Never mind the zeitgeist – in the 2020s, the largest crowds are for big, broad acts that peaked in the noughties
When I first attended Glastonbury as a teenager in 2009, the festival’s musical comfort zone – the sort of thing that wafted seemingly endlessly like a hippy van’s incense or burger fumes across the site – was still a comfy-fit rock indebted to folk or reggae, a genial reflection of Worthy Farm’s countercultural roots. It was probably best enjoyed with a warm ale from the festival’s trade-union approved Workers’ Beer Company partnership. In the 2020s, though – during Glastonbury’s short run between the pandemic and its one-year fallow pause in 2026 – the festival has danced to a different beat: millennial nostalgia.
In the 2020s, Glastonbury’s largest crowds are trending towards big, broad acts whose creative peaks were in the early Y2K years. Last year, the pop-punk of Avril Lavigne was the angsty, fondly remembered soundtrack to that weekend’s largest Other Stage audience, while the reunited original Sugababes proved such a draw to the West Holts Stage that the festival took the unusual move of restricting entry. This year a time traveller from Tony Blair’s Britain would be a little too delighted by some of the lineup: there are high-profile slots for Kaiser Chiefs, Scissor Sisters, Franz Ferdinand and the Libertines – the latter appearing on the Pyramid Stage on Sunday. Some of this is to be expected, an obvious reflection of millennials as they become culturally dominant. But it’s a surprise when contrasted to the buzzier and more zeitgeist-chasing lineups of Glastonbury’s bigger-budget European or American festival competitors.
Avril Lavigne performs on the Pyramid Stage in 2024
Programming the Glastonbury lineup must be a thankless job; it is one of those few musical events for which everyone feels entitled to an opinion. More broadly, in an era of fragmented and atomised listening habits, it is harder than ever to programme a festival of Glastonbury’s size without at least most of the lineup being bewildering to most people. Streaming and social media has splintered what success in pop music looks like. The bands that were ubiquitous on the radio in the noughties, providing the soundtrack to a decade, have the advantage of near-universal familiarity.
Because of this fragmentation, the stakes for performers are now higher for younger artists. In an era where live music is largely absent from British television screens (millennials might just remember the last gasp of Britain’s postwar TV music structure), Glastonbury is one of the few available avenues for artists to cut through with a big domestic audience. Who are the contenders hoping for a Glastonbury moment on British screens? PinkPantheress’s Glastonbury debut on Friday is something of a home-town show for the Bath-born pop producer. Breaking through on the tiny screens of TikTok during Covid, this year’s terrific, fizzing Fancy That mixtape cements her reputation as one of the UK’s true pop auteurs.
It is a good year, too, for CMAT, the brilliant 29-year-old Irish singer-songwriter whose country-influenced songs about messy millennial life has this summer inspired the “woke Macarena” TikTok dance. This was covered in the New York Times, suggesting that social media moments can be used to spotlight complex and thought-provoking lyrics about womanhood.
Hoping for a Glastonbury moment: CMAT plays the Pyramid Stage
It remains to be seen whether Kneecap will be permitted their televised Glastonbury crossover moment: the BBC has not confirmed whether it will broadcast the Irish-language hip-hop act’s West Holts Stage performance, following prime minister Keir Starmer’s comments that their performance would not be “appropriate” after bandmate Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh was charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah at a London show.
Next year, Glastonbury takes its scheduled fallow year. Having doubled its profits last year and invested in land around the site, there is increasing speculation the festival that returns in 2027 might be very different. Some of this might be an accommodation of changing millennial tastes. After crowd congestion last summer, dance publication Resident Advisor argued that the festival needed a root and branch rethink of its nocturnal offering in the South East Corner. But one thing is for certain: between the pandemic and next year’s pause, millennial remembrance of things past has been Glastonbury’s most striking and enduring trend.
Photograph by Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images, Yui Mok/PA Wire, Joe Maher/Getty Images
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