Glastonbury 2025: Watch Rod Stewart perform cheesy disco tune ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’
It’s not often you get to hear an 80-year-old man yell ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ in a field on the BBC. But as expected, Rod Stewart provided his fans with this rare moment as he rattled off the cheesy pop song on the Pyramid Stage.
The singer was lucky enough to be given Glastonbury Festival’s fabled ‘legend’s slot’, and he even got the organisers to extend it by 15 minutes so that he could pack his 90-minute set full of hits.
With an enormous crowd gathered before the Pyramid Stage, the former Faces frontman had no bones about sticking to the hits. In his back catalogue, they don’t get much bigger than ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’. The 1978 hit topped the charts in both the UK and the US.
The song saw Stewart shift towards disco-pop for the first time with a sound that mirrored the music Donna Summer was producing to great success. However, it saw him mirror the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor a little too closely, with the song falling foul of a plagiarism lawsuit.
Stewart would later admit to “unconscious plagiarism” of his track ‘Taj Mahal’, and to avoid any further controversy, the singer even donated all the royalties from the song to UNICEF. This helps to make it a rather guilt-free guilty pleasure. However, his set did attract criticism of a different form after Kneecap questioned the singer’s political allegiances.
Later, the Pyramid Stage will conclude with sets from Nile Rodgers and Chic, Noah Kahan, and then the headliner, Olivia Rodrigo. The 1975 headlined the first night of the festival, and Neil Young performed on the Saturday.
However, few stars have been able to attract the same size crowd that Stewart mustered. There are 210,000 people at Glastonbury this year, plus a few thousand scallies who sneak in, and most of them seemed to be there to watch ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ on the main stage.
You can watch Rod Stewart’s performance below.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.