Blink-182 and Bjork cancel major festival headlining spots, tour dates

Bjork

Lately it seems there's a lot of artists who have had to cancel tour dates due to throat problems. Blink-182 and Bjork are no exceptions, as the two very different artists have had to scratch major festival headlining dates due to illness.

Blink drummer Travis Barker had to undergo an emergency tonsillectomy and will require a period of rest which means the pop-punk band has canceled their dates in May. They were scheduled to headline at Bamboozle, which runs over the weekend of May 18-20. My Chemical Romance will be taking up their spot on May 19, which they were co-headlining with Foo Fighters.

Other stops for Blink-182 would have included dates in New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Canada. The band plans to be totally mended in time for the kick-off to their European leg on June 7.

Bjork, meanwhile, scrapped her dates at Primevera Sound in Spain and at its Portugal sister fest Optimus Primavera on June 2 and June 9, respectively. The Icelandic songwriter is still suffering from problems with her vocal cords, which curbed two of her South American stops last month.

"After cancelling some shows due to an inflamed nodule, Björk’s specialist doctor advised her to rest and to cancel her tour as this could cause permanent damage to her voice," read a statement on the Primavera site.

Oh, well we wouldn't want that.

No replacement for Primavera has yet been named. She is still planning several overseas festival stints this summer.

Adele was famously off the road and out of the studio all of last fall through the winter due to her throat issues and surgery; John Mayer's recurrent granuloma has silenced his voice semi-permanently at this point. Last year, other acts like Keith Urban and R. Kelly had their share of vocal cord/throat surgeries and problems. And Levon Helm, RIP, died this year due to cancer, which originated in his throat.

Be careful out there, guys.

Katie Hasty
Managing Editor

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After five years as a columnist and editor at Billboard, Katie Hasty joined HitFix in 2009 for music and film reporting out of New York. The Midwest native has worked as a writer, music promoter and in A&R since 1999 and performs with her band Numbers And Letters.