Glastonbury 2025: The ultimate guide to The 1975’s performance on the Pyramid Stage
If you were on Tumblr at just the right time, there was no escaping it. A love for The 1975 was a necessity, an inevitability, and once you were in, it seems there was absolutely no getting out. And their fans stuck around, helping make them one of the UK’s biggest indie bands of all time, despite being a tricky enigma to pin down.
To simply label The 1975 as ‘indie’ doesn’t feel enough. Sure, that’s how it started, as the members came together as school kids, forming way back in 2002 when Matty Healy was first the drummer until handing over duties to George Daniels. Healy remembers the moment they met as one that “changed his life”. It wasn’t just that the band now took form, shuffling Healy to the mic, with Daniels on drums, Adam Hann on guitar and Ross MacDonald on bass. It was that together, Healy and Daniels would become one of the most noteworthy songwriting duos of the 2010s, 2020s and seemingly will continue to be.
To their fierce fans, the band have become a fascinating, genre-hopping enigma. With every album, they’ve somehow managed to hold onto the core of the group, which is undeniably their ability to write massive indie hits, starting with ‘Sex’ and adding to that long list on their latest album, Being Funny in a Foreign Language, with tracks like ‘Happiness’ and ‘I’m In Love With You’. This repertoire has raised them to a lofty status where they now seem like an obvious headliner.
Still, plenty of people will roll their eyes at the selection. Their announcement was met with plenty of naysayers making themselves known. The divisive nature of opinions surrounding the band is hard to avoid. Some chalk it up to Healy’s nepo baby status, being the son of a Loose Woman and a Benidorm actor, Denise Welch. Some would put it all down to the singer’s arrogant rock star attitude, previously found stumbling offstage a lot or ruining shows during his darkest pre-rehab days.
But largely, the issues often seem to come down to the band’s obsession with irony not hitting the right audience. Irony is perhaps the one essential ingredient to the band, powering so many of their songs and being a vital part of their identity as a group, woven into their music, their visuals, but predominantly, their live set. Their most recent tour was more of a stage show than anything else, “going viral” for a strange interlude section where Healy would do push-ups and seemingly eat raw meat, an apparent commentary on toxic masculinity that was definitely lost on a lot of people who simply thought the band were weird or doing too much.
It’s been a fascinating ride for a group that seems to split opinions. However, one thing is undeniable—given their status as the country’s biggest indie band working at the moment, with an impressive 17million monthly listens on Spotify, whether you love them or loathe them, they’ve certainly earned their spot on the Pyramid Stage.
A brief overview of The 1975’s history
After launching in 2002, the outfit had a very classic band beginning. They gigged around Manchester, first under a whole bunch of different names, including Drive Like I Do, a project which fans still talk about, but then eventually as The 1975, deciding on that in 2012—a whole decade into their life as a group. In those early sets, their first hits began to take shape with tracks like ‘Sex’ and ‘Chocolate’ earning them a reputation and eventually making them stars.
That would happen when they met Jamie Oborne, their enduring manager who set up the label Dirty Hit, purely to sign them and allow them the creative freedom the band always knew they wanted. They knew from the start that being boxed in as an indie or a rock band wouldn’t work as their influences were already too broad, including elements of electro, punk, hip-hop, and lo-fi.
Their early EPs and eventual self-titled debut, released in 2013, capture that. It has the big indie chart-toppers to grander cuts like the cinematic True Romance-inspired track, ‘Robbers’. But it also has their more left-field sounds on tracks like ‘M.O.N.E.Y’, ‘Menswear’, ‘An Encounter’ or deluxe tracks like ‘Antichrist’, a song from an earlier EP that has become a cult fan favourite, perhaps because the band has yet to play it live.
During those early years, they toured extensively. As that debut instantly shot them to success, they rode the train of it until it crashed, with Healy struggling greatly from addiction and the pressure of it all.
But they kept going. In 2016, they followed up their debut with I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful yet So Unaware of It, opening up the era with ‘Love Me’, a track about their lived experiences with divisive fame. The album boosted them again, displaying the width and depth of their inspirations and capabilities.
They never stay still, though. The band could easily have carried on just becoming a big indie group, but they never seemed content to settle for that. A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships in 2018 made that clear as they shared an almost-concept album, unpicking the digital age, with plenty of odd interlude tracks. It was a similar story in 2020 as they opened up Notes on a Conditional Form with a collaboration with Greta Thunberg and then dove into an album that seemed dedicated to everything but indie.
Following the years, 2022’s Being Funny in a Foreign Language still felt radical because it did the exact opposite. It was still full of the band’s variety and sharp lyricism, but they called in Jack Antonoff, with Healy and Daniels handing over the production reins they’d held for a while, with the simple mission of trimming some of the fat. They wanted to make an album that was all killer, no filler. The commercial success of the album offers a clear sign that they did, touring it extensively on their ‘At Their Very Best’ tour.
Like with every step, the tour led to controversy. In 2023, the band were kicked out of Malaysia after Healy and MacDonald kissed on stage at a festival and Healy openly criticised the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws. It led to the entire festival being cancelled and the band landing in court. The organisers attempt to sue the group for £1.9million in damages. The band have always been vocal supporters of the gay community, writing about it in many songs and often using their stage to protest injustices. In February 2025, they were cleared of liability.
That leads us to now. In 2024, the group wrapped up their ‘Still…At Their Very Best’ second round of the huge world tour in support of their last album, and that’s been it since. Daniels helped his fiancée, Charli XCX, with Brat and released a few solo tracks; Healy got engaged, and the band have all enjoyed some much-deserved off time. Their headline slot on the Pyramid Stage on June 27th will be their first return since then.
What can we expect from their set?
In short, who knows? This is confirmed to be the band’s only show in 2025 and as they haven’t released new music since their last album and haven’t performed since that tour, who knows what the setup will be like, whether the house staging from that tour will make a return or if they’re about to launch something totally new.
Either way, like all their sets, fans can likely expect a big mixed bag. They’ll play the hits as per, and they are nothing if not entertaining, but they’re also definitely a group that likes to dive into fan-favourite deep cuts. With five albums of material, there’s a lot there to try and figure into a setlist, but even for cynics who like to doubt the band, there will definitely be tracks in there that will have the whole field moving.
