The 1975, Charli XCX and the headline act in the age of streaming

While headlining Glastonbury’s Other Stage on Saturday night, Charli XCX asked a delighted crowd, “Who here is really in love tonight?” She was introducing Everything is Romantic, one of her most lyrically tender and sonically experimental tracks, mixing hyperpop with hard baile funk. The song is widely believed to be inspired by her relationship with George Daniel, another Glastonbury headliner as drummer and co-songwriter of the 1975. This weekend, in the largely unprecedented position of headlining the festival on two separate stages, they have been Glastonbury’s imperial couple.

The 1975’s Friday appearance was their first headline set at the festival. Their albums have been pitching for Glastonbury headline status since at least 2018, and the stakes for the Cheshire band are high: to be one of the few reliable British acts, like Coldplay or Arctic Monkeys, that the festival turns to repeatedly when another booking (usually Madonna) has fallen through. On Friday night, the 1975’s staging was like a buzzy contemporary West End show: numerous video screens flashed, providing meta commentary on the dramatic action taking place on stage. At other points, singer Matty Healy performed from inside a car or next to a treadmill, for reasons not entirely clear.

Chocolate, aired midway with a joking-not-joking reference to Healy being the “songwriter of my generation”, was a sweet treat for those in the field wanting big, satisfying hits. In the 2020s, Glastonbury’s headline slot has been complicated by streaming: the 1975 are extremely popular, yet only occasionally puncturing public consciousness with their music. Acts are increasingly turning to special guests and cover versions, but the 1975’s set was traditional in its avoidance of either: admirable, if sometimes constraining the set’s ability to rouse the back half of the field.

Healy, 36, has been known for his freewheeling, motormouth podcast appearances, and the band’s heightened style is a reflection of his opinionated tendencies. Those expecting politics, he said on stage, will be disappointed: the audience “don’t need more politics. We need more love and friendship.”

This is contradicted by the Adam Curtis-inspired montage movie that plays over the screens during Love It If We Made It: the rush of videos of Middle East bombing or grainy military aerial footage feels unearned, luxuriating in violence without a perspective on it. But the song itself, released in 2018 and dense and dizzying in its references to that year’s zeitgeist, is terrific – one of the standouts of a set that is more conventional than its gently experimental staging might at first suggest.