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Britney Spears to drive Danish fans crazy at festival

Pop fans in Denmark have been given an early Christmas present: Britney Spears will play at next year’s Smukfest festival.

Published: 22 December 2017 14:09 CET

Britney Spears to drive Danish fans crazy at festival

Photo: s_bukley/Depositphotos

The festival, located in the town of Skanderborg, announced the appearance of the US megastar on its website and social media on Friday, describing the singer as a “living pop legend”.

BRITNEY SPEARS PÅ SMUKFEST Vi er super glade for at kunne fortælle, at Britney Spears besøger Bøgeskoven som internationalt hovednavn i 2018. Den levende poplegende spiller dermed sin første danske festivalkoncert nogensinde på Smukfest 2018! #SMUK18

A post shared by Smukfest (@smukfest) on Dec 22, 2017 at 1:00am PST

Spears, 36, achieved worldwide stardom in the late 1990s and early 2000s with hits such as Baby One More Time, Oops! I Did It Again and Toxic.

The concert will be her first at a Danish festival.

Danish acts including MØ, D-A-D, Saveus, Nephew and C.V. Jørgensen will also play at Smukfest, which takes place from the 8th-12th August next year.

Tickets for the full festival sold out within an hour and half of going on sale earlier this month – notably faster than last year, when the festival sold out in five hours.

After a career hiatus following highly-publicised personal problems in the mid-2000s, Spears has released three albums since 2011 and has appeared as a judge on the US version of popular television series The X Factor since 2012.

READ ALSO: Britney, and her undies, coming to Denmark

Denmark’s summer music festival hopes fade

The Roskilde Festival during the glorious summer of 2018. Photo: Sofie Mathiassen/Ritzau Scanpix

Music events such as the Roskilde Festival, the largest of its kind in northern Europe, would not be able to take place as normal and must be without overnight guests under the recommendations, submitted in report form by an expert advisory group to the government on Friday.

The group, appointed as part of the national reopening plan, was tasked with looking at how festivals and other large events can take place this summer.

The recommendations will provide the basis political discussions which will form an agreement over large events which will be integrated into the reopening plan.

READ ALSO: Denmark enters new phase of reopening plan: Here’s what changed on April 21st

Seven various scenarios, including one for outdoors, standing events, were considered by the expert group in forming its recommendations. Two phases have been set down for eased restrictions on large events, which are currently banned due to the public assembly limit.

In the final phase of the restrictions towards the end of the summer, a maximum of 10,000 people would be permitted to attend an event. All attendees would be required to present a valid corona passport, and audiences would be split into sections of 2,000.

Although that could provide a framework for some events to take place, Roskilde Festival, which normally has a total of around 130,000 guests and volunteers including sprawling camping areas, appears to be impossible in anything resembling its usual format.

The festival was also cancelled in 2020.

Roskilde Festival CEO Signe Lopdrup, who was part of the expert group, said the festival was unlikely to go ahead should it be required to follow the recommendations.

“Based on the recommendations, we find it very difficult to believe it is realistic to organise festivals in Denmark before the end of the summer,” Lopdrup said in a written comment to broadcaster DR.

The restrictions would mean “that it is not possible to go ahead with the Roskilde Festival. That’s completely unbearable. But that’s where we’ve ended,” she added.

The news is potentially less bleak for other types of event with fewer participants, with cultural and sporting events as well as conferences also included in the recommendations submitted by the group.

Parliament has previously approved a compensation scheme for major events forced to cancel due to coronavirus measures this summer.

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