POINT: Coachella should feature more female headline acts

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival attendees may have noticed a key demographic missing from the Indio main stage during the festival’s premiere weekend — female headliners. Of the three performers featured atop the Coachella lineup, which kicked off its first of two weekend-long performances Friday through Sunday, none were women.

Though the lack of female representation within the festival’s headliners is nothing new, it does highlight a disturbingly pervasive trend throughout both music festivals and, more broadly, throughout the music industry. Given the status Coachella has as the highest-grossing music festival in the industry, it is best-suited to establish the precedent of promoting a more female-friendly lineup.

The male-centric headliners at this year’s festival — including LCD Soundsystem, Guns N’ Roses and Calvin Harris — have prompted many to dub the festival “Brochella,” but those who are familiar with Coachella know that the festival has always had a significant dearth of female performers. In fact, the only female headliner the festival has ever had is Björk, who last took Coachella’s mainstage nine years ago.

This is not simply a Coachella problem. Other major music festival headliners, such as those featured at other festivals including Lollapalooza, Outside Lands and Bonnaroo, have also been known to fail at highlighting the women-driven talent in the music industry today. The Lollapalooza 2016 lineup boasts zero female headliners, down from the one female headliner (Florence and the Machine) featured at last year’s festival. Similarly, both Outside Lands and Bonnaroo neglected to include any female headliners in their 2015 and 2016 lineups. What the continued failure to showcase female talent in music festivals highlights, however, is the broader issues faced by female talent in what has long been a male-dominated industry.

This is not to say, of course, that festivals such as Coachella don’t have female performers. In fact, this year’s Coachella lineup boasts more female artists than the festival has in years past — just not as headliners. Festival organizers have failed to slot deserving women artists in their topmost spots because of their intent to bring in artists who fit the traditional Coachella aesthetic: edgy, indie rock artists with the capacity to draw in large crowds. But if the fact that only 47 of the 162 acts featured in Coachella’s 2016 lineup are female — up from 26 last year and 28 the year before — is any indication, this aesthetic has been largely male.

But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Coachella is changing, and so too should the demographics of its headliners. As the festival continues to broaden its genre-focus beyond its indie rock origins — embracing everything from classic rock to electronic dance music — it should look to expand the diversity of its performers, and this includes highlighting the abundance of successful women in music. Beyoncé, Rihanna and current Coachella performer Ellie Goulding are all examples of women dominating the charts in a historically male-dominated industry. Moreover, they are exactly the kind of performers that can bring in the big audiences that festival-organizers are going for.

Though this gender disparity in the music festival scene certainly won’t be fixed overnight, there is a solution that promises to expedite the process — simply put more women at the top of the lineup. With so many top female artists having top spots of the lineup for multiple years in a row (Ellie Goulding has held the same second-tier spot since 2014), there’s no reason why festivals like Coachella can’t feature a female headliner.

There’s always next year.

Yasmeen Serhan is a senior majoring in international relations. “Point/Counterpoint” runs  Tuesdays.