Somewhere in a field in Somerset, someone is already trying on biodegradable glitter and wondering if their ex will be at Arcadia again. Glastonbury 2025 is near, and the air is thick with promise—the kind you can smell long before the rain, taste long after the cider, and feel in your bones even if you’re not one of the lucky thousands who scored a golden ticket through this year’s virtual queue Hunger Games.
This year’s lineup feels like a perfectly curated mixtape for the times—equal parts catharsis, reinvention, and euphoria. It says something about where we are now—that we crave spectacle and vulnerability in the same breath, that we need rebellion in eyeliner and therapy in four-part harmony. So, it makes perfect sense that The 1975, a band whose lyrics often sound like an Instagram comment thread and a philosophy seminar had a baby, are finally headlining. Matty Healy is likely already rehearsing his monologues between the monologues. Prepare for white vests, guitar solos with emotional baggage, and a crowd simultaneously dancing and wondering if they should text their therapist.
On Saturday, Neil Young takes the Pyramid Stage, back from the brink of a principled no-show. His return feels less like a gig and more like a reckoning—an artist who’s spent decades asking hard questions, standing once again in front of a crowd ready to listen. With The Chrome Hearts behind him, he’s not just here to revisit his legacy—he’s here to expand it. Expect a set that weaves together stone-cold classics and brand new material, some of it unreleased, pulled from an upcoming album still warm from the studio. In Young’s hands, nothing is dusted off and replayed. Every song—old or new—feels lived in, frayed at the edges, and honest to the moment. He’s not performing nostalgia. He’s offering something rarer: a chance to sit inside the sound of someone still searching.
And on Sunday? Olivia Rodrigo, all 22 years and a thousand heartbreaks of her, steps into the headliner slot like it’s always belonged to her. Because maybe it has. Her music carries the heat and ache of youth like a flare—too bright to ignore, too honest to be safe. For Gen Z, she’s not just a pop star; she’s a lighthouse in the fog of being very online and very overwhelmed. Watching her headline Glasto isn’t just about witnessing a moment—it’s about recognising a cultural handover. The kids have arrived, they’ve brought their exes, and they’ve got the lyrics tattooed already.
Rod Stewart, meanwhile, arrives in the Sunday Legends Slot like a bedazzled time capsule cracked open at just the right moment. His Glasto set promises the kind of unfiltered joy that only a man who’s survived disco, divorce, and decades of leopard print can deliver. This won’t be a reinvention—it’ll be a glorious embrace of everything camp, croony, and indelibly Rod. Expect the crowd to sway, sob, and possibly propose marriage to strangers during “Sailing.” You may not know all the lyrics, but your mum definitely does. And she’s never danced harder.
But Glastonbury has always been as much about what’s beneath the surface as what blares from the Pyramid. And somewhere—maybe on West Holts, maybe in a midnight corner with a crowd that feels like it’s stumbled onto a secret—an artist like Doechii is tearing through definitions. She’s not just headlining a stage; she’s detonating a template. Genreless, fearless, and impossible to look away from, she represents the kind of cultural shift that doesn’t ask for attention—it grabs it, flips it, and remixes it in real time. Her set won’t just be memorable—it’ll be a marker of where the culture is headed.
There’s a beautiful restlessness in the lineup this year. RAYE, newly independent and defiantly vulnerable, writes like someone who’s been underestimated for too long and now has the mic to prove it. Her set will be one for the raw-throated truth-seekers. Lola Young, with her smoke-honey voice and unfiltered presence, continues that same throughline: young British talent with too much to say and not enough patience for anyone asking them to tone it down.
Elsewhere, the lines blur further.Anoushka Shankar stretches the idea of “world music” until it snaps, revealing something richer—unbothered by borders and made for a world that’s already post-genre. PinkPantheress spins bedroom pop into something almost liquid; Self Esteem and Charli XCX rewrite the rules of pop femininity in real-time, offering not answers but better questions, glittered and amplified.
Even the infrastructure is catching up. The much-needed overhaul of Glasto’s ticketing system—replacing the dreaded refresh-a-thon with a randomised virtual queue—was less a technical update and more a symbolic one. In 2025, chance and fairness feel radical. For the first time in years, your nan with slow Wi-Fi had as much of a shot as that guy with six browsers open and a VPN. Hope, it seems, has been democratised.
And yes, the myths swirl. A rumored Radiohead drop-in. A Prodigy set that doubles as a resurrection and a tribute to the late Keith Flint—expect something fierce, fractured, and full of fire. And The Searchers, Britain’s oldest pop group, preparing their final bow. If you’re not crying by the end of their set, you’re probably dehydrated.
What this year’s Glastonbury whispers—beneath the lights, beyond the headliners—is that music is still how we gather our sense of self. Still how we protest, party, and mourn. Still the language we return to when words fail and the world feels too much. It’s a place where identity stretches its arms and dares to be bigger than the boxes it came in.
So no, this isn’t just another Glastonbury. It never is. It’s a living, breathing argument that chaos can be cathartic, that memory can be melodic, and that even in a world increasingly built to be scrolled past, some things demand to be witnessed in the mud, in the moment, in real time.
See you in the fields, or up at the Stone Circle for more grass roots music and vibes!
Words & photos – Richard Isaac
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