#eavis

Emily Eavis: Glastonbury 2021 will be ‘a double celebration’

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Image caption Emily Eavis, who grew up on Worthy Farm, has been helping her father Michael organise Glastonbury since 1999

Next year’s Glastonbury festival will be a “double celebration”, organiser Emily Eavis has told the BBC.

The festival was due…

Emily Eavis hints at Glastonbury 2019 headline act

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Glastonbury organiser, Emily Eavis, has hinted that a “great British artist” will headline at the 2019 festival.

Speaking at BBC Music Introducing Live she revealed that the Friday headliner “hasn’t had a stage like this before”.

She also confirmed that Fleetwood Mac won’t be playing, but that they’re on her…

All Hail ‘Yeeavis’

In Defence of Mr. West

A Response to the Glastonbury Headliner Announcement and how people need to accept that festivals are not just about one genre.

So finally the curtain has been raised and the answer to the yearlong guessing game of who will headline Glastonbury has been revealed. This year Foo Fighters, The Who and Kanye West will take the headline slots at Worthy Farm from June 24-28 but the choice of the latter has sparked up major controversy. Naturally, there are always some people who are dissatisfied with the bookings but the backlash that organisers Michael and Emily Eavis have received for booking Kanye has been colossal. A petition that exists on Change.org to remove Kanye as a headliner and replace him with a rock band has over 134,000 signatures but the truly shocking backlash from the whole situation was that Emily Eavis revealed in an interview with The Times that she has received death threats for booking the rapper.

I am happy to admit that I am a fan of Kanye West, I think he produces good music and I do not doubt that he will produce a strong headline performance, but that is not what this is about. Glastonbury is not about one genre of music despite people seeming to think that this is the case. Its unique selling point is that it is a diverse performing arts festival which caters to everyone. With the exception of Radio 1's Big Weekend and potentially T In The Park, Glastonbury often features the most popular mainstream artists and right now one of the biggest, potentially the biggest, name in mainstream music is Kanye West. The question rises then as to why there is so much controversy surrounding his booking?

Two real reasons come to mind. The first being that, let's face it, Kanye is not the best person in the world. He is extremely arrogant and also very rude (see Taylor Swift's VMA acceptance speech in 2009). However, is booking him really any reason to send someone death threats? I have always said, coincidentally normally in the defence of Kanye West, that you cannot disregard someone's music because of their personality otherwise how can we explain the success of bands such as Oasis with the Gallagher brothers being such controversial figures? Or, indeed, that of The Beatles with John Lennon and his ever popular "we are more popular than Jesus" moment. The artist's music and personality are completely separate. It is completely understandable if you listen to someone's music and you do not enjoy it, however, if you fail to give it a chance just because of the person who made it then you might miss something that is genuinely good.

The second problem is that many of the attendees of the festival or the people who watch it at home simply do not believe that someone like Kanye West belongs there. To use the petition as an example, they feel that the spot should be given to a rock band like the other two headliners. This returns to the point about what Glastonbury really represents and how it is not all about one genre of music. In 2008, Jay-Z was booked to headline the festival and he put on a great headline performance winning over the crowd at Worthy Farm. Over the years rap artists and groups such as Public Enemy, Chance The Rapper, Tinie Tempah, Dizzee Rascal, Tyler The Creator, and Wu-Tang Clan to name but a few have taken to the stage at Glastonbury and were all received tremendously. This prejudice is not exclusive to rap, however, with heavier bands such as Motorhead, Enter Shikari, and the Prodigy all being received well only for Metallica to be booked as a headliner creating almost equal controversy. Eavis received similar criticism for booking the metal band as headliners last year despite the fact that they are one of the biggest and most significant bands of all time and, with no surprises, they put on a worthy headline performance.

This second problem does not apply only to Glastonbury as other festivals suffer from some of their attendees believing it to be exclusive to one genre. When Eminem headlined Reading and Leeds in 2013, a similar backlash occurred. Nevertheless, Eminem put on a fantastic performance despite allegations that he was miming the whole set. What was interesting about people's criticisms of the booking was that Eminem had already headlined the festival in 2001 and was received tremendously. Further back in 1992 when Nirvana famously headlined, Public Enemy were the headliners on a different day. Combined with the fact that Reading and Leeds now have the Dance Stage and Radio 1Xtra Stage both of which feature rap and dance music, shows that Reading and Leeds is more vibrant than just a rock exclusive festival.

Yet another example is Download Festival in 2012, which is traditionally viewed as a rock and metal festival, when Chase and Status were booked as sub-headliners. People were upset with the booking on the basis that they are a drum and bass band and many felt that the heavy electronic element of the band meant that they did not deserve a place in the line-up. Despite their electronic sound, Chase and Status still produce heavy music and could hold their own with the more expected bands in terms of creating movement from a crowd. In fact they are one of two bands I have seen live where the crowd surged so much that the barriers at the front actually broke and the band had to stop.