Emily Eavis has been discussing the decision to make grime artist Stormzy one of the headliners for the 2019 Glastonbury Festival.

Stormzy, whose career has skyrocketed since he was named as an artist to look out for in the BBC’s influential Sound of 2015 list, has since gone on to become the first grime album to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart.

The decision to name him as a Pyramid Stage headliner for Glastonbury was always going to incite debate, but for Emily Eavis she has known for a long time that Stormzy was the right man for the job. In a new interview with Matt Wilkinson for Beats 1, Eavis explained how Stormzy’s electrifying performance on The Other Stage in 2017 set the standard.

“I came up with [the idea] because I watched him on The Other Stage in 2017 and I was just like, ‘he could headline’…sometimes, you just see that performance what makes you think ‘he is ready to go’, sometimes it happens [like that]. I just felt like this is the time for Stormzy to headline,” Eavis said.



Talking about Stormzy’s show in 2017 in more detail, Eavis described it as “one of the greatest performances I have ever seen on The Other Stage”.

She continued: “It took off and sometimes that happens and at that point, you have to go… ‘he needs to go on the Pyramid Stage’, he can do this. I totally believe he can do it.

“I think we at Glastonbury need to create headliners and I think at this point, Stormzy is the perfect person to come and do that. We can’t always go over the same ground. It feels really exciting and like that’s what we should be doing.”



