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28.06.13 Music Week 17
GENRE BREAKDOWN OF THE MAIN STAGE FESTIVAL LINE-UPS HARD ROCK CALLING
GLASTONBURY ISLE OF WIGHT
NOTHING BUT A NUMBER: HOW OLD ARE FESTIVAL HEADLINERS?
Festival organisers are once again turning to old favourites to headline, but overall, newer acts dominate this summer’s main stage bills. Nowhere is the importance of the old guard to
the big festivals more apparent than at Glastonbury this weekend with The Rolling Stones marking their own half century as a band by performing at the event on Saturday night for the very first time. Hard Rock Calling, also taking place over the
ROCK 59.1%
URBAN 18.2% WORLD 13.6% COUNTRY 4.5% FOLK 4.5%
READING/LEEDS
ROCK 92.3% FOLK 7.7%
ROCK 79.2% POP 12.5%
BLUES 4.2% URBAN 4.2%
T IN THE PARK V FESTIVAL
weekend, will have its own rock legend in the shape of Bruce Springsteen closing proceedings at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford on Sunday night, while Bestival’s 2013 headliners include Elton John, Latitude’s Kraftwerk, Reading/Leeds Green Day and two weekends ago Isle of Wight welcomed Bon Jovi and The Stone Roses as Download hosted heavy metal veterans Iron Maiden.
ROCK 88.9% URBAN 3.7% DANCE 7.4%
ROCK 42.9%
URBAN 28.6% POP 23.8% DANCE 4.8%
The above shows genre breakdown of acts appearing on the main stage at each festival this year source: Music Week research
changed its name from Hyde Park Calling after leaving the royal park for a new home of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London - and comes with a main stage bill of which 12 of the 13 acts are rock. They include headliners Kasabian and Bruce Springsteen plus Alabama Shakes who are also playing the Other Stage at Glastonbury. The one exception are Atlanta country/folk group the Zac Brown Band whose last two albums topped both the Billboard 200 and country charts. Nearly 80% of the 24 acts occupying the main
stage of the 2013 Isle of Wight Festival - which was held between June 14 to 16 - were rock and included headliners Bon Jovi, The Killers and The Stone Roses, although pop was represented by the likes of Emeli Sande and The Script who were joined by blues/country artist Bonnie Raitt and rising UK soul singer Laura Mvula. Reading and Leeds, being held again this year in
its usual Bank Holiday weekend slot of August 23 to 25, continues its heavy rock tradition with the genre behind 24 of its 27 main stage acts. Those breaking the mould include headliner Eminem and dance act Chase & Status. Both T In The Park and V, scheduled for the
two weekends before, are somewhat more diverse musically in their main stage line-ups. Around 40% of the acts appearing on T In The Park’s main stage over the July 12 to 14 weekend at Balado, Kinross-shire will be rock, but there is also room for Rihanna as a headliner plus the likes of US urban acts Kendrick Lamar and Frank Ocean, alongside 2013 X Factor winner James Arthur. V’s August 17
to 18 main stage acts, meanwhile, across its Chelmsford and South Staffordshire sites will be exactly 50% rock but also include Beyonce and UK pop acts Jessie J, Olly Murs and The Saturdays. Barclaycard British Summer Time is Hyde
Park’s newly-launched music event and will begin on Friday, July 5 with headliners Bon Jovi, while the rock theme continues with The Rolling Stones headlining both the next night and following Saturday. However, unlike with the Hyde Park (now Hard Rock) Calling event it replaced, it has a much wider music remit with It’s A Day In The Park on Sunday, July 7, for example, mixing The Beach Boys with The Saturdays and soon-to-split X Factor graduates JLS, plus the following Sunday closing acts Chic, Lionel Richie and Stooshe. London’s other big forthcoming music festival,
Wireless, which takes place from July 12 to 14 at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, will be uniquely free of rock on its main stage with the urban-biased event including headliners Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake. They are part of a US-heavy main-stage bill further featuring the likes of Ke$ha. Some 60% of Wireless’s main stage line-up
comes from the US and 52.4% of Download’s did, in sharp contrast to domestic acts dominating the other leading festivals’ bills. UK artists will make up nearly 60% of Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage this weekend and 63.4% of the Other Stage, while nearly 80% of the main stage Isle of Wight acts were British, 75% will be at V and around 60% at Hard Rock Calling, Reading/Leeds and T In The Park.
ROCK 50.0% POP 43.8% URBAN 6.3%
But, while there continues to be industry concerns about an over-reliance of old faithfuls as headliners at the main festivals, a wider look at the main stage line-ups shows newer talent is getting a decent look-in. Although Glastonbury has once again booked Arctic Monkeys as a headliner, some six years after the then fresh-faced Domino act led the bill, Mumford & Sons are also headlining this year, still a relatively early two albums into their career. And out of the 22 acts in total on the main stage across the entire weekend, only seven of them broke through during the 1990s or earlier. That leaves 15 main- stage acts who are post-millennium successes. The new feel of the line-up is even more evident
on Glastonbury’s second, Other Stage with around 85% of its acts breaking through since 2000. This is far higher than rival festivals’ main stages where typically around 70% of the line-ups are acts who emerged commercially in the 21st Century, although it got up to 81% at Download. While Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage includes The
Stones and Kenny Rogers from the Sixties and Elvis Costello whose first album came out in the Seventies, Isle of Wight’s main-stage bill featured Boomtown Rats, Steve Harley and Ian Hunter from the same decade, and Earth Wind & Fire will be the veterans at both T In The Park and Wireless. In contrast to headliner Springsteen, whose UK
Top 20 breakthrough came with the Born To Run album in 1975, nearly 70% of this weekend’s Hard Rock Calling main-stage bill have emerged in the current decade. They include Kodaline whose debut B-Unique/RCA album In A Perfect World debuted at 3 in the Official UK artist albums chart last weekend. Some 36.4% of Glastonbury’s Pyramid bill have
broken through this decade, including Ben Howard and The Vaccines, as have 45.5% of those on the Other Stage, while 48.1% of Reading/Leeds’ main stage bill have, 45.8% at Isle of Wight, 38.1% at Download, 33.3% at T In The Park and 31.3% at V. Of the festivals surveyed, Wireless is by far the
most heavily-dominated by new acts on its main stage with 70% of the line-up achieving success after 2009, including A$AP Rocky, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Conor Maynard and Rizzle Kicks.
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