LAST YEAR, WE had a little look at how Ireland’s biggest music festivals would look if every act that did not have a core female member was wiped off of the lineups.
It was pretty depressing.
Last year, 33% of the Electric Picnic lineup was made up of acts that featured at least one female member. 25% of the artists on the Longitude lineup were women. Forbidden Fruit’s lineup was made of 84% men. Only 16% of Forbidden Fruit’s acts featured a non-male band member.
So… Has there been any improvement since last year?
Let’s begin with Forbidden Fruit. Some women have managed to sneak into this year’s lineup via Trinity Orchestra and Sing Along Social.
The biggest female group at this year’s Forbidden Fruit is Warpaint, and after that, there’s Superorganism who have several female band members.
The artists left on the lineup once the all-male acts have been removed are:
Warpaint, Superorganism, Ibibo Sound Machine, Or:la, Sing Along Social, Loah, AE Mak, Trinity Orchestra, Saoirse and Fehdah.
In total, only 20% of the Forbidden Fruit lineup are women.
Just 10 of 49 acts have a core female member. That’s an increase of 4% on last year’s lineup.
This is what the complete lineup looks like:
Next up, we have Longitude.
Longitude have announced considerably fewer acts than Forbidden Fruit have, but many of the acts for Longitude are very big names. Cardi B could definitely be up there alongside Solange as a headliner, but nope.
With all of the men removed from the lineup of Longitude, the lineup is reduced from 28 acts to just 8. These 8 acts are:
Solange, Cardi B, The Internet, Ibeyi, Kali Uchis, Princess Nokia, Mabel and Naaz.
Female acts make up 28% of the Longitude lineup this year.
While still shockingly low, it’s a small improvement of 3% since last year. Here’s what the entire lineup looks like:
Finally, we’ve got Electric Picnic.
There’s no female headline acts, but there’s a decent number of female solo acts and groups with core female members in the lineup.
Altogether, there are 17 women on a lineup of 41.
The 17 acts with non-male members are:
Dua Lipa, St. Vincent, Chvrches, Jungle, Wolf Alice, Nina Kraviz, Garbage, Jorja Smithm Sigrid, Jessie Ware, Stefflon Don, Peggy Gou, Sevdaliza, Lucy Dacus, La Femme, Raye and Nilufer Yanya.
Which means that 41% of the Electric Picnic lineup this year are female acts.
That’s a considerable improvement from last year’s 33%, but we can still do better.
Between all three festivals, Solange is the only headline act.
