Ellie Goulding is one of music’s biggest stars and happens to operate in this strange space in pop music, as well as EDM. In these two worlds, she manages to play a lot of festivals, even headlining many of them. But with this experience comes a lot of disappointment in terms of the glass ceiling that women still have to break through in terms of being booked evenly. In an interview with Rolling Stone about a wide range of topics including her new sound, drinking too much, and loving professional boxing, the Delirium singer went on about the problem plaguing the festival circuit.
“Generally I feel like as a woman in music, the one thing that I’ve noticed, which I’ve said before very openly, is that I feel that there aren’t as many women representing festivals. it’s very man-heavy. I mentioned some specific festivals that are very male-band heavy. I play festivals all the time — I’ve headlined probably 50 festivals this year. Are there any other women? No, not really.”
She mentioned a few acts who she’s shared the stage with like Florence + The Machine, Chvrches, and Banks, but those are few and far between on the main stage. Goulding continued about the double standard women face:
“I feel like in the media, it’s disguised as other things. For example, when I’m in a swimsuit and I don’t look good, the media says “flaunts her bikini body.” They’re desperately trying to say something negative, but they can’t because they’d get so much sh*t. So personally as a female musician on the road, I feel like I’ve had a lot of respect, but there are certain things that are still unfair.”
There’s no doubt women face a double standard in most professional arenas, but kudos to Ellie for putting her name on it and using her voice to help bring more diversity to the top of the bill with her. The work has to be done on both sides to fix things, but she’s clearly doing more than her fair share.
(via Rolling Stone)