Legendary U.K. festival Glastonbury has been garnering headlines for its controversial move to tab Kanye West as the Saturday headliner on the Pyramid Stage for this year's festival. In response, attendees and concerned fans have started a petition that has swelled to more than 100,000 signees urging the festival to replace Kanye. In response to this petition, Glasto organizer Emily Eavis has written an op-ed in The Guardian, defending the festival's decision to choose Kanye West and why those fans are wrong. She says headlining acts "never have been limited to rock, and they never will be."
Eavis touts the history of Glasto and its roots in charity before noting the petition. This is not the first time something like this has happened, and it has not just been exclusively reserved for hip-hop acts. As she notes, even The Smiths were scrutinized in 1984 because people wanted Hawkwind again.
"To say that our headliners should be 'rock' is, I think, a bit silly. Those acts never have been limited to rock, and they never will be. Stevie Wonder, The Prodigy, Curtis Mayfield, The Chemical Brothers, Jay Z, Gorillaz, Beyoncé and plenty of others prove that," responded Eavis.
The biggest knock against Kanye West has not been that he is not a talented individual, though some have made that claim. The vast majority of the signees have gone after his character based on public statements and actions, most recently his Grammy comments leveled at Beck.
"We book our acts by choosing the best and most challenging musicians on the planet -- not by applying some kind of arbitrary morality test," says Eavis.
According to Eavis, there were only four more requests for ticket refunds on the day it announced Kanye's inclusion in the lineup, which means attendees really are not that mad. It is just people behind their keyboards who do not want to see him on the stage.
She caps off her op-ed with a Lou Reed quote about Kanye West: "The guy really, really, really is talented. He's really trying to raise the bar. No one's near doing what he's doing, it's not even on the same planet."
