Gareth Emery Says Swedish House Mafia Canceled Tomorrowland Show

Jeff Virgen
Aug 1, 2019
2 min read

Did he misspeak, or did he speak the truth?

Swedish House Mafia's absence from the 2019 edition Tomorrowland sparked outrage from festivalgoers expecting them to close one or both weekends of the event – even though the EDM superstars were never formally announced as headliners. If the language in an Instagram post by Gareth Emery sheds any light on the situation, however, the incident may have more in common with with their other recent disappearances.

Then again, it could also have resulted from a poor choice of words. In the post, Emery recounted a convergence of factors that made this year's Tomorrowland being his favorite to date. "…A few things happened and fortune was on my side," he wrote. "SHM canceled. Then, due to our stage being moved from inside to outside at the last minute, I ended up doing the first dark set of the day… which was always my favourite time of day at a festival as a raver and things are no different now.⁣"

Swedish House Mafia, a supergroup comprised of Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso, reunited at last year's edition of Ultra Music Festival following a five-year hiatus. Towards the end of 2018, they announced a full 2019 reunion tour complete with new music in an aggressive marketing campaign.

Thus far in the tour, the trio have cancelled performances at Ultra Korea and Weekend Festival. Being that much of the promotional strategy for Tomorrowland 2019 fell in line with their cryptic announcement rollouts, fans felt short changed when both weekends of the festival were instead closed out by 3 Are Legend, a project consisting of Steve Aoki and Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike.

Gareth Emery has not amended his post at the time of writing. EDM.com has reached out to his spokesperson for further comment but we have yet to hear back.

H/T: EDMTunes