Glastonbury Festival's Emily Eavis has told BBC podcast Sidetracked With Annie & Nick that she and her team are not as advanced as normal with their bookings for next year's edition, but that that might have helped them to get a big American artist on the line-up.
Confirming that the festival's 2024 line-up is "still a little up in the air" at the moment, she added: "I thought it was kind of taking shape and then last week I just got a call and... This is what happens if you wait a little longer, because quite often we’ll be booked up from July".
"This year we’re holding out for a little bit longer", she went on, "and last week I got a call from a really big American artist saying this person’s around next year and I was like 'oh my God, this is incredible, thank God we held the slot'".
While Eavis doesn't offer the podcast any real indications on who is likely to headline in 2024, she does discuss the other aspect of the Glastonbury line-up that gets lots of attention, that being gender diversity. She and the festival got lots of criticism for the fact that all of the headliners this year, and the high profile 'legends slot' booking, were all men.
She acknowledged that issue, noting that they did provisionally book a female headliner for 2023, but that they had to pull out and were then replaced by Guns N Roses. "I’m always trying to make it the most balanced, diverse bill", she then insisted.
"It is difficult with female artists because there aren’t enough headliners", she went on. “But we’re also creating them. We’re putting the bands and female artists on smaller stages and bringing them through all the time, so I feel like the pool is going to be bigger soon".
It is true that the pool of headliner level artists available in any one year is often less diverse, though those campaigning for more gender diversity across all festival line-ups argue that that doesn't mean there are no options.
Which means Eavis's remarks in that domain are unlikely to satisfy her critics. Though, looking ahead, she mused that 2024's festival might have two female headliners and "certainly I can say that the legend is female".
