Did Lolla score big with 2011 headliners? Stats suggest so.

Did Lolla score big with 2011 headliners? Stats suggest so. Image Photo: Brendan Lester

Earlier this week, Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot leaked three headliners from Lollapalooza 2011. according to his "reliable industry sources," Muse, Eminem and Foo Fighters will top the bill of the Grant Park festival, August 5–7.

Much online grumbling followed—a good deal of it here, from me. something like this: Eminem is annoying, way past his expiration date. Muse (pictured above at United Center, March 2010) is a watered-down Radiohead that turned into a watered-down Queen. Dave Grohl would make the coolest uncle, but his working-man band is hard to get excited about. Yadda yadda yadda.

But a recently released study by the website we are Hunted suggests I'm just a cranky voice in the minority. a sort of modern Billboard for the social-media era, wearehunted.com scours Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, message boards, blogs, etc. to see what musical acts are being talked about most. in an impressive, if statistically dubious, bit of research, we are Hunted tracked 2,987 artists in 486,631 music articles and 16,063,656 Twitter messages from July to December 2010.

The most popular band might surprise you. or should surprise you: Muse. The flamboyant trio edged Radiohead (who had nothing going in that span of time), the xx, Lady Gaga and Arcade Fire. Eminem came in at No. 13; Foo Fighters, No. 32 (Nirvana was No. 12).

So if the reports are true, C3 has wrangled three of the most popular musicians of the Internet. of course, whether a music festival should be a popularity contest is another matter.

Read the full results here.