Emily Eavis of the Glastonbury Festival has hit out at journalists who attacked their decision to have Jay-Z on the festival bill.
Eavis said in an opinion column in The Independent, that she was "surprised when articles started to appear questioning the selection of Jay-Z as one of our headliners, and linking it with supposedly poor ticket sales."She later adds, "The main misconception, however, has been the suggestion that signing Jay-Z was all about trying to capture a different audience for the festival, an attempt to move it away from its more "traditional" supporters. That is just not the case. It is much simpler than that: we respect Jay-Z as an amazing artist and so, obviously, we want to see him at the festival. There is no reason why we should not have the greatest living hip-hop artist on at Glastonbury; in fact, he is exactly the sort of act we should have performing."
Her letter often returned to her main point, which was an attack on critics. Claiming "the critics do not understand the Glastonbury's audience."
When Jay-Z was announced, people were understandably confused, however it didn't stop the festival selling 100,000 tickets on the first day of sale.
Past headliners of the festival have included Kylie Minogue, Paul McCartney and Oasis, the latter of whom's Noel Gallagher told the BBC, "I'm sorry, but Jay-Z? No chance. I'm not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong."
I have never been to Glastonbury, so perhaps I don't understand it, but I would've thought "having 99 problems" one of which "ain't" a "bitch" wouldn't have been the kind of theme that was representative of a Glastonbury crowd, regardless of Jay-Z's undeniably amazing contribution to music and the music industry.
