Glastonbury 2025: The winners and losers of the festival

The 1975

Over the course of the weekend, The 1975’s decision to openly declare that not being political was a conscious decision looked increasingly unconscionable. As Amyl and the Sniffers bluntly laid it out, “It’s better to say something than say nothing at all right now.” That doesn’t make not saying anything inherently bad, but actively proclaiming that you’re not going to say anything for fear that it might upset the “friendship and love” vibe you’re angling for felt like trite entitlement.

The announcement was a moment that derailed a smooth-running set. Prior to that, the biggest talking point was simply a Guinness that never got sipped and a bad display of drunk acting. But the gasp and wince that his off-kilter comment brought from some soon spread to many as statement after statement solidified the importance of political protest on the most profound platform.

Rod Stewart

It’s hard to take shots at a legend. Rod Stewart is certainly that, too. The singer has made a career out of being a showman with a good set of soulful pipes, but for some reason, his performance on the Pyramid Stage on Sunday, colloquially considered ‘the legend’s slot’, felt completely bereft of any soul at all. Things didn’t start off well, either. Before the show even began, murmurs of boycotting the performance swelled around the festival site as Stewart, who had spent the previous few days espousing his preference for anti-immigrant politician Nigel Farage, felt at odds with perhaps the most political event in years.

But, when he did arrive on stage, it would seem that most who were there to see him sing were happy to ignore, if not agree with him on his politics. The really disappointing moments came when Stewart tried to perform his ream of hits. Sure, we had some nice outfit changes — a head-to-toe pink suit will always be impressive — but it was hard to shake the cruise ship shimmies and continuous absconding of the stage to allow his backing singers to belt out a tune of their own while he changed into a new, generally garish, outfit. When he closed with ‘Sailing’ there were waving hands and a few tears from devotees, but the general feeling was that Stewart could, and maybe should, have sat this one out.

Charli XCX

Sometimes a 0-0 draw can seem worse than a loss. That was pretty much the result of Charli XCX‘s set headlining the Other Stage. Her set proved perfectly entertaining, provided you hadn’t been at LIDO a few weeks back, where the exact same show, right down to the dance moves and audience interaction, was rolled out to many of the same fans who had shunned Neil Young to go and see her once more.

Without any special guests, novel moments, or major fanfare, the show became a moot point of the weekend, with the only major talking point that exceeded its runtime being how Charli took to X the next day to apparently scroll through endless critiques and hit back at the boomers who weren’t all that entertained. The largely trivial aftermath being more noteworthy than the performance itself, served as unfortunate evidence that Brat may be becoming boring, but Charli finds herself trapped in the brand. Put it this way, even the most ardent fans would struggle to argue that it became Bratstonbury, as it may have done some months ago.

Emily Eavis

In any public-facing job, there are external pressures. For the most part, Glastonbury has prided itself on ignoring these pressures. Only a few days before the festival began, among calls to ban Kneecap from performing on the grounds of ‘appropriateness’, the 89-year-old founder, Michael Eavis, commented that those who do not agree with the festival’s politics “can go elsewhere”.

However, Emily Eavis’ statement on Sunday morning, swiftly condemning comments made by Bob Vylan, seemed to say that the festival’s politics are far narrower than her father’s comment implied and that acts found falling outside of those lines can go elsewhere, too. From the outside looking in, it feels like a sham to give political acts a public platform only to crack the whip once the art becomes a little too subversive.

Keir Starmer 

Back in April, as the footballer Jean-Philippe Mateta lay unconscious on the floor following a serious injury, surrounded by worried medics, Millwall FC fans began to sing, “Let him die”. It was a reprehensible moment that unfurled live on the BBC, but by and large, barring the condemnation of a few football commentators, the incident was simply dismissed as a very distasteful chant, and it was business as usual within a matter of days. There was no probe into who started it, no punishment enacted upon the club.

However, if the chant is political, then it seems it is worthy of full-blown investigations and an actionable response. Whether you believe Bob Vylan’s chant was ‘appropriate’ or not, an arbitrary measure of decency should not be the deciding factor on who the state decide to punish. An angry mob, a matter of metres away from a man in a critical condition, clearly poses greater actualised concern than a punk duo does to an entire military force.

However, it is the latter that Keir Starmer has quickly looked to defang, even if their obvious motive was to simply raise awareness of war crimes that only a few days ago resulted in the deaths of 81 civilians in a 24-hour period during a supposed ceasefire. Seemingly, ‘appropriateness’ matters more when it is in disagreement of the government’s narrative.

Helen from Wales

The ‘last-minute’ BBC decision not to broadcast Kneecap’s anticipated set live carried the sinister hallmarks of suppression of the free press. Even earlier that very same day, Far Out were promptly reminded of a long-flouted policy that no performances could be filmed by the media, even on a smartphone, amid thousands of onlookers armed with their own cellular devices. Thankfully, Helen from Wales utilised her doom-scroller for good.

The bold fan plonked herself on the front row, took on the BBC, and came out on top, attracting 1.7million people to her TikTok stream at one point during their deeply political performance. It shouldn’t have taken that for a few young lads to be able to get their point across, but we can all be glad that public defiance is still a powerful tool. “Where there is power, there is resistance,” Michel Foucault said that, not Helen from Wales, but she may as well have done.

Goat

Bedecked in bizarre headware, rattling off equally bizarre and intoxicating psychedelia, Goat are the band who out-Glastonbury’d Glastonbury, particularly in its current guise. The weird Swedes are the next one up from hippiedom, surpassing novelty crystal skull crap with an ethereal aura of primordial exultation. Amid growing corporate concerns about not just Glastonbury but the mainstream music industry at large, the unique band tapped into the very essence of festival culture at its purest.

Hardy parents pushing kids in strollers no doubt saw their toddlers’ eyes boggle at the sight and sound of the shimmering band. That’s important. They are not the band that will garner the most headlines from this weekend, but they will have had a lasting impression on many folks who gathered to have their tiny minds frazzled by a frighteningly groovy source.

Amyl and the Sniffers

The Aussie punks Amyl and the Sniffers burst onto the Other Stage with all the enthusiasm of a puppy, or a yappy mutt as they might term it themselves. However, they were far from naive as they rattled through a maelstrom of momentous riffs and hooks. Amy Taylor became as determined to use her platform as she was to sweat out a few litres of adrenalised perspiration under the blistering Somerset sun.

“I wanna say, its such a crazy time to be alive right now, its so fucking weird, the left and the right politicians don’t believe in anything at all between the two of them,” she said. “They believe in nothing. I’m thinking about the people in Palestine. All our governments — we’re from Australia — they’re doing jack shit, and I know yours are doing jack shit.”

She continued: “I think about schooling and I think about media, and we don’t know learn anything about colonisation. We don’t learn nothing about sex education. We don’t learn any of the right things, and we don’t see any of the right things in the media.” Defiantly: “That’s what is so fucked up. They don’t want us to know. They want us to shut the fuck up, because if we think about Palestine, then back home in Australia we think about the indigenous people there and we think about the fact that us as whities… we’re the fucking colonisers, and that’s so disgusting and that so much to hold and that’s the truth.”

Wrapping up the display of solidarity, she added, “I was gonna say something more poetic, and it’s not perfect. But I think it’s better to say something than say nothing at all right now.” And then she returned to the blunderbuss of their punk attitude, reaffirming the point. Perhaps The 1975 should’ve taken a leaf out of their book.

Spliff

Spliff and Busta Rhymes appeared on the Other Stage like the Morecambe and Wise of hip-hop. This legendary duo defined the meaning of: putting on a show. Sometimes the show was unfathomable, but no matter how peculiar it became, it always felt like an abstract expression of pure joy thanks to the utterly charming demeanour of the fastest quipper in rap, Spliff. The diminutive sideman proved himself to be the greatest hype man in hip-hop history, but perhaps the inadvertent hero of Glastonbury.

Festivals are about brotherhood, coming together for a celebration. Spliff, who not long back was waylaid by congestive heart failure, would stop at nothing to ensure that the good times flowed as freely as Busta’s mercurial tongue. You also suspect that he would, quite literally, die for his faithful partner. Together, the pair brought a unique sense of manic joy to the festival – the sort that could make you forget the world for an hour and transfix on the liquid humour of a dense ball of puns and delight. Perhaps it’s generous that he pips Pulp to a place on this list, but Pulp will surely be back; who knows what lies ahead of this maverick jokester? Not even Spliff knows that; he lives one pun to the next, following the whims of his fast-spitting overlord.

The Maccabees

There is a good shout that, had The Maccabees stayed together, they would have beaten The 1975 to their headline slot on Friday. The latter band have been gifted some praise because of the fact that they remain the first new British band to headline the event in a decade, when it feels like the former could have achieved it with ease had they stayed together. Naturally, then, when watching The Maccabees dominate an emotional performance on Sunday evening, taking top billing at The Park Stage, there is a mixed bag of feelings.

As well as watching the group, newly reunited and heading out on a cross-country tour that culminates in an indie fest guaranteed to smash your nostalgia bones to bits, embrace the moment and truly appreciate the chance to once again be faced with a giant and jubilant crowd, there was an unstoppable duality of emotion. At once happy that the group get to have their moment once again, singing smash hits like ‘Pelican’, ‘Latchmere’, ‘Precious Time’ and ‘Marks To Prove It’ with the same fizzing energy they always did, but also sad that they weren’t on the biggest stage of all, having lost a few years to the wilderness.

However, all this and more was lost in a sea of swirling wonderment as Florence Welch, a “Maccabees super fan,” joined the group on stage to cover ‘Dog Days Are Over’. This sent the audience into raptures, leaving them with permanent goosebumps and a wish that they didn’t have to wait another decade to see them again.