FEATURE:
International Women’s Day 2023
IN THIS PHOTO: Lizzo appears on Glastonbury’s bill alongside headliners Elton John, Arctic Monkeys, and Guns N’ Roses, but as a ‘support’ artist rather than a headliner herself
About Damn Time: Worthy Female/Female-Led Headline Artists
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NOT to labour…
IN THIS PHOTO: Billie Eilish is one of the headline acts at this year’s Reading & Leeds Festival
a point I and many have made over the past few days, festivals like Reading & Leeds and Glastonbury have been criticised for a lack of female headliners. Even though Glastonbury have two female headliners booked for 2024 and have Lizzo and Lana Del Rey as ‘support’ for headline acts, it is an all-male lime-up. The issue is more complex than festivals not looking hard enough. Taylor Swift was originally booked, and many ask whether Lizzo could have been a headliner. There is an issue with how female artists are marketed and signed. Labels are signing the same tired male acts and, even when women are signed, they are not being handled and marketed well. Many are going independent. This means that they have to work harder to get exposure and gigs. If festival headliners are usually defined by a certain successful, popularity and experience, I don’t think that needs to be the way. When I posted my disappointment with Glastonbury’s all-male headliners, some said it would be crowbarring a female artist. Do we need to change things? If the rest of the bill is a good split in terms of gender and sound, why does it matter if the headliners are all-male? I argued that it is recognition of women at the highest level, and it shows that festivals do not believe women can command a headline slot and would prove popular. That is not the case.
IMAGE CREDIT: Glastonbury Festival
Many American festivals have no trouble booking women. Roisin O’Connor, writing in The Independent argued that there is a problem with the U.K. music industry. It is troubling to realise that, unless there are major changes, we might not see many women headline festivals in this country:
“A symptom of this, it appears, is that festival bookers are resorting to old, bad habits in a bid to lure music fans back to the events they’ve gone without for the last few years. In 2022, a YouGov survey found that only one in 10 headliners at the UK’s top festivals were women. Of 200 headline acts, just 26 were female, one identified as non-binary, 24 had a mixed line-up, and the rest (149) were either male solo artists or all-male bands.
But, as Eavis points out, the issue begins far earlier than festival line-ups. Record labels seem perfectly content to sign 100 identikit white male singer-songwriters – your Ed Sheeran, Lewis Capaldi, George Ezra and Sam Fender soundalikes – and just about every spoken-word band that stumbles out of The Windmill in Brixton. Of course, this isn’t the case for women. “There can only be one Adele, one Dua Lipa,” seems to be the argument. The UK industry is still blighted by the ludicrous view that, if you have one female pop star, it’s impossible to break another one on the same timeline. Meanwhile, in the US, they make it look effortless, with Lana Del Rey and Lizzo doing just fine alongside Lady Gaga, Olivia Rodrigo, Beyoncé, SZA, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Meghan Trainor…
IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift was due to headline this year’s Glastonbury Festival, but owing to a scheduling/date conflict she was replaced/PHOTO CREDIT: Beth Garrabrant
There’s also a lack of effort to help emerging female artists achieve any kind of longevity. Labels are busy snapping up viral TikTok stars with one song and zero live experience to their name, then scratching their heads over why fans feel no sense of loyalty towards them, even as industry giants like Capaldi share memories of one of his first gigs in Scotland (he’s currently on a worldwide arena tour). Success such as his does not happen overnight. Yet even now, publications put out their lists championing 100-plus artists to watch each year then fail to mention half of them ever again. Radio stations play the same major label artists on a never-ending loop. Last year’s gender and racial disparity report into UK radio found that UK male solo artists occupied the top 100 more than three times as often as female solo artists, and were present in 80 per cent of all top 100 singles. Sheeran alone took up 10 per cent of the top 50 singles last year”.
The truth is that, even for a two-and-a-half-hour set, there are options at least for festivals when it comes to book suitable and popular women. Setting aside their cost, availability or anything else that might be a barrier – and is often used as an excuse -, the artists in the playlist below are all wonderful potential headline acts (and several of them have headlined festivals in the past). Invaluable directories like The F-List provide so many possible names. It is not as simple as festival organisers need to call these women and book them. There are attempts and efforts made but, when you consider the artists who could command a headline set, you wonder why it is men (and white men at that!) who are consistently booked. Quite boring male artists too. Ahead of International Women’s Day on Wednesday (8th), below are songs from incredible women/female-fronted acts who could…
IN THIS PHOTO: Lana Del Rey is booked for Glastonbury this year, but not as a headliner/PHOTO CREDIT: Lia Clay Miller for Billboard
CREATE stunning headline sets.