Reading and Leeds festival organisers have received massive online backlash after revealing their 2021 line up, the headliners of which are all male. Fans have expressed particularly deep disappointment as this is not the first time the dual-running festivals have failed to book top female artists.
Topping the 2021 bill are Stormzy, Catfish and the Bottlemen, Post Malone, Disclosure, Liam Gallagher, and Queens of the Stone Age. The majority of the other acts are also men, including Lewis Capaldi, Two Door Cinema Club, AJ Tracey, and DaBaby. Female acts include Doja Cat, Madison Beer, and Beabadoobee, but online commenters say that these should have been headliners, and that far more women musicians could have been booked. One widely-shared tweet lists a range of popular female artists, such as Lizzo and Dua Lipa, who many feel deserved headliner spots.
list of females that could’ve headlined reading and leeds:
dua lipa
billie eilish
florence and the machine
lily allen
megan thee stallion
lana del rey
charli xcx
clairo
lorde
lizzo
pale waves— moll (@mollsspangled) August 31, 2020
Since each of next year’s festivals will boast two main stages instead of one, critics argue that their organisers have missed an opportunity to make the events more inclusive and diverse. While some fans simply expressed their dismay, others were angered by the news; one Twitter user calling the line up a ‘display of misogyny’.
As mentioned, Reading and Leeds have been criticised in the past for their male-heavy line ups. In 2015, a photoshopped image of the festival’s poster, which erased all the male acts and left in only the female, went viral. The edited poster highlighted the fact that, among nearly 100 performers, only nine were female, and none of them were headliners. Josh Dalton, who created the image, said: ‘I have a 16-year-old sister who is at the age I was when I started attending festivals. The idea that she could attend the event and quite feasibly not see a single female performer doesn’t quite sit right with me’.
#RANDL21 is going to be BIGGER and BETTER than ever Here are your SIX HEADLINERS across TWO main stages NO MAIN STAGE CLASHES General on sale Thursday 3rd September at 9:00am Reading : https://t.co/2JiEh36rfi Leeds: https://t.co/iG8BIzlOxD pic.twitter.com/n5yeQVvPY8 — Reading & Leeds Fest (@OfficialRandL) August 31, 2020
The festivals also have a history of not putting female-fronted bands on their main stages; in 2014, Paramore became the only such band to headline Reading in over 20 years. More recently, analysis of the 2019 Reading and Leeds line up showed that only 12% of the acts were female performers or female-fronted groups.
In 2018, organisers of 45 UK festivals joined an initiative to get a 50/50 gender split in their line ups by 2020, but Reading and Leeds boss Melvin Benn decided not to participate in the scheme. He remarked: ‘Is that the right way to go about it – to say it’s got to be 50/50? I don’t know that it is’. He instead launched his own campaign called ReBalance, which aims to give 36 female artists one week of studio recording time over the next three years. Benn said this would ‘create a bigger pool of female acts’, thus giving festivals ‘greater choice’ when booking performers.
Despite the recent controversy, Reading and Leeds have promised to make their 2021 festivals ‘the most epic’ yet, with over 200,000 fans expected to be attending. Organisers have also been working on a rigorous coronavirus testing regime, which they say will be ready by next year. Amid the current uncertainty in the live music industry, Melvin Benn has stated that he is ‘very confident’ that the 2021 festival season will go ahead as planned.
