The Swedish pop star Zara Larsson has had enough, and is demanding that UK music festivals address the gender balance of their line-ups now.
It comes after a BBC study found only 13 per cent of 2022 festival headliners are a female solo act or an all-female band. “They need to book more women,” she says. “It’s not like women aren’t making music.”
“I remember saying this years ago. I was doing this festival in Sweden and it was me and this one other girl,” she said, of her own experience. “I was like, how is this possible?”
But the Symphony singer believes the festival circuit is only the tip of an industry-wide gender imbalance. “It’s behind the scenes as well. I’ve been in many sessions with only men, when I was really young, speaking about weird topics. People are like ‘my dick is this big’, ‘I’ve f*cked this many girls’,” she says. “I don’t want to be in a room with just men anymore. I’m over it.”
Last night she attended the red carpet debut of ABBA’s new Voyage concert, which sees the fellow Swedes virtualised into ‘Abba-tars’ to perform their hits. The foursome made their first outing together in over five years to watch, and hugged Larsson in front of the cameras.
To “put her money where her mouth is”, Larsson is building up an all-female team to surround her and making a change to her working life. However she does faces one dilemma. “I really want an all-girl band, but I’ve been with my band seven years now — I just don’t have the heart to fire them!”
They live to play another day.
