Oxegen

Oxegen 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, and, by 2009, it was being cited as the greenest festival, being a 100% carbon neutral event in Ireland, although some critics questioned how environmentally friendly the festival was from 2008 onwards. It was previously called Witnness, 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.

Oxegen attracted significant attention from outside Ireland, with many of those attending travelling from overseas experiencing a "mass exodus" to the festival. 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) and television personality Chris Pontius, actor Josh Hartnett, 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. 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.

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". 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". Oxegen received a mention in the Colum McCann short story "Aisling".

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

History

Oxegen first took place in 2004 over the second weekend in July. The Killers, who went on to headline the festival twice in 2007 and 2009, were one of the bands to appear at the first Oxegen. Dave Keuning, in an interview with ''Hot Press'' prior to the 2009 festival, described Oxegen as "a big deal because it's one of the first European festivals we played when we came over from Vegas in 2004. We only had one hit—" Mr. Brightside"—and were worried in case no one showed. But the tent was packed with people screaming out the words to songs we didn't think they knew. It was that night we thought, 'Hey, something's happening here!' Oxegen more so than Glastonbury even was the highlight of our summer."

The original festival, Witnness, sponsored by Guinness, took place during the start of August with notable headliners, including Oasis

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