of more than a decade of freshness and pop irony to present El Big Blue. This year, the group reinforced its sound sophistication, between forcefulness and experimentation.

► You Point it out to me at the Vorterix Theater (November)

Three years after their last show, the men from Mendoza are back and as valid as before. Between classics, live premieres and new songs, the trio that became a quintet offered a concert with messianic touches.

► Bad Bunny in Vélez (November)

The Puerto Rican reaffirmed his bond with the Argentine public in two stark shows. Thus, among contrasts, and with as many hits as aesthetics, the leader of a movement that finds sadness in the tropical reappeared.

► Hot Chip at C Art Media Complex (November)

The London band gave their fifth show in Buenos Aires, finally in something similar to a bowling alley: the Chacarita hangar received thousands of people who were looking for that mixed zone of pleasure, between rock, funk and electronics.

► C. Tangana at Movistar Arena (November)

Pucho assumed part of a larger machinery in two hot and outrageous touches. His stature is short but the vision of the man from Madrid is very long: he plays his role and surrounds himself with the best in a movie show.

► CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso in Works (December)

The thermodynamic duo made their comeback in two very heated shows in front of 10,000 people. They played hits and novelties, songs together and solo tracks, with guests (Wos, Chita), an impressive setting and even rain.