Luke Combs is headlining Slane because he is a global star with a huge fanbase. But the decision also highlights a bigger problem for the music industry. Photograph: Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for the Recording Academy
Slane Castle has gone country. Next summer the venue that hosted Bruce Springsteen, Queen and The Rolling Stones (twice) will open its gates to Luke Combs, a North Carolina singer best known among the wider public for a cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car that many fans of the original believe should be banished immediately to the scrap heap.
This isn’t quite a first for Slane. For all its aura as a place of pilgrimage for rock fans, it has always been open to new ideas – for better or occasionally worse. Two years ago, for instance, Irish rock’s most heralded venue went pop when it welcomed Harry Styles.
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