title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: Over the years Rainbow went through many personnel changes with no two studio albums featuring the same line-up: Blackmore was the sole constant band member. Rainbow achieved modest success; the band's worldwide sales are estimated at more than 28 million album copies, including 4 million copies sold in the US.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: In 1997 Blackmore, with his girlfriend Candice Night as vocalist, formed the traditional folk rock duo Blackmore's Night. From about 1995, they were already working on their debut album "Shadow of the Moon" (1997). Blackmore once portrayed their artistic characteristics as "Mike Oldfield plus Enya". Blackmore mostly used acoustic guitar, to back Night's delicate vocal melodies, which he wrote. Night said, "When he sings, he sings only for me, in private". As a result, his musical approach shifted to vocalist-centred sounds. They recorded a mixture of original and cover materials. The band's musical style is inspired by medieval music and it blended with Night's lyrics about love's themes. The second release, entitled "Under a Violet Moon" (1999) continued in the same folk-rock style, with Night's vocals remaining a prominent feature of the band's style. The title track's lyrics were partly written by Blackmore. "Violet" was his mother's first name and "Moon" was his grandmother's surname.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: In subsequent albums, particularly "Fires at Midnight" (2001) which featured the Bob Dylan cover "The Times They Are a Changin'", there was occasionally an increased incorporation of electric guitar into the music, whilst maintaining a folk rock direction. A live album, "Past Times with Good Company" was released in 2002. After the next studio album's release, an official compilation album "" was released in 2004, featuring music from the four studio albums. A Christmas-themed holiday album, "Winter Carols" was released in 2006. Through numerous personnel changes, the backing musicians have totalled 26 persons. Blackmore sometimes played drums in recording studio. They choose to avoid typical rock concert tours, instead limiting their appearances to small intimate venues. In 2011, Night said, "We have actually turned down a lot of (touring) opportunities." Blackmore continued to write her vocal melodies. They have released eleven studio albums, with the latest one being "Nature's Light" in 2021.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: A re-formed Rainbow performed three European concerts in June 2016. The concert setlists included both Rainbow and Deep Purple material. The band featured metal singer Ronnie Romero, keyboardist Jens Johansson and bassist Bob Nouveau.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: During the 1960s, Blackmore played a Gibson ES-335 but from 1970 he mainly played a Fender Stratocaster until he formed Blackmore's Night in 1997. The middle pick-up on his Stratocaster is screwed down and not used. Blackmore occasionally used a Fender Telecaster Thinline during recording sessions. He is also one of the first rock guitarists to use a "scalloped" fretboard which has a "U" shape between the frets.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: In his soloing, Blackmore combines blues scales and phrasing with dominant minor scales and ideas from European classical music. While playing he would often put the pick in his mouth, playing with his fingers.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: In the 1970s, Blackmore used a number of different Stratocasters; one of his main guitars was an Olympic white 1974 model with a rosewood fingerboard that was scalloped. Blackmore added a strap lock to the headstock of this guitar as a conversation piece to annoy and confuse people, as it didn't actually "do" anything.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: His amplifiers were originally 200-Watt Marshall Major stacks which were modified by Marshall with an additional output stage (generating about 27dB) to make them sound more like Blackmore's favourite Vox AC30 amp cranked to full volume. Since 1994, he has used ENGL tube amps.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: Effects he used from 1970 to 1997, besides his usual tape echo, included a Hornby Skewes treble booster in the early days. Around late-1973, he experimented with an EMS Synthi Hi Fli guitar synthesizer. He sometimes used a wah-wah pedal and a variable control treble-booster for sustain, and Moog Taurus bass pedals were used in solo parts during concerts. He also had a modified Aiwa TP-1011 tape machine built to supply echo and delay effects; the tape deck was also used as a pre-amp. Other effects that Blackmore used were a Uni-Vibe, a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face and an Octave Divider.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: In the mid-1980s he experimented with Roland guitar synthesizers. A Roland GR-700 was seen on stage as late as 1995–96, later replaced with the GR-50.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: Blackmore has experimented with many different pick-ups in his Strats. In the early Rainbow era, they were still stock Fenders, later Dawk installed over wound, dipped, Fender pick-ups.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: He has also used Schecter F-500-Ts, Velvet Hammer "Red Rhodes", DiMarzio "HS-2", OBL "Black Label", Bill Lawrence L-450, XL-250 (bridge), L-250 (neck). In his signature stratocaster Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound Flat SSL-4's are used to emulate the Schecter F500ts and since the early 90s, he has used Lace Sensor (Gold) "noiseless" pick-ups.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: Blackmore credits fellow guitarist Eric Clapton's music with helping him develop his own style of vibrato around 1968 or 1969.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: In 1979, Blackmore said: "I like popular music. I like ABBA very much. But there's so much stigma like, 'you can't do this because you're a heavy band', and I think that's rubbish. You should do what you want ... I think classical music is very good for the soul. A lot of people go 'ah well, classical music is for old fogies' but I was exactly the same. At 16 I didn't want to know about classical music: I'd had it rammed down my throat. But now I feel an obligation to tell the kids 'look, just give classical music a chance' ... the guitar frustrates me a lot because I'm not good enough to play it sometimes so I get mad and throw a moody. Sometimes I feel that what I'm doing is not right, in the sense that the whole rock and roll business has become a farce, like Billy Smart, Jr. Circus, and the only music that ever moves me is very disciplined classical music, which I can't play. But there's a reason I've made money. It's because I believe in what I'm doing, in that I do it my way—I play for myself first, then secondly the audience—I try to put as much as I can in it for them. Lastly I play for musicians and the band, and for critics not at all."


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: In May 1964, Blackmore married Margit Volkmar (b. 1945) from Germany. They lived in Hamburg during the late 1960s. Their son, Jürgen (b. 1964), played guitar in the touring tribute band Over the Rainbow. Following their divorce, Blackmore married Bärbel, a former dancer from Germany, in September 1969 until their divorce in early 1970s. As a result, he is a fluent German speaker.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: For tax reasons, he moved to the US in 1974. Initially he lived in Oxnard, California, with opera singer Shoshana Feinstein for one year. She provided backing vocals on two songs in Rainbow's first album. During this period, he listened to early European classical music and light music a lot, for about three-quarters of his private time. Blackmore once said, "It's hard to relate that to rock. I listen very carefully to the patterns that Bach plays. I like direct, dramatic music." After having an affair with another woman, Christine, Blackmore met Amy Rothman in 1978, and moved to Connecticut. He married Rothman in 1981, but they divorced in 1983. Following the marriage's conclusion, he began a relationship with Tammi Williams. In early 1984 Blackmore met Williams in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she was working as a hotel employee. In the same year, he purchased his first car, having learned to drive at 39 years of age.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: Blackmore and then-fashion model Candice Night began living together in 1991. They moved to her native Long Island in 1993. Having been engaged for nearly fifteen years, the couple married in 2008. Night said, "he's making me younger and I'm aging him rapidly." Their daughter Autumn was born on 27 May 2010, and their son Rory on 7 February 2012. Blackmore is a heavy drinker, and watches German-language television on his satellite dish when he is at home. He has several German friends and a collection of about 2,000 CDs of Renaissance music.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: Readers of "Guitar World" voted two of Blackmore's guitar solos (both recorded with Deep Purple) among the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos of all time – "Highway Star" ranked 19th, and "Lazy" ranked 74th. His solo on "Child in Time" was ranked no. 16 in a 1998 "Guitarist" magazine readers poll of Top 100 Guitar Solos of All-Time. On 8 April 2016, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of original members of Deep Purple; he did not attend the ceremony.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: In 1993, musicologist Robert Walser defined him as "the most important musician of the emerging metal/classical fusion". He is credited as a precursor of the so-called "guitar shredders" that emerged in the mid-1980s.


title: Ritchie Blackmore

text: Blackmore has been an influence on guitarists Fredrik Åkesson, Brett Garsed, Janick Gers, Paul Gilbert, Craig Goldy, Scott Henderson, Dave Meniketti, Randy Rhoads, Michael Romeo, Wolf Hoffmann, Lita Ford, Brian May, and Yngwie Malmsteen.


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Miranda Jane Richardson (born 3 March 1958) is an English actress. She made her film debut playing Ruth Ellis in "Dance with a Stranger" (1985) and went on to receive Academy Award nominations for "Damage" (1992) and "Tom & Viv" (1994). A seven-time BAFTA Award nominee, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for "Damage". She has also been nominated for seven Golden Globe Awards, winning twice for "Enchanted April" (1992) and the TV film "Fatherland" (1994). In 1996, one critic asserted that she is "the greatest actress of our time in any medium" after she appeared in "Orlando" at the Edinburgh International Festival.


title: Miranda Richardson

text: After graduating from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Richardson began her career in 1979 and made her West End debut in the 1981 play "Moving", before being nominated for the 1987 Olivier Award for Best Actress for "A Lie of the Mind". Her television credits include "Blackadder" (1986–1989), "A Dance to the Music of Time" (1997), "Merlin" (1998), "The Lost Prince" (2003), "Gideon's Daughter" (2006), the sitcom "The Life and Times of Vivienne Vyle" (2007), and "Rubicon" (2010). She was nominated for the 2015 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator for "Operation Orangutan".


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Her other films include "Empire of the Sun" (1987), "The Crying Game" (1992), "The Apostle" (1997), "Sleepy Hollow" (1999), "Chicken Run" (2000), "The Hours" (2002), "Spider" (2002), "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (2005), "The Young Victoria" (2009), "Made in Dagenham" (2010), "Belle" (2013), and "Stronger" (2017).


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Richardson was born in Southport, Lancashire. She recalls "a cinema about 50 yards from my house. So Saturday mornings were spent with The ABC Minors: the Saturday cinema club with the theme song set to the tune of Blaze Away by Abe Holzmann, a red ball bouncing over the lyrics so you could sing along. As I got older, I would go to the cinema by myself to watch matinees of westerns and historical Technicolor dramas."


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Richardson enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where she studied alongside Daniel Day-Lewis and Jenny Seagrove, having started out with juvenile performances in "Cinderella" and "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime" at the Southport Dramatic Club.


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Richardson joined the Manchester Library Theatre in 1979 as an assistant stage manager, followed by a number of appearances in repertory theatre. Her London stage debut was in "Moving" at the Queen's Theatre in 1981. She found recognition in the West End for a series of stage performances, ultimately receiving an Olivier Award nomination for her performance in "A Lie of the Mind", and, in 1996, one critic asserted that she is "the greatest actress of our time in any medium" after she appeared in "Orlando" at the Edinburgh Festival. She returned to the London stage in May 2009 to play the lead role in Wallace Shawn's new play, "Grasses of a Thousand Colours" at the Royal Court Theatre. Richardson has said that she prefers new works rather than the classics because of the history which goes with them.


title: Miranda Richardson

text: In 1985, Richardson made her film debut as Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom, in the biographical drama "Dance with a Stranger". Around the same time, Richardson played a comedic Queen Elizabeth I, aka Queenie, in the British television comedy "Blackadder II".


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Following "Dance with a Stranger", Richardson turned down numerous parts in which her character was unstable or disreputable, including the Glenn Close role in "Fatal Attraction". In this period, she appeared in "Empire of the Sun" (1987). In an episode of the TV series "The Storyteller" ("The Three Ravens", 1988), she played a witch. Meanwhile, she had returned in guest roles in one episode each in "Blackadder the Third" (1987) and "Blackadder Goes Forth" (1989). She returned to play Queenie in the Christmas special "Blackadder's Christmas Carol" (1988) and, later, a special edition for the millennium "".


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Other television roles include Pamela Flitton in "A Dance to the Music of Time" (1997), Miss Gilchrist in "St. Ives" (1998), Bettina the interior decorator in "Absolutely Fabulous", Queen Elspeth, Snow White's stepmother, in "" (2001), and Queen Mary in "The Lost Prince" (2003).


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Richardson has appeared in supporting roles in film, including Vanessa Bell in "The Hours", Lady Van Tassel in "Sleepy Hollow" and Patsy Carpenter in "The Evening Star". She also won acclaim for her performances in "The Crying Game" and "Enchanted April", for which she won a Golden Globe. She received Academy Award nominations for her performances in "Damage" and "Tom & Viv".


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Her film credits also include "Kansas City" (1996), "The Apostle" (1997) and "Wah-Wah" (2005). In 2002, she performed a triple-role in the thriller "Spider".


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Richardson also appeared as Queen Rosalind of Denmark in "The Prince and Me" and as the ballet mistress Madame Giry in the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "The Phantom of the Opera" (2004). In 2005, she appeared in the role of Rita Skeeter, the toxic "Daily Prophet" journalist in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire". She also did the voice for Corky in "The Adventures of Bottle Top Bill and His Best Friend Corky" (2005), an Australian animated series for children. In 2006, she appeared in "Gideon's Daughter". She played Mrs. Claus in the film "Fred Claus" (2007).


title: Miranda Richardson

text: In 2008, Richardson was cast in a leading role in original AMC pilot, "Rubicon". She plays Katherine Rhumor, a New York socialite who finds herself drawn into the central intrigue of a think tank after the death of her husband.


title: Miranda Richardson

text: In 2014, Richardson was cast as Queen Ulla in "Maleficent", where she was to play the titular character's aunt, but her role was cut from the film during post-production. In 2015, she played Sybil Birling in Helen Edmundson's BBC One adaptation of J. B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls".


title: Miranda Richardson

text: Richardson's hobbies include dog walking, gardening and falconry, and she started playing the cello in 2013. She trains a falcon named Cassiopeia.


title: United States midterm election

text: Midterm elections in the United States are the general elections that are held near the midpoint of a president's four-year term of office, on Election Day on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Federal offices that are up for election during the midterms include all 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives, and 33 or 34 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate.


title: United States midterm election

text: In addition, 34 of the 50 U.S. states elect their governors for four-year terms during midterm elections, while Vermont and New Hampshire elect governors to two-year terms in both midterm and presidential elections. Thus, 36 governors are elected during midterm elections. Many states also elect officers to their state legislatures in midterm years. There are also elections held at the municipal level. On the ballot are many mayors, other local public offices, and a wide variety of citizen initiatives.


title: United States midterm election

text: Special elections are often held in conjunction with regular elections, so additional Senators, governors and other local officials may be elected to partial terms.


title: United States midterm election

text: Midterm elections historically generate lower voter turnout than presidential elections. While the latter have had turnouts of about 50–60% over the past 60 years, only about 40% of those eligible to vote go to the polls in midterm elections. Historically, midterm elections often see the president's party lose seats in Congress, and also frequently see the president's opposite-party opponents gain control of one or both houses of Congress.


title: United States midterm election

text: While of the United States Constitution sets the U.S. President's term of office to four years, sets a two-year term for congressmembers elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. then sets a six-year term for those elected to the U.S. Senate, with dividing the chamber into three "classes" so that approximately one-third of those seats are up for election every two years.


title: United States midterm election

text: The elections for many state and local government offices are held during the midterms so they are not overshadowed or influenced by the presidential election. Still, a number of state and local governments instead prefer to avoid presidential and midterm years altogether and schedule their local races during odd-numbered "off-years".


title: United States midterm election

text: Midterm elections are regarded as a referendum on the sitting president's and/or incumbent party's performance.


title: United States midterm election

text: The party of the incumbent president tends to lose ground during midterm elections: since World War II, the President's party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House, and an average of four seats in the Senate.


title: United States midterm election

text: Moreover, since direct public midterm elections were introduced, in only eight of those (under presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden) has the President's party gained seats in the House or the Senate, and of those only two (1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and 2002, George W. Bush) have seen the President's party gain seats in "both" houses.


title: United States midterm election

text: The losses suffered during a president's second midterm tend to be more pronounced than during their first midterm, in what is described as a "six-year itch".


title: Euler's formula

text: Euler's formula, named after Leonhard Euler, is a mathematical formula in complex analysis that establishes the fundamental relationship between the trigonometric functions and the complex exponential function. Euler's formula states that for any real number :


title: Euler's formula

text: where is the base of the natural logarithm, is the imaginary unit, and and are the trigonometric functions cosine and sine respectively. This complex exponential function is sometimes denoted ("cosine plus i sine"). The formula is still valid if is a complex number, and so some authors refer to the more general complex version as Euler's formula.


title: Euler's formula

text: Euler's formula is ubiquitous in mathematics, physics, and engineering. The physicist Richard Feynman called the equation "our jewel" and "the most remarkable formula in mathematics".


title: Euler's formula

text: In 1714, the English mathematician Roger Cotes presented a geometrical argument that can be interpreted (after correcting a misplaced factor of formula_2) as:


title: Euler's formula

text: Exponentiating this equation yields Euler's formula. Note that the logarithmic statement is not universally correct for complex numbers, since a complex logarithm can have infinitely many values, differing by multiples of .


title: Euler's formula

text: Around 1740 Leonhard Euler turned his attention to the exponential function and derived the equation named after him by comparing the series expansions of the exponential and trigonometric expressions. The formula was first published in 1748 in his foundational work "Introductio in analysin infinitorum".


title: Euler's formula

text: the above equation tells us something about complex logarithms by relating natural logarithms to imaginary (complex) numbers. Bernoulli, however, did not evaluate the integral.


title: Euler's formula

text: Bernoulli's correspondence with Euler (who also knew the above equation) shows that Bernoulli did not fully understand complex logarithms. Euler also suggested that complex logarithms can have infinitely many values.


title: Euler's formula

text: The view of complex numbers as points in the complex plane was described about 50 years later by Caspar Wessel.


title: Euler's formula

text: The exponential function for real values of may be defined in a few different equivalent ways (see Characterizations of the exponential function). Several of these methods may be directly extended to give definitions of for complex values of simply by substituting in place of and using the complex algebraic operations. In particular we may use any of the three following definitions, which are equivalent. From a more advanced perspective, each of these definitions may be interpreted as giving the unique analytic continuation of to the complex plane.


title: Euler's formula

text: The exponential function formula_6 is the unique differentiable function of a complex variable for which the derivative equals the function formula_7 and formula_8


title: Euler's formula

text: Using the ratio test, it is possible to show that this power series has an infinite radius of convergence and so defines for all complex .


title: Euler's formula

text: Here, is restricted to positive integers, so there is no question about what the power with exponent means.


title: Euler's formula

text: This proof shows that the quotient of the trigonometric and exponential expressions is the constant function one, so they must be equal (the exponential function is never zero, so this is permitted).


title: Euler's formula

text: Here is a proof of Euler's formula using power-series expansions, as well as basic facts about the powers of :


title: Euler's formula

text: where in the last step we recognize the two terms are the Maclaurin series for and . The rearrangement of terms is justified because each series is absolutely convergent.


title: Euler's formula

text: Another proof is based on the fact that all complex numbers can be expressed in polar coordinates. Therefore, for some and depending on ,


title: Euler's formula

text: No assumptions are being made about and ; they will be determined in the course of the proof. From any of the definitions of the exponential function it can be shown that the derivative of is . Therefore, differentiating both sides gives


title: Euler's formula

text: Substituting for and equating real and imaginary parts in this formula gives and . Thus, is a constant, and is for some constant . The initial values and come from , giving and . This proves the formula


title: Euler's formula

text: This formula can be interpreted as saying that the function is a unit complex number, i.e., it traces out the unit circle in the complex plane as ranges through the real numbers. Here is the angle that a line connecting the origin with a point on the unit circle makes with the positive real axis, measured counterclockwise and in radians.


title: Euler's formula

text: The original proof is based on the Taylor series expansions of the exponential function (where is a complex number) and of and for real numbers (see below). In fact, the same proof shows that Euler's formula is even valid for all "complex" numbers .


title: Euler's formula

text: A point in the complex plane can be represented by a complex number written in cartesian coordinates. Euler's formula provides a means of conversion between cartesian coordinates and polar coordinates. The polar form simplifies the mathematics when used in multiplication or powers of complex numbers. Any complex number , and its complex conjugate, , can be written as


title: Euler's formula

text: Now, taking this derived formula, we can use Euler's formula to define the logarithm of a complex number. To do this, we also use the definition of the logarithm (as the inverse operator of exponentiation):


title: Euler's formula

text: and in fact, this can be used as the definition for the complex logarithm. The logarithm of a complex number is thus a multi-valued function, because is multi-valued.


title: Euler's formula

text: which can be seen to hold for all integers , together with Euler's formula, implies several trigonometric identities, as well as de Moivre's formula.


title: Euler's formula

text: Euler's formula, the definitions of the trigonometric functions and the standard identities for exponentials are sufficient to easily derive most trigonometric identities. It provides a powerful connection between analysis and trigonometry, and provides an interpretation of the sine and cosine functions as weighted sums of the exponential function:


title: Euler's formula

text: These formulas can even serve as the definition of the trigonometric functions for complex arguments . For example, letting , we have:


title: Euler's formula

text: Complex exponentials can simplify trigonometry, because they are easier to manipulate than their sinusoidal components. One technique is simply to convert sinusoids into equivalent expressions in terms of exponentials. After the manipulations, the simplified result is still real-valued. For example:


title: Euler's formula

text: Another technique is to represent the sinusoids in terms of the real part of a complex expression and perform the manipulations on the complex expression. For example:


title: Euler's formula

text: In the language of topology, Euler's formula states that the imaginary exponential function formula_30 is a (surjective) morphism of topological groups from the real line formula_31 to the unit circle formula_32. In fact, this exhibits formula_31 as a covering space of formula_32. Similarly, Euler's identity says that the kernel of this map is formula_35, where formula_36. These observations may be combined and summarized in the commutative diagram below:


title: Euler's formula

text: In differential equations, the function is often used to simplify solutions, even if the final answer is a real function involving sine and cosine. The reason for this is that the exponential function is the eigenfunction of the operation of differentiation.


title: Euler's formula

text: In electrical engineering, signal processing, and similar fields, signals that vary periodically over time are often described as a combination of sinusoidal functions (see Fourier analysis), and these are more conveniently expressed as the sum of exponential functions with imaginary exponents, using Euler's formula. Also, phasor analysis of circuits can include Euler's formula to represent the impedance of a capacitor or an inductor.


title: Euler's formula

text: In the four-dimensional space of quaternions, there is a sphere of imaginary units. For any point on this sphere, and a real number, Euler's formula applies:


title: Euler's formula

text: and the element is called a versor in quaternions. The set of all versors forms a 3-sphere in the 4-space.


title: Dance-pop

text: Dance-pop is a popular music subgenre that originated in the late 1970s to early 1980s. It is generally uptempo music intended for nightclubs with the intention of being danceable but also suitable for contemporary hit radio. Developing from a combination of dance and pop with influences of disco, post-disco and synth-pop, it is generally characterised by strong beats with easy, uncomplicated song structures which are generally more similar to pop music than the more free-form dance genre, with an emphasis on melody as well as catchy tunes. The genre, on the whole, tends to be producer-driven, despite some notable exceptions.


title: Dance-pop

text: Dance-pop is highly eclectic, having borrowed influences from other genres, which varied by producers, artists and periods. Such include contemporary R&B, house, trance, techno, electropop, new jack swing, funk and pop rock.


title: Dance-pop

text: Dance-pop is a popular mainstream style of music and there have been numerous artists and groups who perform in the genre. Notable artists include Cher, Madonna, Britney Spears, Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue, Christina Aguilera, Spice Girls, Paula Abdul, Backstreet Boys, Michael Jackson, NSYNC, Jennifer Lopez, Janet Jackson, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Years & Years, Justin Bieber, and Ava Max, among others.


title: Dance-pop

text: As the term "disco" started to go out of fashion by the late 1970s to early 1980s, other terms were commonly used to describe disco-based music, such as "post-disco", "club", "dance" or "dance-pop" music. These genres were, in essence, a more modern variant of disco music known as post-disco, which tended to be more experimental, electronic and producer/DJ-driven, often using sequencers and synthesizers.


title: Dance-pop

text: Dance-pop music emerged around the early 1980s as a combination of dance and pop, or post-disco, which was uptempo and simple, club-natured, producer-driven and catchy. Dance-pop was more uptempo and dancey than regular pop, yet more structured and less free-form than dance music, usually combining pop's easy structure and catchy tunes with dance's strong beat and uptempo nature. Dance-pop music was usually created, composed and produced by record producers who would then hire singers to perform the songs.


title: Dance-pop

text: At the beginning of the 1980s, disco was an anathema to mainstream pop. According to prominent Allmusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Madonna had a huge role in popularizing dance music as mainstream music, utilizing her charisma, chutzpah and sex appeal. Erlewine claimed that Madonna "launched dance-pop" and set the standard for the genre for the next two decades. As the primary songwriter on her self-titled debut album and a co-producer by her third record, Madonna's insistence on being involved in all creative aspects of her work was highly unusual for a female dance-pop vocalist at the time. The staff of "Vice" magazine stated that her debut album "drew the blueprint for future dance-pop."


title: Dance-pop

text: In the 1980s, dance-pop was closely aligned to other uptempo electronic genres, such as Hi-NRG. Prominent producers in the 1980s included Stock, Aitken and Waterman, who created Hi-NRG/dance-pop for artists such as Kylie Minogue, Dead or Alive and Bananarama. During the decade, dance-pop borrowed influences from funk (e.g. Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston), new jack swing (e.g. Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul), and contemporary R&B.


title: Dance-pop

text: Other prominent dance-pop artists and groups of the 1980s included the Pet Shop Boys, Mel and Kim, Samantha Fox, Debbie Gibson, and Tiffany.


title: Dance-pop

text: By the 1990s, dance-pop had become a major genre in popular music. Several dance-pop groups and artists emerged during the 1990s, such as the Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Backstreet Boys, and 'NSYNC. During the early 1990s, dance-pop borrowed influences from house music (e.g. Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy", Taylor Dayne's "Soul Dancing", and Madonna's "Vogue", "Rescue Me" and "Deeper and Deeper"), as well as contemporary R&B and new jack swing (e.g. Shanice's "I Love Your Smile").


title: Dance-pop

text: By the late 1990s, electronic influences became evident in dance-pop music; Madonna's critically acclaimed and commercially successful album "Ray of Light" (1998) incorporated techno, trance and other forms of electronic dance music, bringing electronica into mainstream dance-pop. Additionally, also in 1998, Cher released a dance-pop song called "Believe" which made usage of a technological innovation of the time, Auto-Tune. An audio processor and a form of pitch modification software, Auto-Tune is commonly used as a way to correct pitch and to create special effects. Since the late 1990s, the use of Auto-Tune processing has become a common feature of dance-pop music.


title: Dance-pop

text: Celine Dion also released a midtempo dance-pop song, "That's the Way It Is" by the end of 1999. Also during this period, some British bands connected with Britpop and alternative pop experimented with dance-pop as a form - examples include Catatonia single "Karaoke Queen," Bis's top 40 hit "Eurodisco", Kenickie's final single "Stay in the Sun" and Romo band Orlando's major-label debut single "Just For A Second." Another Britpop band, Theaudience was fronted by Sophie Ellis Bextor who went on to a successful solo career primarily in artist-driven dance-pop.


title: Dance-pop

text: At the beginning of the 2000s, dance-pop music was still prominent, and highly electronic in style, influenced by genres such as trance, house, techno and electro. Nonetheless, as R&B and hip hop became extremely popular from the early part of the decade onwards, dance-pop was often influenced by urban music. Dance-pop stars from the 1980s and 1990s such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Janet Jackson and Kylie Minogue continued to achieve success at the beginning of the decade. Whilst much dance-pop at the time was R&B-influenced, many records started to return to their disco roots; Kylie Minogue's albums such as "Light Years" (2000) and "Fever" (2001) contained influences of disco music, or a new 21st-century version of the genre known as nu-disco; hit singles such as "Spinning Around" (2000) and "Can't Get You Out of My Head" (2001) also contained disco traces. In Madonna's case, her album "Music" (2000) contained elements of Euro disco, especially the successful eponymous lead single.


title: Dance-pop

text: Nevertheless, it was not until the mid-to-latter part of the decade when dance-pop music returned greatly to its disco roots; this can be seen with Madonna's album "Confessions on a Dance Floor" (2005), which borrowed strong influences from the genre, especially from 1970s artists and bands such as ABBA, Giorgio Moroder, the Bee Gees and Donna Summer. Britney Spears' album "Blackout" (2007) contained influences of Euro disco.


title: Dance-pop

text: The mid-to-late 2000s saw the arrival of several new dance-pop artists, including Rihanna, Kesha, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga. This period in time also saw dance-pop's return to its more electronic roots aside from its disco ones, with strong influences of synthpop and electropop. Lady Gaga is frequently considered one of the pioneers of this evolution, notably with her singles "Just Dance" and "Poker Face" which were heavily influenced by synthpop and electropop. Rihanna's singles in the dance-pop genre, including "Don't Stop the Music" and "Disturbia", contained electronic influences, the former of which has elements of house music, the latter electropop. Kesha's debut single, "Tik Tok", was also highly electronic in style and employed a video game beat. Katy Perry's "Hot N Cold" (2008), "California Gurls" (2010), and "Firework" (2010), which were major commercial hits, also showcased influences of electropop and house music.


title: Dance-pop

text: The 2010s, similarly to the late 2000s, saw strong electronic influences present within dance-pop and also strong emphasis on bass-heavy drum beats. Artists such as Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Madonna, Kesha, Christina Aguilera, Usher and Rihanna remained very popular, while newer recording artists such as Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Rita Ora, and Dua Lipa joined the dance-pop charts within the decade.


title: Dance-pop

text: American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift's albums "Red" (2012), "1989" (2014) and "Reputation" (2017) contain more of a pop-influenced sound, which features production by dance-pop record producers Max Martin and Shellback. Ariana Grande's single "Problem" featuring Iggy Azalea was a big hit in 2014 and reached combined sales and track-equivalent streams of 9 million units worldwide the following year.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: On November 5, 2021, a fatal crowd crush occurred during the first night of the 2021 Astroworld Festival, a music event founded by American musician Travis Scott that was held at NRG Park in Houston, Texas. Eight people died on the night of the concert, and two more died in the hospital over the following days. The cause of death for all ten was ruled to be accidental compressive asphyxiation, with one of the ten affected by the additional influence of a toxic combination of drugs and alcohol. Twenty-five people were hospitalized, and more than 300 people were treated for injuries at the festival's field hospital. Multiple concertgoers documented the incident, posting videos and recounting their experiences on social media.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: The Astroworld Festival is an annual music event founded by American musician Travis Scott in 2018, taking its name from his third studio album released the same year. The event was organized and managed by Live Nation and its affiliates. Apple Music streamed Scott's performance live.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: The 2021 festival was planned for two consecutive nights. Tickets were sold out in under an hour upon going on sale in May, and 100,000 in total were expected to attend. Authorities initially planned to limit attendees to 70,000 the first night, and that was reduced to 50,000 closer to the event, even though city fire codes permitted 200,000 people. The city of Houston and Harris County organized security for the event, with both mayor Sylvester Turner and General Manager for NRG Park Mark Miller claiming more than 1,000 security staff and police were present, more than double the total from the prior Astroworld concert, with the city specifically providing more security for the festival than it had for the 2021 World Series, which had ended in Houston three days earlier. Inquiries to verify those numbers from the "Houston Chronicle" as of December 3 were declined. NRG Park, owned and managed by the Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation (HCSCC), also had expanded upon the previous year's setup by two new gates and expanded room for crowd traffic flow around the 'Yellow Lot' parking area on which the festival was held, one of a series of them that surround NRG Arena, according to Miller on November 17. Despite the NRG campus being on county property, with local jurisdiction laws, the city of Houston and its fire marshal had the final say on the festival's permits, approving all ten regarding pyrotechnics, street closures, food safety, gas and electrical usage, and other contingencies, but Houston Police Department (HPD) Chief Troy Finner said on November 10 his department had no part in the writing or agreements of the original contract. Parking staff requested that HPD close two major thoroughfares outside the complex beginning November 3 in order to avoid property destruction and stampedes similar to those seen in 2018 and 2019, with no word as of November 10 on whether the request was granted.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Concerns about the "ratio of guests to staff" were repeatedly made weeks in advance of the event by GM Mark Miller, which Live Nation subsidiary ScoreMore Shows, an Austin-based concert promoter in charge of the concert, offered to remedy with its own supplemental staff, but Harris County had exclusive agreements for NRG Park with crowd management and event security contractor Contemporary Services Corporation (CSC). As a result, on November 4, Harris County officials signed an amendment to the contract with ScoreMore for the promoter to provide more staff of its choosing. Prior to this, officials had never amended the contract. Seyth Boardman, co-founder of live entertainment risk management company B3 Risk Solutions, contracted by showrunners Live Nation and ScoreMore for Astroworld as its safety and risk director, was also a longtime manager at CSC, resulting in conflicts of interest on budgetary issues, staffing, and security protocol.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: The initial version of the event operations plan prepared by ScoreMore contained eventualities such as deaths, traumatic injuries, severe weather, an active shooter, civil unrest, lost persons, missing children, and unruly fans. However, it did not contain plans for a surging crowd or mosh pit safety, nor the gate breach at the prior Astroworld Festival, or other security issues at Scott's concerts. Despite reports of subsequent revisions, HCSCC claimed to have never obtained them prior to the event. Early attendees recalled witnessing the same scene that experts later corroborated post-incident: a festival layout with little signage, poor lighting, a mainstage never utilized all day to assist with crowd control, only two water stations with line times near 45 minutes, minimal exit points from the festival's main venue, wide quadrants conducive to severe and unmanageable crowd surges, and access aisles too narrow for security and medical staff to move safely and efficiently. One lawsuit against Apple Music claimed that early reports pointed to the placement of the streamer's camera team and equipment surrounding the venue's quadrant barriers that split the premises horizontally and vertically, arguing that this planning decision cut off concertgoers' means of dispersal and/or exit in favor of better vantage points for the cameras. Multiple ticket purchasers said that their wristbands—which came last-minute in the mail—were accompanied by neither an invoice nor a brochure for directions or best practices, while others were lost in transit entirely.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At the time of the incident, the head of risk management for security personnel, the security director, the interior and exterior security directors, and the company they all worked for were not listed in the Texas Department of Public Safety's private security license database. In a document obtained by CNN, the chain of command indicated the concert's executive producer and its festival director were the only people authorized to stop the concert, but the report did not specify who held those roles. Specific crowd control techniques to spot or prevent problematic behavior were also not detailed in the document.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: HPD claimed to have 528 on-duty officers at the festival, including 367 for the night shift and 161 held over from the day, and early reporting indicated that event organizer Live Nation provided another 755 security officers, including 505 event security staff, 91 armed private security officers and 76 off-duty officers from HPD paid privately, but all of those totals were later called into question, with no secondary verification of these numbers as of November 18. HPD Chief Troy Finner disputed Live Nation's totals specifically, given what he described as poor record-keeping from the three to four security companies under their purview. Paramedical needs were covered by ParaDocs Worldwide, a contractor from Brooklyn, New York, which established a main medical tent and smaller aid stations around the venue.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Early reporting indicated the Houston Fire Department (HFD) stationed twenty ambulances outside the venue ahead of the concert, but Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association (HPFFA) President Marty Lancton later disputed that total, saying there were none of his personnel were inside the venue as it was owned by the county, and that the HPFFA only had four staff members on standby outside. Early reporting estimates from HFD officials indicated around 50 ParaDocs personnel, but ParaDocs CEO Alex Pollak later disputed that total, saying they had 70 on the ground and clarified they did not own any ambulances, but that five to seven were separately contracted to serve Astroworld. As only NRG-exclusive vendors could be used for ambulance needs per the event's license, HFD logs at 1:21 p.m. indicated all five of the Harris County's Emergency Corps ambulances were already being used for the event, which had to be supplemented by another private ambulance company that was an exclusive NRG vendor.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Live Nation had been linked to at least 200 deaths and 750 injuries at its events in seven countries since 2006. From 2016 to 2019, they had also been cited for at least ten OSHA violations, fined for several more serious incidents, and sued civilly at least once for a concert incident. ParaDocs and CSC have been the subjects of multiple recent or ongoing lawsuits seeking damages for deaths and/or injuries at concerts staffed by their personnel.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Darius Williams, a former CSC employee, told TMZ on November 9 that his Level 2 security officer licensing exam the day before had been brief and open book, with answers provided by the instructor. He said that he quit the morning of the event upon realizing they were understaffed and not equipped to handle the crowds, with several coworkers he spoke with voicing similar concerns. He later added to CNN the little urgency he sensed from supervisors upon raising concerns about rumors of a likely gate rush he had read and heard from colleagues and friends, which was only answered with an offer to change location positions on the property.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Three people that worked for ScoreMore prior to the incident told "Rolling Stone" on November 13 about what they described as a disorganized, cost-cutting, and unprofessional past concert work environment, and were surprised that it took them "this long to fuck up this badly." One detailed an assault by the then assistant to the president and the pocketing of box office cash; another described cost-cutting on the height of perimeter fencing and workers' holding them up as they were being crashed at past concerts, and the third detailed mid-concert bulk water purchases as attendees were passing out.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: A little less than two weeks earlier at NRG Park, similar circumstances occurred at American rapper Playboi Carti's concert on October 23, causing it to be canceled. Pictures and videos shared on social media showed split metal detectors, rushing of checkpoints, fans on top of cars, and at least one witness statement to the press indicating an ambulance was called for someone who had been trampled, but as of November 11, no details regarding that allegation had been released.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: In Scott's previous performances, a number of legal issues, including his incitement of incidents and praising fans for their participation, were raised. Leading a new micro-generation of trap artists in 2013 bringing punk-rock nihilism to live hip hop, Scott was quoted in several outlets at the time as wanting to bring his childhood fantasy of becoming a professional wrestler to his concerts. Building his reputation with an event that CNN said teetered on the brink of chaos, a Complex review in 2015 entitled "I Tried Not to Die at Travi$ Scott and Young Thug's Show Last Night" called it "the most dangerous safe haven" and "a turnt-up fight for survival."


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At Lollapalooza in 2015, Scott was charged with disorderly conduct after inciting concertgoers to ignore security and rush the stage. In 2017, he was arrested for similar conduct after a performance in Arkansas at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion. He was again charged with disorderly conduct and received additional charges for inciting a riot and endangering the welfare of a minor. All charges were later dismissed, with the exception of disorderly conduct, which Scott would plead guilty to. That same year, a fan sued Scott and the organizers of a concert at Terminal 5 in New York City after falling from the third level balcony and being dragged on stage, leaving the fan paralyzed from injuries sustained in the fall, with the lawsuit blaming the fall on a crowd surge. At the same concert, Scott was recorded encouraging other fans to jump off balconies, claiming that the crowd beneath them would catch them. In 2019, three people were injured as a crowd rushed to enter the compound at Astroworld. In late 2020, music executive Irving Azoff said that while he would remain an advisor to Live Nation for Scott's tours, he had dropped him as a client, describing Scott as unmanageable.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: On November 8, 2021, TMZ reported a promotional video for Astroworld which played up the apparent danger of attending the festival, with spliced news clips hyping the prior years' chaos, had been removed from their social media accounts except for Instagram. Photos on Scott's personal Instagram with his comments glorifying and glamorizing fans that had broken their hands or passed out had still not been taken down. The outlet editorialized in both cases that Scott's "rager" persona and the Astroworld brand that supported it had caught up with them.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 5:00 a.m. fans began to line up at the festival's outer perimeter. At 6:15 a.m., more than 100 people that responded by text to an online posting requesting security guards showed up in all black to the parking grounds, some of whom claimed they were posted instantly with identifying vests at the main gate with no request for public safety license registration, any training, nor background checks, despite its requirements for the lowest-level security in Texas. At 7:00 a.m. HFD and HPD set up their command post in the Orange Lot, more than east from the festival main stage, with no immediate clarity in subsequent reporting on the decision-making regarding the distance. In the planning documents, a second incident command post existed in the Purple Lot which was near the Main Chills stage. HFD chief Sam Peña explained after the event that its existence was not known to him at the time so no firefighters were posted there, with no confirmation as to HPD's position there either.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 8:15 a.m. HFD received a call from a police lieutenant requesting riot gear due to the crowd's behavior at the security perimeter. At 9:00 a.m. eyewitnesses claimed some impatient attendees waiting in line were throwing trash at each other, crowd surfing and surging towards the ground's outer barriers. From approximately 9:15 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. numerous checkpoints including the festival's main entrance gate and a COVID-testing site were breached and bypassed prior to the grounds' first opening at 10 a.m., with no immediate evidence of recovery or the number of people who streamed in. A security guard was injured, and medics were needed for four more people.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Around 9:30 a.m., associates of HFD Assistant Chief and event emergency designee Michelle McLeod and the Chief of the closest fire district, Section 21, claimed the latter were denied venue access for a preparatory dry run of NRG Park by an employee at CSC, then again by their head of security, who gave the District Chief only a map to compensate. McLeod's request for radios was also denied, later supplanted with only a cellphone number, despite ScoreMore's own plans indicating it would be slow and unreliable due to extra network traffic.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At approximately 10:00 a.m., an eyewitness described seeing a crowd start to attempt pulling down barricades and rushing a checkpoint, igniting small fireworks and trampling a girl whose foot was stuck between the metal bars of a barricade, to which a guard responded by discharging his taser into the sky. Several injured concertgoers started being taken to the hospital that morning, a process that continued consistently throughout the afternoon. Starting at 11:00 a.m., crowds at both lines for merchandise vendors became so volatile that one shut down by 12:00 p.m., according to HFD logs, in an attempt to avoid endangering both those waiting and those working their tables.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 12:17 p.m., prior to its scheduled opening at 1:00 p.m., staff lost control of another checkpoint, with the fence in the Green Lot being damaged due to an individual using bolt cutters. By 2:00 p.m. a VIP entrance completely broke down after at least 200 fans surged through its barricades and checkpoints, knocking over metal detectors and trampling several attendees. At least one person was injured, and by 2:30 p.m. at least six were detained for trespassing. Multiple eyewitnesses by this point described wristbanding, pat-downs, and directional posts being abandoned by many authority figures at the entrances or on the grounds, then alcohol and drugs seen in the possession of numerous attendees later that night, especially in the merchandise section.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: By about 3:15 p.m. HPD were already starting to log dangerous crowd conditions, and an EMT dealing with an expected influx of people seeking medical help for overdoses said their understaffed medical teams progressively became overwhelmed with traumatic injuries by 8:15 p.m. to the point they had to stop documenting patients and start triage. After running out of medical equipment and naloxone (a drug used to treat opioid overdoses), treatment was delayed by at least 20 minutes for many patients after being declared unconscious while some medics on-hire that were not trained in CPR had to seek out audience members that were, only for them to give up trying as the crowds were too tightly packed for the procedure to be implemented properly. At 3:54 p.m. ParaDocs' logs indicated at least 54 patients had been treated by medical staff and crowd conditions were getting dangerous. At approximately 4:15 p.m. yet another gate was broken and breached by an estimated 150 participants. At 4:30 p.m. several eyewitnesses described injuries from several attendees attempting to climb over barricades to escape the crowd compression and mosh pits at the festival's secondary stage where Don Toliver was performing.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: In a meeting between approximately 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. in Scott's trailer which included Chief Finner, Travis Scott (whom Finner initially claimed to "The New York Times" he knew personally then later clarified in a press conference to have only met twice which he said did not constitute a close relationship), and Scott's personal security manager Michael Brown, Finner claimed to have relayed concerns about the energy of the crowd and advised Scott's team to be cautious regarding their messaging on social media, including unplanned events during the festival, staying conscious of a challenging time with social unrest and the COVID-19 pandemic. Finner also recommended Brown contact his department in advance next time so that more coverage could be prepared for additional concerts, then thanked Scott for his support of Houston. Scott's lawyer Ed McPherson claimed subsequently that neither security nor best practices were ever discussed in what he characterized as a brief conversation to only wish Scott well.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 6:55 p.m. HFD logged more than 100 people rushing the VIP gate heavily damaged from its breach four hours earlier, and 15 guards were moved from the main gate to the corridor between the front barricade and the mainstage to escort anyone away from that zone not allowed there, but no headsets were ever given to receive instruction nor radios for communication from supervisors. By 7:00 p.m. an attendee said she was being pressed against the barricades at the mainstage. By 8:39 p.m. at least five fans were lifted over pen barricades by security near the Chills stage. Around this time video from a member of the crowd showed a person calling for help and another being assisted by security as they were examined.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Having never received any promised planning calls from ParaDocs' EMS Director or radios in their network, Union President Lancton said HFD, EMS, and PD were forced to respond on their own after hearing cross-traffic or from colleagues on their own radios of patrons needing help, being misdirected by security from gate to gate upon arrival. Disputing some claims, CEO Alex Pollak said ParaDocs did not provide radios for events they contracted with, directing responsibility for that communication problem to concert production staff. In addition, he insisted no CPR patient had to wait for care and they were prepared with enough supplies and the properly allotted 70 workers for an anticipated crowd size of 70,000. Pollak also clarified he was passing along information consistently from the medical tent where he was stationed to their dispatch in the command center and his organization had enough radios for his own dispatchers provided by the organizers, but their primary difficulty was in going into crowds to reach victims in time, as many attendees punched, kicked, harassed or blocked their dispatchers, many treating their efforts as a joke.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Scott was set to perform on the first night of the Astroworld Festival, with a countdown timer appearing thirty minutes before his set. Attendees cited by the Houston Chronicle, CNN, and ABC News said that as crowds from the last three of eight guest artists' concerts for Yves Tumor, Don Toliver and SZA at the grounds' only other stage, 'Thrills', finished prior to Scott's countdown, they boxed-in the crowd already waiting front-and-center at the 'Chills' stage solely being used that day for Scott's performance. With barriers, then the sound and lighting stands, followed by concessions just behind that initial crowd directly in front, they were left with nowhere to escape, and compression worsened until breathing became difficult.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: An EMT told "The Washington Post" he had heard on his radio from other staff that people were being trampled as early as 9:00 p.m., having overheard discussions to shut down the concert early. He did not know why the show continued, deciding with several colleagues that it was too dangerous to enter the crush and attempt to help the injured. While event organizers had estimated that HPD had logged 5,000 non-ticket holders streaming in after the various breaches, with an approximate 55,000 total in attendance at 9:02 p.m. that night, NRG Park Manager Miller later told HCSCC Chairman of the Board Edgar Colón in a meeting on November 17 that Live Nation's scanner report indicated only 37,858 attendees with scanned tickets on the property, throwing those totals into doubt. By approximately 8:52 p.m. HPD logs indicated nearly 300 people had already been treated, which ParaDocs CEO Pollak said subsequently was not unusual in his practice for a crowd that size, detailing only two transports to hospitals prior to the crush which he also described as a minimal total by comparison to his past work.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Scott was scheduled to start his set at 8:45 p.m., but did not take the stage until approximately 9:02 p.m., starting at approximately 9:06 p.m. with the opening song "Escape Plan". His appearance on the stage resulted in people pushing toward it, leading to a human crush. According to HFD Chief Sam Peña, at about 9:00 p.m. members of the crowd pressed forward and also surged from the sides, causing a crush near the stage; he added that the crush was not caused by obstructed exits but by issues close to the stage, where the crowd was tightly packed. As people struggled to stay on their feet, several began to fall, and many were injured. Panic grew as Scott started his second song of his set, the remaining escape routes shrank, and several attempted to climb over barricades.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 9:11 p.m. the concert's Unified Command—which consisted of Houston police, festival security, festival production staff, ParaDocs dispatchers and Harris County Emergency Core dispatchers—reported the main stage had been compromised, instructing their helicopter to investigate, as video showed fans unable to escape from the area closest to the stage. As the breach was limited to a single section, an official advised standing by and waiting for concert management. At 9:12 p.m. a tightly packed group of fans in the crowd's southern quadrant began screaming for medical help.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Chief Peña said most of the deaths likely occurred after 9:30 p.m., but according to forensic analysis of dozens of videos from crowd experts for "The Washington Post", later confirmed by legal representatives of several victims’ families, witness statements, and publicly available medical logs, at least one victim later declared deceased was seen falling under a mass of people right at the concert’s opening with no evidence he ever got upright again. Three others that also died were seen unconscious in a pile of fans by at least 9:16 p.m., one of whom had attempted to save two younger women’s lives. They were part of a group of at least seven that died from their injuries in the center of the crowd’s south quadrant, where a physicist with tracking software found little to no individual voluntary movement, victims caught between a surging crowd leaving the secondary stage on one end and three barriers on the other, and a density concentrated to as little as of space per person, inducing compressive asphyxiation.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Several veteran ParaDocs supervisors, including one trapped in the southern quadrant attempting to assist three concertgoers in critical condition while protected with a daisy chain formed by some attendees, told "Business Insider" the majority of the patients they were attempting to resuscitate did not have signs of physical trauma such as stepped-on faces or chests but had fixed and dilated pupils—signs of anoxia as a result of suffocation while on their feet, something they had never seen before after working at hundreds of festivals. Even for trapped concertgoers who remained upright, a local internal medicine physician confirmed to the "Houston Chronicle" that those who could not expand their diaphragms, causing blood flow to be restricted to the brain and heart, likely died within minutes as a result of cardiac arrest.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 9:13 p.m. an officer reported multiple fans scaling a gate. At 9:16 p.m. multiple reports of breathing problems and people being trampled were heard sporadically on radio traffic but with no clear location. At 9:18 p.m. HPD logs and radio traffic indicated at least one crush injury and at 9:21 p.m. crowd compression, then at 9:23 p.m. some fans began climbing a speaker tower to escape the crush. During Scott's song "Butterfly Effect", a security guard recalled over a dozen terrified attendees screaming at him for help to pull them over the barricades, including one woman whose screams were ignored by two men on either side of her repeatedly elbowing her face as they jumped around.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: One eyewitness told ABC News that she saw security guards reinforce crowd-control barricades by tying the supporting bars together as they began to buckle under the pressure. Disregarding protocol prohibitive to personal harm, an EMT contracted with ParaDocs described on TikTok an impossible situation of having to reject desperate concertgoers grabbing him to assist others he already knew were likely dead in the crowd, with music too loud for radio traffic to be heard and a crowd that did not care about those around them. One fan who was from the stage told Dallas ABC affiliate WFAA-TV that when he complained to a staff member, he was told, "It's a mosh pit, what do you expect?" Another recalled to "Rolling Stone" that he witnessed unconscious concertgoers being crowd-surfed out to safety.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Several attendees told KTRK-TV, the local owned-and-operated ABC station in Houston, that the piles of people in some areas became two bodies deep, and that some tried to help, only to be sucked further into the crowd. A victim filmed herself on the bottom of one of them, struggling to stay alive, and later posted the video to TikTok. Another victim described to the Associated Press how the desperation in the crowd eventually increased to "every man for himself". A HPD officer was then warned by an unidentified official on the radio that they were having structural issues that could be catastrophic. One concertgoer claimed on Twitter that security responded to his pleas for help by saying that they could not do anything to stop the show as the concert was streaming live.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: An ICU nurse attending the concert who passed out twice from the pressure on her chest and back described her shock to CNN at the "feral" atmosphere, describing how people continued to trample those on the ground to get to the front despite their screams. Two guests in the rear disabled-accessible section told the "Houston Chronicle" they saw 50 to 60 people climbing two stories up onto the concert's projection screens with exposed wiring to escape the crush or for better views that were not stopped by authorities. A couple searching for missing shoes and a phone amid the chaos told "The Washington Post" they eventually found six phones, learning later that two belonged to those who had died. Some medical personnel, including former combat medics, recalled to "USA Today" that their colleagues wept while working on 11 young concertgoers in cardiac arrest at once in both an over-capacity medical tent and an unforgiving crowd.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Scott stopped the show for the first time at about 9:24 p.m., saying "Somebody passed out right here" towards the front of the stage. Other fans elsewhere continued screaming and waving to attract his attention, but the rapper began his next song. At approximately 9:27 p.m., Scott paused and hunched over after a song. While the crowd chanted his name, Scott stood up and walked to the right, pointing offstage, asking for more lights, then to "make some noise for my boy right there hanging in the tree". Meanwhile, some nearby concertgoers were still calling out for medics. Scott then told everyone to make a gesture with their middle fingers "because they are ready to rage", and continued.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At approximately 9:30 p.m., medical staff moved to someone lying unresponsive in front of a reserved section, then multiple barriers were reported compromised, and officials requested a drone get closer for clearer footage. Scott noticed an ambulance in the crowd, pointing and asking "What the fuck is that?" After telling the crowd "If everybody good, put a middle finger up to the sky", two members of Scott's entourage came onto the stage to have an indecipherable conversation for several seconds, after which he turned to the crowd again, asking twice and joined by one of the two others on stage the second time for "two hands in the sky". Many people complied, so he said, "Y'all know what you came to do, Chase B, let's go," continuing the concert with his song "Upper Echelon", telling the crowd that he wanted to hear the ground shake, then sending the two that were on stage to dive off and crowd-surf.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: As Scott was starting to sing at approximately 9:34 p.m, a man yelled at a camera operator multiple times from the bottom of his media tower to stop the show, which was ignored. A woman soon joined him, climbing its ladder onto his platform to shout the same concerns of someone dead in the crowd. After also being ignored, the other concertgoer came up onto the platform to join her, but another audience member told them both that the crowd would take care of it. "People are fucking dying! I want to save somebody's life! That's somebody's kid!", he responded. The operator told both to get off the platform and continued to film. Meanwhile, multiple mayday requests from other operators went unheeded as the media towers they were trying to escape were being climbed by other desperate attendees themselves.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At approximately 9:35 p.m, a graduate assistant attending the concert who also worked as a firefighter and EMT confirmed not being able to find a pulse on a 22-year-old woman whose skin had turned greyish-blue as a result of cyanosis, and he attempted to revive her by pumping her chest while getting another attendee to breathe oxygen into her lungs. Relieved two ParaDocs medics had shown up by approximately 9:42 p.m, he quickly realized that not only had they not arrived with an oxygen bag or defibrillator, being told they had run out, but watched with horror as one's compressions were not being implemented properly while the other's backboard had no straps, then after propping that board up on a fence, the woman's unconscious body slid off and hit the ground head first. The victim died several days later at the hospital.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At approximately 9:42 p.m. Scott stopped performing "Skeletons" mid-song for his third and final time of the concert after noticing an unconscious attendee. Security team members provided aid, and he resumed the performance. A video showed an unconscious man being carried from the area.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At approximately 9:43 p.m., one of the victims who later died was confirmed by his attorney to be photographed in the medical tent with a disfigured face as a result of being stepped on by the crowd. During Scott's next song, "90210", a group of concertgoers in the crowd's western quadrant began a "Stop the show!" chant that its southern quadrant had tried 40 minutes prior, but their requests went unheeded. At 9:55 p.m. an audience member was seen dancing on the roof of a retrofitted golf cart being used by medical staff as an ambulance. Just prior to 10:00 p.m. eyewitnesses noted the initial crush seemed to be over, but things got chaotic again with the arrival of Drake, who joined Scott on the song "Knife Talk." Scott and Drake started the song "Sicko Mode" at approximately 10:08 p.m. before the show closed with the final song, "Goosebumps," after which Scott waved to the crowd while jogging offstage, saying "I love y’all. Make it home safe. Good night!"


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Right at the concert's opening, ParaDocs' chief dispatcher Jon Saltzman told "Business Insider" that Unified Command where he was stationed received reports of at least three attendees suffering smoke inhalation from the stage's fireworks; then, his radio check-ins to supervisors stationed at forward triage positions were responded to with what he deciphered to be at least three distinct reports of cardiac arrest, a number he and his colleagues had never seen before at any event they had worked. Overstepping his authority, Saltzman told the festival dispatcher at command to shut down the festival as they were in uncharted territory, then waited for a response he implied he never received.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 9:18 p.m. was HFD's first log of an injury related to breathing issues and a perceived crush. At 9:21 p.m. staff among the event's private medical contractors were dispatched to the front of the crowd, confirming multiple injuries to the concert's Unified Command, but the concert continued. Concertgoers recorded staff performing CPR on unconscious attendees as early as 9:28 p.m. As medical personnel were overwhelmed in triage, audience members attempted to help perform CPR as well. Several people were administered naloxone.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At approximately 9:30 p.m. a panicked female officer asked for clear airwaves on radio traffic to report multiple trampled victims passed out at the medical tent, warning of thick, unruly, worsening crowd conditions that would likely affect officers attempting rescues. HFD District Chief Mo Koochak at his Orange Lot command post, who was never given a radio within ParaDocs' network, overheard her on cross-traffic on his own device.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 9:33 p.m. police reported multiple victims trampled and passed out at the front of the stage, and over the next ten minutes, police operators fielded five 911 calls about unconscious people in the crowd and reports of possible CPR ongoing or needed. Upon confirmation from a deputy chief of a compressing crowd with several attendees staggering out experiencing panic attacks, and with no time to wait for ParaDocs for further consultation, Chief Koochak ordered an 'EMT Task Force' of sixteen units to mobilize to the scene.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 9:38 p.m., a ParaDocs dispatcher at the concert's unified command relayed a mass-casualty incident to officials, a 'Level 1' event was declared by HFD dispatchers, and radio traffic for an undetermined amount of time for many officials became entirely unintelligible. HPD Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite, with several officials, informed festival promoters that the show should not continue, but the "Houston Chronicle" reported Chief Finner, following what he later claimed was consultation with local officials, made the ultimate call to defer to festival management, production and the entertainer on the decision to halt the show, citing his department's lack of power. Several officials alleged to "The New York Times" that proper protocol was not followed numerous times from some workers in identifying suspected deceased victims by code name over the radio.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At about 9:40 p.m. the first HFD ambulances reached the gate directly behind the main stage, only to be diverted to another area in response to a cardiac arrest. At least one of the district chiefs of those units was misdirected by security to a gate a from the medical tent, which wasted what he described as crucial minutes when patrons were likely dying. A HPD official advised several inquiring HFD officials on the radio that the show would soon end, but the concert continued. From 9:40 p.m. to 9:50 p.m. some HFD firefighters witnessed five patients at the medical tent whose hearts had stopped.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At approximately 9:53 p.m., HFD officials upgraded the incident to a 'Level 2' event, sending 12 more units, and a mass-casualty declaration was first put into department logs. Scott's lawyer McPherson claimed that he believed Scott was informed just before 10:00 p.m. that the show would need to conclude by festival management via his in-ear monitors, which Scott claimed was only a message that the show must end after its guests appeared onstage for which he was not given a reason as to why the performance was being cut short. Radio traffic from a female officer overheard from several officials at approximately 10:03 p.m. claimed the show had been stopped, but Scott and Drake were still performing. Footage from the event emerged showing police officers near the stage pointing their phones at the stage, with the performance going on, at least fifteen minutes after the mass casualty event was declared.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: At 10:13 p.m. the festival's first fatality was declared by doctors at Ben Taub Hospital. Scott finished at approximately 10:10 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. Some reports indicated he finished in full his originally planned 25-song set, while others indicated it had ended thirty minutes earlier than scheduled. From 10:46 p.m. to 11:18 p.m. seven others were pronounced dead by four other Houston hospitals. By 11:00 p.m. HFD officials had dispatched 55 of their own units to the scene, and called off any more of their paramedics from heading to the incident. At 12:20 a.m., approximately three hours after a mass casualty event was declared, came the first official announcement to the public of an "NRG Park incident" via the HPD's Twitter account.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Eight victims, aged 14 to 27, died on the night of the concert. One of the injured, a 22-year-old woman, was declared brain dead on November 9 and died the next day. A 9-year-old boy was placed in a medically induced coma after being crushed and trampled at the concert, becoming the tenth fatality of the event when he died on November 14. It was the most accidental deaths at a U.S. concert since the Station nightclub fire which killed 100 people in West Warwick, Rhode Island in 2003.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Twenty-five people were evacuated to local hospitals that night. In all, more than 300 people were treated for injuries in the field hospital at the festival.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Immediately following the concert, Scott went to a pre-scheduled, private after-party at a local Dave & Buster’s hosted by friend and co-performer Drake. They allegedly did not hear pleas to stop the concert at the grounds, first learning about the severity of the event at the restaurant and immediately leaving.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: By 2:13 a.m. a reunification area for missing persons had been set up at the Wyndham Houston Hotel and authorities confirmed in a press conference at NRG Park the incident's initial death toll of eight victims. In its first statement of condolences at about 6:00 a.m. Astroworld clarified in a social media post that the second night of the festival on November 6 had been canceled. The incident and its fallout quickly gained widespread attention and the event was soon dubbed "Gen Z's Altamont" (1969).


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Two days after the crush, a makeshift memorial for the victims was created on a chain link fence outside the festival area, with prayer candles, flowers, pictures of the deceased, and stuffed animals among the items left. A non-profit group from San Antonio provided therapy dogs at the scene. On November 21, the family of one of the ten dead victims had photos of the other nine that died printed and posted at the memorial as a gesture in support of the other families.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: The Sunday Service Choir, an American gospel collective led by rapper and producer Kanye West, partnered with Triller and Revolt TV to hold a free live online worship service in memory of and tribute to those who died.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: On November 14, Houston rapper Bun B and local restaurant Eatsie Boys hosted a local "Breaking Bread" event joined by Trae tha Truth, a local distillery and several food trucks that used their surplus supply originally intended for the remainder of the festival, donating a portion of sales to the victims and their families.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: In a statement posted on his social media the next day, Scott offered his condolences to those who died, and offered support to local authorities. Later that day, he posted a video response on Instagram stories that was quickly criticized by some outlets for its perceived insincerity and parodied on social media. Also that day, Kylie Jenner, Scott's girlfriend who attended the show, and her sister Kendall, deleted their social media posts related to the festival following heavy backlash. Both released subsequent statements expressing their sympathy, with Kylie indicating that she and Scott were unaware of the fatalities until afterwards, adding that had they known, they would not have continued filming or performing. Apple Music, who live streamed the event, deleted their social media posts related to the festival the next day and issued a statement commemorating the victims. On November 8, Drake released his first statement voicing similar sentiments to Scott.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Live Nation in a statement said: "Our entire team is mourning alongside the community", and they were working on ways to support attendees, the families of victims, and staff with mental health counseling and help with hospital costs for the victims and their loved ones, promising refunds to all paying concertgoers. A 5.4% share price fall totaling more than $1 billion was wiped from Live Nation's stock value on the Monday following the incident, which company observers characterized as "modest", predicting shareholders would likely prioritize the long-term impact of litigation over prior concerns such as COVID-19 recovery and congressional inquiry into ticket scalping.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: In an interview with Charlamagne tha God posted to YouTube on December 9 which Scott said he granted as he wanted a forum for public communication of his emotions, he said the media was forcing responsibility onto him as the face of the festival and that he was looking for solutions for future concerts, clarified that he did not know about any deaths until minutes prior to authorities' press conference the morning after the incident and that he had not heard any fans screaming for him to stop the concert, citing his ear-piece, and expressed regret about his initial Instagram video apology prior to more information being made public, understanding plaintiffs' denial of his offer for coverage of funeral costs. Multiple law firms for several victims who died heavily criticized the interview to several outlets as gaslighting, punting blame, and a pre-packaged public relations stunt from an artist that built his brand on an abusive relationship with his fans, arguing it increased his liability further with tacit acknowledgments of improper planning and willful ignorance by Scott's production team.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: American rapper Roddy Ricch and American singer Toro y Moi both announced that weekend they would be donating their net compensation for performing at the event to the victims' families.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Scott announced in a statement on November 8 that he would cover the costs of funerals as well as medical expenses for those killed at the festival. The "Houston Chronicle" reported on November 26 that attorneys for many of the victims told them not to accept his nor Live Nation's offers, and "Rolling Stone" on November 29 obtained a letter sent from lawyers representing the 9-year-old victim that died declining a request from Scott's new lawyer, Daniel M. Petrocelli, for either a meeting or reimbursement. Representatives for four other victims that died confirmed the next day they had also rejected or ignored similar offers from Scott's old and new legal teams, describing the gestures as demeaning attempts to lessen public pressure rather than a genuine display of remorse.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Scott's additional offer in his statement on November 8 of a month of free online therapy to people who attended the concert as part of an unpaid partnership with BetterHelp was met with criticism by some that considered the move insufficient, inauthentic and exploitative given its limit, opportunity for future sponsorship for Scott, the organization's past privacy controversies and notice their services weren't suitable for minors despite most of the concert's survivors being teenagers, while other mental health experts were hesitant to dismiss the move outright. On November 9, Scott posted the wrong telephone number to call for the therapy on his Instagram account from what he intended to be the hotline for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) but was supposed to be a different dedicated national number NAMI created in partnership with BetterHealth. A reporter claimed early attempts at calling only reached a government agency scam while latter observers claimed to only reach a car insurance scam, and Scott only updated the number on his account two days after "Buzzfeed News" reached out to his team for comment.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Reports arose online by November 18 of rumors from several concertgoers alleging that any right to participate in a class-action lawsuit or arbitration against Live Nation would have to be waived if they wished to receive a ticket refund, with their only avenue through a company settlement outside of court. Lawyers that looked through the company's policies later clarified there were not any explicit qualifications in the terms of use and a sweeping waiver likely would not be upheld in court. Amidst the controversy, guidance for many concertgoers still had not been given weeks later as to how or when full refunds would be handled for attendees who had not planned to make legal filings and many also could not reach Front Gate Tickets — the official promoter and ticketing provider of the event.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: "Rolling Stone" on December 17 obtained from a staffer hired for that night an email with an updated contract sent on November 15 from a manager working for Live Nation, ScoreMore, and XX Nation that contained a new clause which said they would not be reimbursed unless they agreed to a liability release to not sue, which he refused to sign.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: "Variety" reported on November 8 that Scott had cancelled his headlining appearance at the Day N Vegas Festival, slated for November 13 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Houston Rockets pre-scheduled Travis Scott Day celebration for their November 10 home game against the Detroit Pistons was postponed out of sensitivity for the victims with a moment of silence observed instead and Scott and DJ Chase B's streetwear boutique at Rice Village in Houston closed indefinitely following the incident. Epic Games temporarily removed their Travis Scott "Fortnite" emote on November 7 and Nike announced the postponement of its early 2022 Air Max 1 x Cactus Jack footwear collab launch with Scott indefinitely in an email to users of its SNKRS app on November 15 out of respect for the victims. CEO of fashion house Dior Pietro Beccari told "Women's Wear Daily (WWD)" in a statement they were still evaluating the situation internally as of November 16 as to whether they would pull their entire spring/summer 'Cactus Jack Dior' menswear collection on which they collaborated with Scott, which experts to "Rolling Stone" indicated had likely already been manufactured in full for its distribution in January 2022. Parsons School of Design also confirmed to "WWD" they had decided not to renew a contract with Scott's Cactus Jack Design Center that had hosted online courses and provided scholarships in fashion and design for underserved students in Houston in partnership with the local chapter of non-profit My Brother's Keeper and TX/RX labs, who did not clarify to the outlet whether they would stay open as a result of the withdrawal either. As of November 17, General Mills confirmed to the "Houston Chronicle" they had no plans for future collaborations with Scott following their custom "Reese's Puffs" cereal box in 2019 and the outlet could not confirm the future of Scott's branding relationships with McDonald's, Sony PlayStation, Byredo, or Mattel.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: W Media agreed with Scott and Kylie Jenner to withdraw online and in print prior to its release date soon after the concert their magazine cover and feature with their daughter Stormi. A representative for the Kardashian family denied allegations Scott had been cut from any storylines for their upcoming Hulu series, The Kardashians, stating he had not yet been filmed. A controversy with the streaming service arose on December 1 following their decision to post then remove in the same day a news special from KTRK-TV, "Astroworld: Concert from Hell". Confusion and backlash followed their perceived profiting from the partnership too soon following the incident as well as the impression Hulu had produced their documentary and it was not available after they removed it, even though it had been publicly available on the affiliate's website since November 24 after originally airing on television November 20. The affiliate's original news special was retitled to "Astroworld Aftermath" on December 2.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: On December 10, trade publications "Beer Business Daily" and "Beer Marketer's Insights" reported Anheuser-Busch had informed its wholesalers of the decision to discontinue all production and development of their brand partnership with Scott, the CACTI Agave Spiked Seltzer, less than nine months after it first went on sale, speculating as to the incident being the cause given what they described as a significant sales dip prior. "Ad Age" reported that day the brand had its related Twitter account removed as well, having not posted since the incident, and a representative for Scott told the outlet his endorsement deal had expired November 30, characterizing the decision to cease their involvement as mutual, although a source allegedly connected to the brand claimed to TMZ it had not been discontinued but put on a temporary hold. That day Palm Springs ABC-affiliate KESQ reported a Change.org petition calling for Scott to be removed from the 2022 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival for which he was a headliner had received at least 60,000 signatures, then confirmed, citing reports from its host city Indio and its Community Services Manager Jim Curtis, that he was no longer on the bill. "Variety" reported the next day the festival informed Scott's agent Cara Lewis it intended to pull Scott from the bill and was willing to pay a 25% kill fee for the cancellation but that Lewis was trying to keep him on it, offering to forgo his entire performance fee as an incentive. On December 17 TMZ reported Scott was partnering with The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) to create a safety report for live entertainment going forward with a focus on new innovation and technology, and on December 28 "WWD" reported Dior had indefinitely postponed their Cactus Jack capsule collaboration which was originally supposed to be included in their Summer 2022 collection. Following reports confirming Scott's removal from Coachella's roster in early January 2022 and rumors one of its headliners, Kanye West, would be featuring him regardless, another Change.org petition supporting Scott's return to the festival reached over 70,000 signatures in just three days by January 26, approximately 65,000 of which were removed the following day due to what website engineers cited as fraudulent activity, followed by its complete removal the day afterwards with no explanation as of January 28.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: Despite the initial wave of cancellations and/or postponement of live performances and sponsorships, Travis Scott quickly re-emerged the following year in June with a performance at the 2022 Billboard Music Awards thanks to a self-described "demand" of the organization from its host and executive producer P. Diddy, who went on in a statement to blame cancel culture for Scott's initial backlash. Soon after, "not even a full year after Astroworld", 'Day N Vegas', the Las Vegas festival produced by Goldenvoice behind the Coachella festival that had originally withdrawn their concert slot to Travis announced he would be headlining the last day of their 2022 festival iteration (although the festival would later be canceled for reasons unrelated to Scott), following announcements from Primavera Sound in Brazil and Argentina that he would be headlining their festivals as well that November, including a concert in São Paulo just one day after the event's first anniversary. In addition, as of late May 2022, it was confirmed that Scott's new projects and releases with Nike and Dior would be moving forward.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: On the night of the incident, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) described the events as horrific and said that there needed to be a very serious, credible, and objective investigation. The next day, Texas governor Greg Abbott said, "What happened at Astroworld Festival last night was tragic, and our hearts are with those who lost their lives and those who were injured in the terrifying crowd surge." On November 10, he announced the formation of the 'Texas Task Force on Concert Safety Panel' to begin the work of creating safety standards and guidelines for future events of this type in the state. Fellow Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion announced that she had cancelled her local show scheduled for December 3 out of respect for the victims.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: The legal counsel for several festivals, lawyers for past concert victims, and experts on past concert disaster task forces explained to several outlets substantial reforms weren't likely towards standing-room-only general admission tickets as assigned seating was unaffordable for smaller indoor venues and didn't make sense for outdoor festivals, arguing Astroworld's failures weren't a sweeping referendum on festival culture as a whole. However, organizers taking more responsibility for utilizing a 'stop show' more frequently and not equating that with a cancellation (despite the financial incentive) was seen as much more plausible, with the biggest roadblocks to that reform surrounding specialty hiring during a global labor shortage as a result of COVID-19, and the biggest opportunities including emerging technology such as crowd tension monitoring through heat maps of crowds overlaid on CCTV.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: On November 19, rapper Chuck D of the hip hop group Public Enemy wrote an open letter to concert promoters defending Scott in which he expressed that as a young black man, Scott was being blamed for a crime while the "old white men running the corps" that Scott and his fans trusted with their lives "stay quiet in the shadows". He went on to argue that Scott was a performer that did not run logistics and questioned the perception in the public and press of Scott's past and present irresponsibility, saying Live Nation would not have promoted and partnered with him, then let him headline his own show in the first place if they were truly concerned. On November 22, policy was amended for just the San Bernardino, California, stop from December 10–12 of hip-hop festival Rolling Loud to only allow attendees 18 or older, alluding to the incident in a statement. Questions were raised in the press and from concertgoers subsequently as to why the policy was not implemented permanently for all Rolling Loud concerts going forward.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: The Governor's Task Force on Concert Safety formed after the incident recommended in its final report issued on April 19, 2022 a solution to permitting loopholes as a result of discrepancies between Harris County and the city of Houston, a standardized event permitting process for the state of Texas which had led to "forum shopping" across event promoters prior, a universal permitting template with a standardized checklist for counties to consult before issuing them, unique contingency plans for events fans could easily breach, stampede, or overcrowd, clearly outlined triggers for pausing or canceling shows, integration of local first responders in the unified on-site command and control and greater prioritization in resources, application and training in risk management for staff and promoters in future events, clarifying there wasn't likely occupancy overloading issues that night but in crowd management. Mayor Turner and Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia announced their own Special Events Task Force on February 9, 2022, for both Houston and Harris County with 10 other industry leaders to similarly review and make recommendations in improved communication, protocols and permitting requirements for future events only, later clarifying they weren't analyzing that night's events as it would interfere in ongoing investigations.


title: Astroworld Festival crowd crush

text: In the immediate aftermath of the incident, local homicide and narcotics investigators, representatives for the insurance companies of the defendants, OSHA, and lawyers for the concertgoers were on the scene. A judge's limited freeze order to pause cleanup of the site did not come until two nights later on November 8, allowing victims' lawyers to investigate and take photographs and requiring organizers to preserve remaining evidence after an agreement was reached with defendants, clarifying it did not waive their legal defenses entirely. Live Nation and ScoreMore said they were working with local authorities, investigators were inspecting the grounds, and CCTV video had been turned over. On November 8, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed to ABC News that his agency would be providing technical assistance to local investigators and FBI Houston branch spokesperson Brittany Davis clarified subsequently they were ready to assist, but city officials initially declined to divulge publicly whether the department had asked for the FBI's aid or accepted the help. On November 10, Chief Finner called the FBI a partner in the investigation, but clarified his department was taking the lead.