Public’s Electric Picnic meter running low as it sticks to The Script
The Script's Danny O’Donoghue will be performing at Electric Picnic next weekend. Picture: Dan Linehan
Imagine this situation.
It’s the end of 2022 and to celebrate making it through lockdowns and covid, you decide to purchase a €200 ticket for an event in 2023 – a movie, a theatre show, whatever. You don’t know who’s going to appear at this show or film until less than a week before.
Welcome to the world of thousands of Electric Picnic fans, who were left waiting and waiting to find out the identity of the second headliner on the main stage on Sunday evening; the name of the act had been blurred out on the festival’s posters.
It was still blurred out even as tickets had gone on sale for 2024’s event.
It left fans to play a guessing game as to who the blurred out act could be.
Could it have been, ahem, Blur, even though they had already played Ireland earlier in the summer? Maybe it was Blink-182, who are playing Belfast and Dublin on Monday and Tuesday?
Organisers added to the confusion on Friday morning, revealing on social media that The Script were set to play the festival.
It was only a couple of hours later, when an eagle-eyed fan spotted the updated poster on the official website, that it was finally confirmed that the blurred logo on the poster belonged to them.
The Dublin band put on a brilliant live show, have a back catalogue of hits, and are homegrown.
Their performance in Laois will be their first since the tragic passing of their co-founder and lead guitarist Mark Sheehan back in April.
To show the courage to continue performing is admirable.
But there was anger aimed at Festival Republic for allowing a nationwide game of ‘Guess Who’ to develop, as some fans may have been hoping for a huge international name.
The fiasco is the latest in a catalogue of criticisms aimed at Electric Picnic bosses in recent years — from claims of overcrowding to a failure to promote homegrown talent to the sheer carnage of the campsites.
A local brewery near Stradbally recently hit out at not being able to promote its products to the 80,000 people who attend Electric Picnic each year, saying that the festival’s deal with Heineken is in direct violation of its claims to be “sustainable.”
While the addition of The Script addresses the homegrown talent issue — and Niall Horan is there too, of course — it will also mean that another unwanted Electric Picnic trend continues.
Billie Eilish will take to the stage to close out Friday’s festivities — but she’s is the only female headliner.
Last year, Megan Thee Stallion was the sole female headliner. In the cancelled 2020 lineup, there were no female headliners.
In 2019, Florence + the Machine were the only headliners flying the flag for female representation.
Even as you go down the official poster for this year’s festival, just three of the first 19 are female: Eilish, Mimi Webb, and Wet Leg.
It’s something Melvin Benn, the managing director of Festival Republic, will need to consider ahead of 2024, when, for the first time since its inception and for its 20th birthday, Electric Picnic will take place in the middle of August.
We haven’t been given a reason and we probably won’t be, though many believe it is to avoid a clash with the four Coldplay gigs at Croke Park across Electric Picnic’s ‘usual’ dates.
With all this added to the confusion over the blurred headliner, a week out from the festival, fans might be thinking of pulling the plug on Electric Picnic.
