NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM
Glastonbury announced the first 95 names for its 2020 festival this evening (March 12), and 52% of the lineup is made up of female artists.
Taylor Swift is set to headline the festival alongside Kendrick Lamar and Paul McCartney, and will be joined by Diana Ross, Lana Del Rey, FKA twigs, Haim and many more at Worthy Farm in June.
Of the names announced for the festival, as the BBC points out, 52% are female artists or feature female-identifying members.
It comes after festival boss Emily Eavis said back in November that the Glastonbury 2020 lineup will be “as close to” a 50/50 gender split as possible. “I think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel,” she said back in 2018 on the strive for gender equality at the festival and in the wider music industry.
Talking to NME at last month’s NME Awards 2020 in London, Eavis said she was “really really passionate” about achieving a balance across the lineup.
“It’s just something that I noticed, actually,” she said at the Brixton Academy ceremony. “We recently put a book together. Just looking back through all the lineups, you realise it’s been so male-dominated over the years. I think it’s time to address it.
“Unless you consciously do that and change the minds of the bookers, then it will just roll out in the same way that it has done for years.”
Eavis added: “I feel like people feel like they immediately need to go for 50/50, when in fact any little effort is good. The pressure is there and there’s no hiding from it. We can do better, everyone can do better, you’ve just got to take those steps. It’s really easy to keep churning out those male artists, because there’s just so many of them.”
Fans have been reacting to the unveiling of the Glastonbury 2020 lineup on Twitter, while Eavis addressed the worries of fans over whether the festival will take place amidst the outbreak of coronavirus.
Eavis said: “As things stand we are still working hard to deliver our 50th anniversary Festival in June and we are very proud of the bill that we have put together over the last year or so.
“No one has a crystal ball to see exactly where we will all be 15 weeks from now, but we are keeping our fingers firmly crossed that it will be here at Worthy Farm for the greatest show on Earth!”
The post Glastonbury’s 2020 current lineup features 52% female acts appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.
