I know you’re getting tired of hearing about it – because his appearance at the festival has been omnipresent in the news since the ball dropped into 2015 – but this year’s Glastonbury Festival will be remembered as the year Kanye West headlined. Don’t like it? That’s okay. The beauty of the world is that people enjoy different things.
For some people the appearance of “The Greatest Living Rockstar in the World” was too much to stomach. At the festival itself, there were some boos between songs, and people held up flags inscribed with the words “Fuck Kanye” and “Gay Fish”. One puerile and misogynistic individual even decided to print a still image from Kim Kardashian’s sex tape onto a huge flag, much to the delight of Lad Bible.
The flags were juvenile at best, and horrendous at worst. And so it has transpired, via her Instagram, that on the Friday of the festival, Lily Allen – known as Sheezus, and a seasoned Glastonbury-goer – sought out some justice by scouting a “Fuck Kanye” flag near her tent, ripping it down, and setting it alight; burning bits off until it simply read “Kanye”.
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She wrote in the caption that she was trying to restore some “Peezus”. So, big up Lily Allen and her flaming justice, because the more the Kanye backlash escalated, the harder it became to imagine it happening to any other musician. She went on: “Don’t go for dinner at someone’s house and tell them their food sucks.” Which is exactly the point. There would have been plenty of people at Glastonbury who didn’t like many of the bigger acts, but rarely do you see flags of outrage and protest at their performances. People just go somewhere else. When Deadmau5 left his decks, while headlining the Other Stage on Saturday night, to drink beer while an obvious backing track played, nobody was booing or seething with anger.
It’s clear that some of the negativity thrown toward Kanye goes a lot further than a simple dislike for his music. It feels like a culmination of much more personal things: his status, his relationship and family, the culture of hip-hop. The idea that “Kanye’s music sucks” or “Kanye is an asshole” doesn’t seem to justify the level of malevolence thrown at him.
There’s just no place for that mindset anymore. More than anything, festivals are a place of celebration, love, and joy, rather than negativity. Also, shout out Lily Allen for getting “All Day” to sync so well on top of her Instagram video. She’s got the multi-tasking video-editing app game on lock.
You can find Ryan Bassil on Twitter: @RyanBassil
