2025 Headliners

[Looother]

I didn't realise until I was informed by my 15-year-old this week that Billy Joel is seriously popular with his age group. In particular loads of his friends know all the words to Vienna, which is apparently a thing.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/01/billy-joel-vienna-tiktok

Edited August 16 by Looother

[incident]

8 minutes ago, Looother said:

I didn't realise until I was informed by my 15-year-old this week that Billy Joel is seriously popular with his age group. In particular loads of his friends know all the words to Vienna, which is apparently a thing.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/01/billy-joel-vienna-tiktok

 

Well, that makes things simpler then. It's the old, out of touch people who don't want him. Sorted.

[CaledonianGonzo]

He's the 2025 Keane

[clarkete]

Has he ever mentioned it or given any hint he'd be interested? 

[incident]

1 minute ago, clarkete said:

Has he ever mentioned it or given any hint he'd be interested? 

 

None whatsoever.

 

Any conversation is in the context of "he'd be good" rather than anything more.

[gigpusher]

2 hours ago, giantkatestacks said:

Isn't the point about diversity of artists is that Emily has the doubly difficult job of filling a field plus building a future audience, if she has to choose between one or the other I imagine she will go with building a future audience - we can see this with some of the Pyramid acts and the new stages in Shangi-la and I'm really pleased to see it. 

This is the key point diverse booking bring a diverse audience and continuing to encourage young people to come to the festival ensures the future of the festival because old people have a nasty habit of dying and that makes your pool of customers smaller.

[gfa]

2 hours ago, Looother said:

I didn't realise until I was informed by my 15-year-old this week that Billy Joel is seriously popular with his age group. In particular loads of his friends know all the words to Vienna, which is apparently a thing.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/01/billy-joel-vienna-tiktok

I'm 23 and have never heard a single person my age talk about Billy Joel or seen a tiktok about him

 

What is this weird billy joel bubble?!

[crumbler]

Funny to give it the "glasto needs to be progressive!" spiel when you were wanting to see Eminem headline less than a month ago 😄

[SwallowOrSleepOnTheWetSpot]

4 hours ago, stuie said:

 

I was fully expecting a man to hold up SZA as a reason why the festival shouldn't worry about gender diversity on the top line.  Totally ignoring the problem that the pool of female headliners is too small in a previously male-dominated industry.  

 

What does a male-dominated industry have to do with that? They can push and promote all sorts of female acts as much as they want, but if attendees/music fans aren't biting then tough sh*t.

 

 

[Superscally]

15 hours ago, stuie said:

‘We’ would be the people Emily felt the need to address when she apologised for 2022’s unbalanced top line. When they tried to pretend Lizzo was a joint headliner to balance it out.

 

Luckily the festival understand why diversity of the lineup is important, even if you don’t. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah I knew this would hook a big one... 😉

Diversity is important, but it isn't the MOST important thing.

[Crazyfool01]

8 minutes ago, SwallowOrSleepOnTheWetSpot said:

 

What does a male-dominated industry have to do with that? They can push and promote all sorts of female acts as much as they want, but if attendees/music fans aren't biting then tough sh*t.

 

 

Aren’t you looking at 1 act here and calling the whole thing a failure ? I went to many female acts over the course of the festival … several of whom were much discussed on the overcrowding threads . The female lineup this year was incredible I’m not sure where the whinging is coming from ? One act does not make a festival . Maybe SZA was a miss but that stage has had several other misses over the years which have also been discussed on here many times . 

[SwallowOrSleepOnTheWetSpot]

Just now, Crazyfool01 said:

Aren’t you looking at 1 act here and calling the whole thing a failure ? I went to many female acts over the course of the festival … several of whom were much discussed on the overcrowding threads . The female lineup this year was incredible I’m not sure where the whinging is coming from ? One act does not make a festival . Maybe SZA was a miss but that stage has had several other misses over the years which have also been discussed on here many times . 

 

I didn't say anything here about SZA, not did I attend her set. FWIW, I did think that her headliner status made sense on paper, given how big she is elsewhere.

 

And this whole discussion here isn't about female acts in general (of which there were indeed plenty of good bookings), but specifically about Pyramid Stage headliners and insisting that the DEI stuff (for lack of a better term) must apply to them as well.

 

 

[balti-pie]

Courtesy of this thread, i bunged on some Billy Joel last night while i was doing a whole load of housework, and he's great. Would absolutely watch him, and i'm very much lesser seen at the pyramid.

 

In fact its made me check the local karaoke song choices to see if they had a few of his, and they have a stack. I'd like a bash of River of dreams or An innocent man i think, i'd nail the living sh*t out of those two (and i will, if you're anywhere near either the Lucky Voice karaoke place in brighton, or the pyramid field when Billy smashes it) 

[CaledonianGonzo]

I don't think Emily's made any commitments to any sort of specific criteria. She's said it'll be nice and will hopefully happen, but she's not going to turn down a reformed Led Zeppelin and book Moonchild Sanelly to headline instead just to tick some boxes.

[nikkic]

The main commitment should be a 50/50 split throughout the festival line up. 

If more women are given slots lower down the festival, there will be more options for headliners with every passing year. 

[wro_lap]

3 hours ago, Looother said:

I didn't realise until I was informed by my 15-year-old this week that Billy Joel is seriously popular with his age group. In particular loads of his friends know all the words to Vienna, which is apparently a thing.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/01/billy-joel-vienna-tiktok

I did think there were a disproportionate amount of teenagers/youngsters at his Cardiff gig. That's pretty cool though

[wro_lap]

36 minutes ago, nikkic said:

The main commitment should be a 50/50 split throughout the festival line up. 

If more women are given slots lower down the festival, there will be more options for headliners with every passing year. 

This is bang on. Thinking about female-predominant acts who've played in the last few festivals (ie since Emily started talking publicly about gender splits) who could feasibly headline the Pyramid/Other in future, you're looking at Olivia Rodrigo, Raye, Little Simz, Last Dinner Party, Wet Leg, Lizzo (although probably not anymore), Becky Hill, Wolf Alice (at a push), Phoebe Bridgers, Charli XCX, Jorja Smith, Rosalia, Mitski and so on

Then you look at acts like Confidence Man, Self Esteem, Beabadoobee, Sigrid etc who may never headline a big stage at Glastonbury, but could absolutely do a job headlining smaller festivals

We've already seen Billie Eilish, who was initially booked for Woodsies in 2019 then bumped up, headline

 

Point being - Emily's had a year where she could say she had 2 female headliners now. She's not going to force that every year as there's a crop of huge female artists coming through now anyway. Now it's the turn of smaller festivals to take a punt on female headliners/gender balanced lineups

[gfa]

23 minutes ago, wro_lap said:

This is bang on. Thinking about female-predominant acts who've played in the last few festivals (ie since Emily started talking publicly about gender splits) who could feasibly headline the Pyramid/Other in future, you're looking at Olivia Rodrigo, Raye, Little Simz, Last Dinner Party, Wet Leg, Lizzo (although probably not anymore), Becky Hill, Wolf Alice (at a push), Phoebe Bridgers, Charli XCX, Jorja Smith, Rosalia, Mitski and so on

Then you look at acts like Confidence Man, Self Esteem, Beabadoobee, Sigrid etc who may never headline a big stage at Glastonbury, but could absolutely do a job headlining smaller festivals

We've already seen Billie Eilish, who was initially booked for Woodsies in 2019 then bumped up, headline

 

Point being - Emily's had a year where she could say she had 2 female headliners now. She's not going to force that every year as there's a crop of huge female artists coming through now anyway. Now it's the turn of smaller festivals to take a punt on female headliners/gender balanced lineups

The difficulty for smaller festivals (to an extent, obviously some put 0 effort into doing it) is that Glastonbury and R&L are very varied in lineups.

 

The indie festivals your superstruct ones have very little choice for female headliners. Its the same with dance festivals - nobody wants Wet Leg and Peggy Gou headlining every medium sized festival in the UK (I know there's a few more, but the balance is way way off vs say pop).

 

There's a long way to go yet basically - at least for smaller fests that have to stick with limited genres to please their fanbases

[wro_lap]

1 minute ago, gfa said:

The difficulty for smaller festivals (to an extent, obviously some put 0 effort into doing it) is that Glastonbury and R&L are very varied in lineups.

 

The indie festivals your superstruct ones have very little choice for female headliners. Its the same with dance festivals - nobody wants Wet Leg and Peggy Gou headlining every medium sized festival in the UK (I know there's a few more, but the balance is way way off vs say pop).

 

There's a long way to go yet basically - at least for smaller fests that have to stick with limited genres to please their fanbases

It's a fair point. They have to sell tickets to what can be a narrow minded fanbase at times. Naturally Truck got criticised for booking Wet Leg as a headliner, for instance. Hopefully a few more names come along/these festivals take a risk on a Becky Hill type name outside of their usual genre

[MEGABOWL]

6 hours ago, clarkete said:

 

As before, I'm an old git, so my knowledge is finite, however I'm not convinced picking one act that was likely to be weaker for a number of reasons proves your point?   (and tbh the guardian aspect is a bit feeble imo given they've been hugely supportive of the fest for decades) 

 

As with most years, the line up was full of acts that were diverse and went down fabulously. 

The Guardian is generally supportive of the festival but they were whining arseholes over the headliner bookings in 2023. 

[MEGABOWL]

3 hours ago, gigpusher said:

This is the key point diverse booking bring a diverse audience and continuing to encourage young people to come to the festival ensures the future of the festival because old people have a nasty habit of dying and that makes your pool of customers smaller.

Absolutely. And speaking as a 47-year-old bloke, rightly so. 

[clarkete]

35 minutes ago, MEGABOWL said:

The Guardian is generally supportive of the festival but they were whining arseholes over the headliner bookings in 2023. 

 

Obviously not everyone would agree with your perspective (including myself, but I very much enjoyed Reg) , but if you think the guardian were an outlier you're mistaken

 

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/glastonbury-2023-line-up

 

 

https://www.newstatesman.com/thestaggers/2023/03/glastonbury-line-male-pale-stale-do-better

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/glastonbury-2023-headliners-women-lizzo-b2293571.html

 

https://www.joe.co.uk/entertainment/glastonbury-2023-headliners-revealed-as-controversy-grows-over-lineup-380250

 

 

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/03/08/the-glastonbury-problem-why-european-festivals-arent-struggling-with-female-headliners

 

 

https://www.irishmirror.ie/whats-on/whats-on-news/glastonbury-2023-headliners-critcised-29364462

 

https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/03/03/glastonbury-festival-2023-headliners-guns-n-roses-backlash/

 

https://www.goodto.com/entertainment/glastonbury-line-up-2023

Edited August 16 by clarkete

[CaledonianGonzo]

I think there's a decent argument that by trying to get ahead of a potential backlash they catalysed a far bigger one.

[Joey Peeps]

5 hours ago, Looother said:

I didn't realise until I was informed by my 15-year-old this week that Billy Joel is seriously popular with his age group. In particular loads of his friends know all the words to Vienna, which is apparently a thing.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/01/billy-joel-vienna-tiktok

 

Yeah my daughter is 16 and loves him, due to the Vienna Tik Tok trend.

 

We live in interesting times. 

[Skip997]

6 hours ago, Looother said:

I didn't realise until I was informed by my 15-year-old this week that Billy Joel is seriously popular with his age group. In particular loads of his friends know all the words to Vienna, which is apparently a thing.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jul/01/billy-joel-vienna-tiktok

Gets worse by the day.

 

What’s up with people?

 

 

Edited August 16 by Skip997