Beyoncé will be the first female headliner at the Coachella music festival in 10 years, Vanity Fair reports. The last, and only, woman to headline the three-day event was Björk in 2007.
A previous report by The Los Angeles Times called the festival “Brochella,” and criticized the fest for its lack of female headliners. “Last year,” Vanity Fair writes, “fewer than a quarter of the fest’s overall 167 acts were female, which, though dismal, was a 16 percent improvement from 2015.”
“People assume that it’s a complete accident or a bunch of fat cats sitting around a table with cigars thinking how can we oppress the women,” said Andi Zeisler, a former music columnist and author of “We Were Feminists Once.” “It’s not. It’s a cumulative problem, decades and decades of stereotypes and ambient bias against women in music.”
Considering that a 2015 Nielsen report found that women slightly outnumber men at music festivals, it would behoove fests like Coachella, Lalapalooza, and Bonnaroo to include more female artists.
Beyoncé was nominated for nine Grammy awards this year, including one for Album of the Year for her album “Lemonade.” She’ll headline day two of the festival, with Radiohead taking day one and Kendrick Lamar day three.
