4 Artists We’d Like To See Collaborate With Toto At Falls Festival

Toto are playing Falls Festival this year, which was an artist announcement we honestly weren’t expecting, but are pleasantly surprised about!

First forming in 1976, the Los Angeles band had a slew of hit songs in the 70’s and 80’s, including timeless classics ‘Rosanna’, ‘Hold the Line’ and ‘Africa’. Toto have released a whopping seventeen studio albums during their career, and were added to the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009.

The band have recently been dominating the headlines again since Weezer honoured them with an official ‘Africa’ cover and they covered Weezer back, after teaming up to collab with Australia’s very own What So Not.

And now, their surprise inclusion on the Falls lineup got us thinking about the potential for onstage collabs with other artists playing the festival!

Obviously, in the ideal world every single artist on the line-up would get up on the (probably needing to be heavily-reinforced) stage with Toto, to participate in a massive sing-along for their generation-spanning hit ‘Africa’. In lieu of that, though, here are a few artists on the lineup we’d particularly love to see collaborate with the band at Falls this festival season.

88Rising

The media company 88Rising has definitely made a name for itself since forming in 2015. The troupe, which includes acts like August 08, Niki, The Higher Brothers, Rich Brian and Joji, focuses on creating media for the digital age. 88Rising are coming down under and playing their only shows in our great land at Falls Festival! Their festival performance will include Rich Brian, Joji, Niki and August 08, so if you’re a fan of these guys, Falls is your chance to see ’em perform together.

The label also has a reputation of releasing music that features multiple artists on the label collaborating with each other. While we’re on the topic of collaboration, imagine the collab between 88Rising artists and Toto! You could have Rich Brian rapping, Joji doing a sick little vocal part… Wouldn’t that be weird and wonderful? Now, who do we need to contact to make this happen?

First Aid Kit

The Swedish folk duo released their fourth studio album Ruins this year and came to Aus in April for a series of concerts to showcase it. The sisters are heading back to our shores for Falls, and we have this idealistic hope that while at the festival, they’ll find time to join Toto on stage to perform a track or two.

Just imagine it… the synth-line for ‘Africa’ starts, the crowd cheers, but wait, who are the two figures in the dark at the back of the stage? The verse is slick, then the tom-fill leading into the chorus happens and BOOM, the lights shine on the two figures and it’s First Aid Kit! We’re getting goosebumps just thinking about how that chorus would sound!

CHVRCHES

CHVRCHES also released a new album this year! The Scottish act’s third album Love Is Dead peaked at #7 on the ARIA charts, and has some great tracks like ‘Graffiti’ and ‘Miracles’. We’re keen to see which of the new songs the band performs at Falls, as well as which of their classic hits they bring to the festival.

Surely, we can’t be the only ones who think the music from the two bands could mix really well together, right? We reckon a version of ‘The Mother We Share’ with the full Toto band in tow would absolutely go OFF at Falls.

Cub Sport

Brissie 4-piece Cub Sport have had a pretty big couple of years. They released their second album BATS in 2017 – which featured singles ‘Hawaiian Party’, ‘O Lord’ and ‘Chasin’’, the latter of which made it into the triple j Hottest 100 2017, toured the world extensively, plus earlier this year frontman Tim Nelson and keyboardist Sam Netterfield tied the knot! The band have announced they will be releasing their third album next year, and we’re keen to see if they give us a sneak peak of a new song or two at Falls. We would also love to see a Toto and Cub Sport collab at the festival! We’re thinking a version of ‘Hold The Line’ with Nelson adding vocals would be a pretty magical performance to experience.

If you can’t make it to Falls, but still wanna see Toto, don’t fear as they are going to be playing sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne in January too. Either way, if you want to catch the band while they’re here, hurry, the tickets are waiting there for you!

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