Glastonbury’s headliners have now all been announced and the top of the ticket acts are all white men.
The Arctic Monkeys and Guns N’ Roses were announced on Friday as the final two headliners joining Elton John on the Pyramid Stage over the June weekend.
John was already confirmed as one of the headlining acts in December: it will be his last ever UK show, as the musician is currently on his pre-retirement Farewell Tour.
In an interview with The Guardian today, Glastonbury’s organiser Emily Eavis responded to the line-up, saying that she is “entirely focused on balancing our bill. It’s not just about gender, it’s about every aspect of diversity,” but that the issue is that there’s a “pipeline” problem when it comes to finding top female headliners.
But star act Lana Del Rey also seemed to take issue with the announcement as headliners of the Other Stage, the second biggest stage, were not specifically announced.
Commenting under Glastonbury Festival’s line-up Instagram post, Lana Del Rey said: “Thanks for announcing that I was headlining the other stage. Thumbs up.” Her comment now seems to have been deleted.
Glastonbury released a poster introducing 55 of 2023’s acts, but did not detail which stage any of the acts would be playing on. Lana Del Rey is on the seventh row of the poster. Del Rey was then reported by several outlets as commenting elsewhere: “Well, I’m actually headlining the 2nd stage... But since there was no consideration for announcing that we’ll see.”
Defending the line-up, Eavis said that there should be two female headliners next year, and said that a female act had been scheduled to play in the Saturday Guns N’ Roses slot, but then “changed her touring plans”.
While Eavis would not say who this was, some fans were anticipating that Taylor Swift, who was set to perform at Glastonbury in 2020, might be one of the musicians headlining the Somerset festival this year. Swift will in fact spend the summer performing her ERAS tour in America.
Here is the first Glastonbury Festival 2023 line-up poster, which includes our final two Pyramid Stage headliners: @ArcticMonkeys (Friday) and @gunsnroses (Saturday).
— Glastonbury Festival (@glastonbury) March 3, 2023
Many more acts and attractions still to be announced. pic.twitter.com/dMnppdSf1U
55 Glastonbury 2023 acts have now been revealed, and they include Lizzo, Alt-J, Blondie, Lana Del Ray, Leftfield, Carly Rae Jepsen, Alison Goldfrapp, Christine and the Queens, Lil Nas X, Wizkid, Thundercat, Shygirl, Kelis and Fever Ray. 53 per cent of the 55 announced acts are male, and 43 per cent of the announced acts are non-white (or are mixed groups).
“We’re trying our best,” said Eavis about creating a balanced line-up, but said that the music industry as a whole needed to continue to progress.: “The pipeline needs to be developed. This starts way back with the record companies, radio. I can shout as loud as I like but we need to get everyone on board.”
Eavis said that Lizzo “could totally headline... Many of the artists could. But the headline slot had already been promised to someone else.”
Guns N’ Roses, she added, will “be brilliant and provide something totally different to the rest of the headliners.”
Eavis also said that if everything goes ahead as planned there’ll be two female headliners next year. One act has already been confirmed while the other is likely to confirm soon. Some fans have suggested that Madonna, who has never played at the UK festival and whose Celebration Tour ends in January 2024, could be one of these top female acts.
Eavis also said that confirming any of the top acts was a difficult feat: “People assume that because we’re the ‘Christmas of music’ we can breezily book whoever – but to get Elton doesn’t happen easily, so that’s a really big moment for us,” she said.
In 2018 Eavis told MusicWeek: “Every booking Glastonbury make is conscious; we’re trying to address the imbalance.
“I mean, there are a lot of old guys in the music industry; unfortunately it’s not been a topic which people have been conscious of,” she said. “It’s not necessarily purposeful, it’s just that it hasn’t ever been top of the agenda like it is now. I keep saying to some of our older bookers who have been doing it for 30 years, ‘Come on guys, you need to engage with this’.”
