Glastonbury Festival
Pilton, Somerset
25-29th June 2025
Mark Muldoon presents his absolutely fictional Glastonbury awards ceremony, whilst discussing Neil Young, Olivia Rodrigo, Pulp, The 1975, Beth Gibbons, Wolf Alice, Taskmaster and much more.
Welcome to The Worthys, Glastonbury Festival’s very own award ceremony. If the Oscars are the pinnacle of the film calendar and the height of prestige, think of The Worthys as more like the East Yorkshire Double Glazing awards. Having now somehow arrived at their fifth online publication, let’s once again take a look at the best – or at least most notable – moments from another five days of organised chaos held on some farmland in Somerset.
Most broadly okay headliner, I suppose: The 1975
There was a time, five years ago, when you could’ve made the case that The 1975 were the most interesting major act in pop music, freely experimenting as they were across whichever genres they fancied, with frequently sublime results.
That feels like a very long time ago now. Their fanbase didn’t really go for their wilder musical lurches, and so they retreated back to a more conservative sonic palette with the release of their most recent album, Being Funny In A Foreign Language. Meanwhile, artists like Charli XCX and Chappell Roan have pushed pop’s centre of gravity to a significantly more interesting place. The 1975 are no longer anywhere close to being on the frontier of bold pop music.
All that, plus frontman Matty Healy appears to exist within ‘the league of semi-cancelled men’, as columnist Marina Hyde has called it, with Healy’s labelmate Rina Sawayama calling him out, on stage at this very festival two years ago, for multiple troubling ethnicity-based attitudes and comments.
So you could quite reasonably question whether The 1975 should be headlining at all. But you couldn’t really argue that they haven’t got enough huge pop bangers to deserve headliner status. And they’ve certainly put the effort into their staging, which is flatly astonishing: there’s a growing habit (probably due to the vast budgets Coldplay are able to throw at their headline sets here) for acts to spend far more on their headline performances than the festival are paying them. And tonight you can really tell: the number of screens on stage results in a genuine assault on the senses.
It’s odd, then, that they seem to otherwise treat the show like a normal 1975 gig. There’s no attempt to engage floating voters with the songs they won’t know (the following afternoon, Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker is extremely talented at selling the band’s new songs). Healy instead addresses committed fans. Later in the weekend, Olivia Rodrigo will also come across as far more likeable than Healy does tonight. Meanwhile People – a thrashy punk track that should take the wind out of an audience’s sails – feels like it’s had its edges sanded down by the sound mix. Healy then also goes out of his way to make a speech about how the band are avoiding making political statements. It often feels as though somebody is only a couple of years away from becoming really right wing when they say that, but you do you, Matty. Besides, it’s not as if anybody would’ve noticed if you’d simply not mentioned politics in any way whatsoever. Marketing yourself as newly apolitical, in 2025 of all years, is a curious strategy.
Still, with no new material to promote, this is essentially a greatest hits set. And those hits have the desired effect. This just isn’t a show to win over their considerable number of naysayers.
Two nights later, Olivia Rodrigo is fantastic. She engages with the occasion much more than, say, Billie Eilish, who (more so than Healy) seemed to treat headlining the world’s biggest green field festival as just another regular tour date. (Fair play: Glastonbury-goers are very used to being spoilt by acts who lavish special attention and florid words of affection throughout their sets). It helps that Rodrigo’s songs are also superb: extremely catchy whilst also full of character and drama. And of course, she then duets with actual Robert Smith on Friday I’m In Love and Just Like Heaven. In our section of the field, at least, people go nuts.
Best festival: Glastonbury
It’s common to hear people proclaim “best place on earth” towards the back end of any Glastonbury, and you can understand the logic. A beautiful, highly conscious, historic, wildly varied, inclusive, non-profit-maximising, ambitious event that quietly succeeds in being better organised every year. Huge acts abound – any complaints about the nominal headliners seem faintly ridiculous when you see how many Proper Big Names play across the rest of the bill. Honestly, after 18 consecutive Glastonburys, this journalist still feels like a kid in a candy store, getting to spend every hour picking between a ludicrous wealth of enticing options.
Best set: Beth Gibbons
Clashing with the start of Neil Young means it’s not exactly heaving for Beth Gibbons’ set on the Park stage. Those that are in attendance can consider themselves truly lucky: every menacing drone sound, anxious guitar wail and discordant violin string benefits from a perfect, exquisite sound mix, as she runs through tracks from her stunning debut solo album, Lives Outgrown. In previous years, this could have gone fatally wrong – sound bleed from the nearby Stonebridge bar has long hampered quieter sets on this stage – heartfelt thanks to whoever reoriented that tent so the speakers are pointing further away.
The performance has already achieved its status as the best of the festival before she plays her Portishead classic Glory Box. After that, it was one for the history books.
Most significant ‘big emotions’ moment: Neil Young
All that hard raving up at Beth Gibbons meant there is only time to catch half of Neil Young’s headline set, but it feels like an unqualified success. It’s easy to get the sense that, over the course of the weekend, many people will have cried upon hearing one of their favourite songs. Young deserves additional credit for reducing this writer to tears with Old Man, a Young song he’s not even that familiar with.
Best cover version: Wolf Alice
It feels as though Wolf Alice are doing everything in their power to win over their Sunday evening audience anyway, but really: slipping a cover of Fleetwood Mac – Dreams in there just as the sun is starting to go down. It’s going above and beyond, really.
Best magic trick: friend of a journalist
I’m still in awe of my friend who gifted me a beautifully chilled can of lager from his bag at 4am on Saturday night. Truly, Glastonbury is a place where magic happens.
Best festival anthem: Common People
With its ubiquity, you could be forgiven for having forgotten what a phenomenal, breathtakingly rousing song Pulp‘s Common People is. An absolutely perfect festival anthem if ever there was one.
Best live debut of a cherished TV format: Taskmaster
The Edinburgh Fringe might be offended that the team behind TV behemoth Taskmaster have chosen to debut a live format at Glastonbury rather than during Comedy Glastonbury (which is what I call the Fringe). Expect far more words on the performance here in the next couple of days, but for now, let’s just mention one of the tasks, which challenges comedians to go out into the audience and find their closest lookalike. Closest resemblance wins. Fun. Although contestant Richard Blackwood quickly points out the ethnic make up of the crowd, adding “you booked me and didn’t think it over.” Well, yes. This is Glastonbury and – not unusually – the audience is 99% white. Real shame, then, to see The Guardian try and make a bit of a hoo-ha out of it, claiming that it is “tonally jarring” and an “awkward” moment. Not so. Blackwood unquestionably plays it for laughs because he is a professional comedian, and the huge eruption of laughter he receives in response speaks of how much the audience agrees with him and how funny they find it. Blackwood nimbly draws attention to the ethnic make up of the festival in a way that is also one of the comic highlights of the whole performance. Bravo.
Most well-meaning failure: Wednesday night, Pyramid stage circus show
The latest attempt by the festival to try to disperse crowds around the site on the first night of the festival, their circus show is, ultimately, a wholly admirable endeavour that is nevertheless definitely not what the field is in the mood for. It needs amplified sound. Even regardless, a circus doesn’t seem to work in such a large venue. It’s probably fantastic for those down the front, immersed like they would be at a regular circus.
Formerly excellent area that’s now pretty average: Shangri-la.
A very different approach to Shangri-la this year. It feels bigger and more open (great), but this year’s theme of rewilding sounded dry when they announced it, and is indeed also dry once fully realised.
The area certainly looks handsome enough, but it removes the (often very good) satirical edge from the area, and therefore by extension, from the whole festival. Which feels like an error: satire feels important to Glastonbury. You can understand a creative wish to try a different approach after all these years, but on this occasion, it’s to the detriment of the festival.
Festival with the best 2027 headliners: Glastonbury.
Always fun to get predictions in for when the festival finally returns, two years from now. As they basically book five headliners nowadays, let’s go with: Rihanna, Robbie Williams, Stevie Wonder, Sam Fender and the Spice Girls.
21 sets ranked from best to worst
An extremely high-quality weekend of live music means there is little in the way of actual duffers. Also, no shade on Ishmael Ensemble and Westside Cowboy, who can blame sound issues for their low rankings.
UK folk can watch Glastonbury sets on the iPlayer for the next month. Non-UK folk might want to give BBC Music’s YouTube channel a bash.
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All words and pictures by Mark Muldoon, whose previous festival reviews for Louder Than War can be found here. You can also find him on Instagram and Bluesky. He’s hoping to get through the next week with less of the waterworks, actually.
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