Glastonbury 2025: Watch Amyl and the Sniffers deliver powerful political speech
Australian rockers Amyl and The Sniffers made a huge political speech during their Glastonbury set that stood in solidarity with Palestine and slammed musicians who failed to use their platform to encourage change.
The Melbournite four-piece are a force to be reckoned with, and they strutted out onto The Other Stage with the confidence that suggested they knew exactly that. Beginning with a few rules for the best mosh pit etiquette, they barelled into a cover of ‘I Don’t Give a Fuck’.
After racing through tunes such as ‘Security’ and ‘Guided by Angels’, which saw the huge Saturday afternoon crowd spin out into a cataclysmic meeting of sweating bodies, the band turned their attention towards the current political landscape.
Frontwoman Amy Taylor began her speech stating what an honour it was to be performing at Worthy Farm: “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 yourds 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.”
She declared 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,” perhaps referring to The 1975 who used their headline slot at the Pyramid Stage on Friday night to declare their political silence at shows “intentional”.
She finished with a nod towards the increasing pressure of Artificial Intelligence. “Shit’s going down the shitter faast and, mate, we got AI on the way. So buckle up bitches, shit’s about to get weird.”
Later, they also dedicated their song ‘Big Dreams’ to the “incoming recession”.
Despite the solemn interjection, the band looked euphoric during their set. During Amyl’s cover story interview with Far Out, the band explained their love for performing live. “It’s awesome, it’s such a variety of people, and everyone’s really present. Yeah, some people are filming stuff on their phones, and I’m totally fine with that, but a lot of the time, it’s not like other concerts where their phones are up the whole time. They’re really there.”
Amyl and The Sniffers set comes after a jam-packed Friday line-up, including the likes of The 1975, Loyle Carner, Biffy Clyro, Alanis Morissette, and a secret set which turned out to be Lewis Capaldi. Other acts performing at Glastonbury include CMAT, Raye, Charli XCX, Neil Young, Olivia Rodrigo, and Turnstile.
Watch Amyl and the Sniffers’ political speech in full below.
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