Ellie Goulding on the Lack of Female Performers at Music Festivals

Ellie Goulding is a tough gal and she’s not afraid to point out something if she feels it’s not right. Just yesterday, she posted a series of tweets that points out the lack of women in music festival line-ups.

In 2015, she already called out Glastonbury in her cover story interview for Cosmopolitan. “I got annoyed when Glastonbury had so many men on the line-up,” she said. The festival took notice and promised to do better that year, and Florence + The Machine headlined. Woohoo! This year, Katy Perry also debuted at the festival.

Went balls deep for @Glastofest yesterday ?

A post shared by KATY PERRY (@katyperry) on Jun 25, 2017 at 6:27am PDT

The Huffington Post found out that in 2016, 78 percent of performers during music festivals were male and only 12 percent were women. It also took Coachella nine years to have a female performer headline the famous festival when they booked Beyoncé, who was later on replaced by Lady Gaga because of doctor’s orders.

Executive vice president of programming for Superfly (the people behind Bonnaroo) Chris Samson said, “We’re very aware of the gender imbalance. We try to book the best festival that we can every year. We want the best artists out there, at every level, male or female.”

Although most festivals are making an effort to feature both male and female artists, there’s still a big discrepancy. It’s good that there’s an open discussion about the issue, but wouldn’t it be better if we see it in action?

[Refinery 29]

Photo courtesy of Ellie Goulding’s Twitter account

Follow Preen on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Viber

Related stories: 
Beyoncé Backs Out from Her Coachella 2017 Performance
Lady Gaga Is Set to Replace Beyonce for Coachella
Guess Which Makeup Item Got Ellie Goulding into Cosmetics
Lady Gaga Dedicated Her Coachella Performance to Her Former Assistant