Oxegen

This article is about the music festival held in Ireland. For the chemical element, see oxygen.

Oxegen
The Oxegen logo, circa 2010s
DatesAugust 2013[1][2]
Location(s)Punchestown Racecourse, County Kildare, Ireland
Years active2004–2011; 2013
WebsiteOxegen.ie (archived)
Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox recurring event with unknown parameter "music_festival_name"
Preview warning: Page using Template:Infobox recurring event with unknown parameter "presented by"

Oxegen /ˈɒksɛdʒɛn/ was a music festival in Ireland, first held from 2004–2011 as a rock and pop festival and again in 2013 with dance and chart acts only. The event was regularly cited as Ireland's biggest music festival,[3][4][5][6] and, by 2009, it was being cited as the greenest festival, being a 100% carbon neutral event in Ireland,[7] although this claim is highly disputed[by whom?] as green-washing[citation needed]. It was previously called Witnness,[8] which ran from 2000 and was sponsored by Guinness. The event was promoted by MCD and was sponsored by Heineken. Oxegen was originally a three-day festival, but from 2008 onwards, it was expanded to four days.

It took place at the Punchestown Racecourse in County Kildare, Ireland and has an average attendance of around 60,000 a day, with around 50,000 of these camping on site for the duration, and the rest travelling to the site each day. It took place on the same weekend as T in the Park in Scotland and shared a very similar lineup each year, but Oxegen was generally regarded as Ireland's version of the Glastonbury Festival, with the 2008 festival sharing three of the same headliners as its English counterpart.[9]

Oxegen attracted significant attention from outside Ireland, with many of those attending travelling from overseas experiencing a "mass exodus" to the festival.[10][11] Members of bands such as The Killers, Snow Patrol and R.E.M. have spoken positively of their experiences at the festival. Celebrities frequently attend, including models Helena Christensen (a regular attendant)[12][13] and television personality Chris Pontius,[14] actor Josh Hartnett,[12] and Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones, who was pursued by "half the journalists in the country" and many of his own relatives for much of the 2008 festival.[13][15] The event has also attracted some negative publicity, particularly following the 2006 festival. This is attributed to such factors as the age of admission (17) and easy access to alcohol.[16]

Oxegen, for two consecutive years, was named as the Best European Festival in a poll which included festivals from France, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom and other countries, leading The Sunday Business Post's Nicola Cooke to describe it as "one of the most successful music festivals in Ireland has [sic]".[17] Leagues O'Toole has described it as an "enormously successful, award-winning, established brand [...] aimed at a young audience out for a good time, a post-Leaving Cert rite of passage perfect for acts with big singalong tunes that sound great in the mud".[18] Oxegen received a mention in the Colum McCann short story "Aisling".[19]

In April 2014, organisers announced that the Oxegen festival would not be going ahead that year, citing a lack of suitable headline acts.[20]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference promises_to_be_back_in_2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference a_breather_for_a_year was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Snow Patrol steal the limelight from top acts". Irish Independent. Independent News & Media. 2 February 2007. Retrieved 10 February 2009.
  4. ^ "OXEGEN 08: THE LINE-UP". The Irish Times. Irish Times Trust. 4 July 2008. Retrieved 21 February 2009.
  5. ^ "Editorial: Rain can't dampen our spirits". Evening Herald. 13 July 2009. Archived from the original on 1 August 2012. Retrieved 14 July 2009.
  6. ^ "Snow Patrol take a breather from U2 tour". Belfast Telegraph. Independent News & Media. 9 July 2009. Retrieved 14 July 2009.
  7. ^ "Oxegen breaks all carbon neutral records". Hot Press. 16 July 2009. Retrieved 18 July 2009.
  8. ^ Doyle, Kevin (14 July 2008). "Oxegen: Mud, sweat and beers". Evening Herald. Archived from the original on 1 August 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2009.
  9. ^ "Goodbye Glasto... Hello Oxegen". Sunday Tribune. 6 July 2008. Archived from the original on 15 July 2010. Retrieved 5 July 2008.
  10. ^ "Multinational audience joins rite of passage for Irish teens". Sunday Tribune. 13 July 2008. Archived from the original on 1 August 2008. Retrieved 27 July 2008.
  11. ^ "In Pictures: Festival-goers get a whiff of Oxegen". Belfast Telegraph. 10 July 2009. Archived from the original on 28 July 2012. Retrieved 14 July 2009.
  12. ^ a b "Hollywood star Josh Hartnett and former Danish supermodel Helena Christensen watch the Kings of Leon at the Oxegen Music festival at Punchestown racecourse in County Kildare". BBC News. BBC. Retrieved 3 July 2009.
  13. ^ a b "Journalists engage in futile hunt for Ronnie Wood". Sunday Tribune. 13 July 2008. Archived from the original on 15 July 2010. Retrieved 3 July 2009.
  14. ^ McEnroe, Juno (14 July 2008). "Fans find Oxegen's frequency just right, Kenneth". Irish Examiner. Thomas Crosbie Holdings. Archived from the original on 27 September 2013. Retrieved 3 July 2009.
  15. ^ "Relatives of Rolling Stone Ronnie rush to Ireland in bid to halt bender". Belfast Telegraph. 13 July 2008. Archived from the original on 23 July 2012. Retrieved 3 July 2009.
  16. ^ "Oxegen: one parent's nightmare". Sunday Tribune. 13 July 2008. Archived from the original on 4 February 2009. Retrieved 27 July 2008.
  17. ^ Cooke, Nicola (20 June 2010). "Rock festivals are set to beat the economic blues". The Sunday Business Post. Retrieved 20 June 2010.
  18. ^ O'Toole, Leagues (25 June 2010). "Living on the edge". The Irish Times. Irish Times Trust. Retrieved 25 June 2010. The two big events that bookend the Irish summer are Oxegen and Electric Picnic, both now enormously successful, award-winning, established brands. [...] On one hand you have MCD's Oxegen, which starts on Friday, July 9th, a three-day music extravaganza at Punchestown Racecourse in Kildare aimed at a young audience out for a good time, a post-Leaving Cert rite of passage perfect for acts with big singalong tunes that sound great in the mud.
  19. ^ Walsh, Caroline (19 June 2010). "Loose Leaves: Colum McCann tries his hand at the aisling". The Irish Times. Irish Times Trust. Retrieved 19 June 2010. Now it's Colum McCann's turn. His new short story entitled Aisling, in the summer issue of the Paris Review , is quite a departure from the realist prose of his National Book Award-winning novel Let the Great World Spin. [...] And although it's very short, at under two and a half pages, he manages to include a wide range of Irish references, from Loreto Foxrock to Oxegen and the Trocadero.
  20. ^ "Oxegen 2014". Oxegen.ie. Archived from the original on 26 June 2014. Retrieved 2 August 2014.