The Pop Corporation

Are you one of those people who thinks of festivals as things that belong to rock music still? Well, times have changed. From the ’90s onward, Glastonbury embraced dance music, hip hop and increasingly erred on the side of pop music. Of course, glancing at the line-up for the 2024 show, it’s not like rock music fans were found wanting.

PJ Harvey, Idles, Yard Act, Baxter Dury, The National, Lambrini Girls, Fat White Family, Blondshell, Fontaines DC, Breeders, Otoboke Beaver, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, BC Camplight… and we’re bored of typing them all out now, but you get the picture… there’s still loads of rock and related for people to watch at Glastonbury.

Anyway, organiser, bookers and festival royalty Emily Eavis says she would have liked to have seen more rock on her festival line-up, but that wasn’t possible because “there aren’t a lot of new rock acts to choose from.”

Speaking to a newspaper who are behind a paywall, so there’s no point us even telling you which one it is, she said: “There aren’t a lot of new rock acts to choose from if I’m honest – hopefully that will emerge again – my heyday was 1995 with Pulp, Oasis and Radiohead… and that was great but music changes all the time and right now this is where we’re at.”

There’s been plenty of heritage rock, new indie and all that stuff at the festival in recent years of course, so it’s all a bit of a moot point. However, it is noticeable that so few are in with a look at the headliner slots on the main stage(s), and that’s invariably a twofold issue.

The first is that new rock music just isn’t hitting the heights it did in the past, and as live venues are closing down all over the country and rock bands being more expensive to manage than pop stars, there just aren’t as many breaking through. The other is that festivals are less likely to take a chance on a smaller band and give them a headline slot, because with tickets being so expensive, punters now expect a certain level of star to grace their stage. For example, in ’92 the headliners for Glastonbury were Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, Shakespears Sister, and Youssou N’Dour, who between them weren’t exactly established, gazillion selling acts. It wasn’t until the ’00s tuned in, that we saw behemoth acts topping the bill with any regularity, and the formal existence of the ‘legends’ slot and the like.

Looking at the current crop of rock groups, it isn’t clear who might end up having a legacy, who might find themselves in such rarified air as to command a whole field of festival punters.

Rumour has it that Eminem is willing to headline the festival, which has been a pipe-dream of Eavis, but again, we’re not finding it from rock. Taylor Swift? Rihanna if she returns to music? From grassroots to top-billing, rock music is in a precarious position at the moment, so we’re all going to have to see what happens. Rock is far from dead, but it’s playing catch-up with other genres, that’s for sure.