SpencerF

Honestly, the whole 'Who is SZA?' shitck is incredibly ignorant, from my point of view. She's more than capable of headlining and easily has the draw - just because a few rock n roll heads don't listen to that sort of music, doesn't mean she isn't capable. Stats are stats and at the end of the day, she has an audience of 70m monthly on Spotify alone, one of the biggest albums of the decade so far as well as featuring on two of the biggest albums to come out last year. I get it not being the music you're into; but honestly if you've never heard of an artist that popular who has dominated so much of the charts for the last couple years, then it's a you problem - not the festival 'running out of options'. Saw someone say Foals would draw in a bigger crowd ffs

Had 20+ devices across multiple different people trying yesterday and we didn't even get a sniff of the booking page - 90mins of the 'will refresh after 20 seconds' page and then instantly to the 'sold out' page, first year I haven't even had a look in, so that's disappointing. Sad to hear of the host hack thing, but it's to be expected nowadays so no grudges and it's bound to be a small proportion of the general sale. Will look to go again for the resale, though getting 6 tickets in that seems a TASK. On the bright side, I might be due a year off. Got insanely good Taylor seats for her show in Lisbon next year, so the inevitable £1000+ spent at Glastonbury can go towards spending that on the Mrs instead and being able to see Macca, Elton, Kendrick and more over the past 2 festivals has been great

Crying at the fact some people think you're not doing Glastonbury 'properly' unless you're shitting in a hole and sleeping/camping in pure discomfort

As much as I'm not a fan of the new Monkeys music, I can at least appreciate some of it and find it palatable. The new songs weren't the issue as much as the setlist/stage presence/performance. The crowd were so up for a singsong, a bit of a dance and a special 'Glastonbury moment' which we never got - I Wanna Be Yours was an insanely weird encore choice, as was the opener. A lack of fan favourites from the back catalogue and a slowed down, self indulged performance of the few we did get caused groans, yawns and a fair few exits from where I was stood - turned into less of an excited 'we all want to singalong' vibe to people being scared to sing along because it didn't match what Alex was doing on stage. Peculiar. First time I've had a really sour taste coming out of a headliner and wouldn't hope for them to be booked again anytime soon if at all.

Olivia Rodrigo for a high up slot on the pyramid or other could be a shout given the fact she's releasing another album shortly and her popularity, surely?

Tour dates means she could only possibly do Sunday; as well as having to cut her 3.5 hour setlist down to a festival friendly, shorter setlist with an almost certainty of an extra Dublin date being added due to demand before the a week break. Odds on the bookies mean nothing apart from more people betting on that artist - people tipping her after the all male headliners this year and previously being booked before COVID.

Camping near Pedestrian Gate B and one night this bloke was absolutely trollied, don't know if anyone else here heard him but he wasn't just loud, he was LOUD. Kept shouting sh*t like 'LIVERPOOL AND 49' and then had this proper annoying baby voice he kept doing. Then he found out it was 6am so thought it was about time to wake everyone up with shouting and howling for a solid hour. Genuinely was a collective 'shut the f**k up' from multiple tents, which just made him louder - got to the point where if you didn't laugh you would have cried. Apart from that, everything is just a little inconvenience that everyone deals with - still pisses me off how coffin dodgers can camp right at the barrier for the pyramid all day and as soon as you see their face on TV, they know none of the songs and look like they've been hit in the face with a sh*t stick. Was front and centre for Arctic Monkeys and genuinely, someone at the barrier went on someones shoulders - was in disbelief and heard audible groans when someone with already the best view in the house went that extra mile.

Agreed - was underwhelmed when she got announced in 2020 and the missus (huge Swiftie) took it as an opportunity to take me through her back catalogue. Blown away, majority of songs you hear from Taylor that gets radio time are her worst - extremely talented and genuinely great artist. Probably my most listened to artist on Spotify this year now.

Who the f**k are The Churnups?

Just want to take this moment while we're all waiting to say Good Morning to everyone except Chris Martin

Yeah, it makes sense - it's a shame how it has timed itself. Still though, I would have expected Emily to try and pull something out of the hat considering how much she's brought up that issue before, I'm sure there would have been someone willing to do a one off show/touring around that time that would want to headline the biggest show of their career. Just makes 2024 look all the more promising from my point of view, I guess.

Yeah, I agree it's all subjective - I haven't liked much that they've released from Humbug onwards. The fact they've done the festival a couple times before, have only released poorer stuff since (imo) and STILL get booked to headline just makes it all the more disappointing personally.

Very dependent on age groups, I'm just assuming that festival goers are generally of a younger demographic and the older demographic are more likely to know modern acts due to radio time/being introduced to them by kids and such. To know much of GnR outside the big hitters, you'd actively have to go out of your way to dig into their discography

AM and GnR are incredibly uninspired and underwhelming, I'm shocked we don't have at least one female headliner - I agree with the sentiment that they really must have ran out of options this year. While AM are GnR are undoubtedly big names, stature alone doesn't warrant a place headlining the pyramid. Genuinely believe AM might be one of the most overrated acts ever, they had a certain 'cool, nostalgic' indie vibe that most teenagers can relate to/want to be able to relate to in some way and have literally produced no album of any real top quality since 'FWN'. Their last couple have been nothing short of poor, pretentious bores and their recent setlists don't look much better. GnR are again huge, but I genuinely think if you ask the majority of the population to name more than a handful of their songs, most couldn't do it. Obviously they've got hits, but recent poor performances and lack of a fleshed out, widely known setlist that everyone can get excited about indicates to me that it's clearly a poor choice. I like some of their songs, but not enough to justify standing there for hours getting through loads of back catalogue I - and I'm assuming the majority - have no interest in. Will happily be elsewhere, but it's always nice to be excited by the main 3 which unfortunately isn't the case this year. More time for beer runs though!

SZA is dropping this month so would she potentially make an appearance as an other stage headliner ala Megan Thee Stallion? 070 Shake would be great but I don't know how likely that is. Ari Lennox dropped a great project this year. Wizkid would draw a big crowd in too I'm sure, but again I don't know how likely that is - just throwing out names that have dropped recently/are going to drop

Completely forgot he was there this year, he did a secret set at the rabbit hole at like 1am, right? Think I was on the opposite end of the site, so personally would be nice to see a full set on a bigger stage - especially after the drop of hugo.

Surely Loyle Carner makes an appearance? Got tickets for his Leicester date but would be great to see him at Glasto. Any chance of JID despite his Europe/UK dates being a bit earlier in the year? Wouldn't be shocked to see Lancey Foux there too.

I will take any shred of hope that they aren't headlining that I can get. COME ONNNNNNN

GnR and AM can surely only mean a female headliner as the third slot? Fuck me what a poor first two headliners if it's true - both nowhere near the levels they used to be (not in terms of size, but quality - in my opinion) and very geared towards the same type of crowd. First year I may not be seeing any of the headliners!

AFUT for AOTY.

Went to his Birmingham show Saturday and the performance and artistry was amazing, the crowd was shitty though. Young teens ripping their shirts off and trying to get pits going for songs that really didn't need it (Father Time? Really?) Shockingly little crowd participation for a huge amount of the MMATBS songs too, but Kendrick was faultless as per and the Keem x Kendrick chemistry at the end of the set is great. His Glasto set was generational so it's non-comparable, but still one of the best standalone gigs I've been to in some time; even if everything was slightly delayed because him and his team (apparently) ordered 500+ chicken wings and more from Nandos

Yup - ever since Reading and Leeds decided to move from the 3 headliner setup the the '3 co-headliner' set up, the quality of headliners has declined (imo anyway). Obviously it makes sense, you have a budget that can only go so far and you're trying to book six 'headline' acts. Here's the NME review - https://www.nme.com/reviews/live/catfish-the-bottlemen-reading-festival-2021-3031483 'Not for the first time in their career, Catfish and the Bottlemen are closely followed by rumours of their demise' is just a funny opening sentence and I can't even explain why.

Was just using streaming numbers as an example, I'd say The Beatles having as many streams as one of the biggest female artists about right now, despite them not having released an album in 52 years and only semi-recently coming to streaming only shows how massive they were/continue to be, despite everything. Catfish and the Bottlemen also headlined Reading only last year and they're nowhere near Glastonbury headliners, I don't get the whole 'They've headlined Reading!' argument personally - I get they get big acts every year, but the two festivals aren't really comparable in terms of appeal and draw for artists imho.

Christ, please not The 1975 - I don't think they're even big enough to headline? Maybe it's just music preference and me not really being into them outside of a few songs, but I cannot imagine them pulling in a huge crowd. Megan Thee Stallion has almost double the amount of monthly listeners on Spotify and headlined the Other last year, for comparison. SZA has over double the amount at almost 33m monthly listeners and a new project coming out, would much prefer to see her headline after doing Wireless this year but I doubt that'll happen either - it doesn't matter if they've headlined other festivals before, I think the general view is that certain artists are just not really 'headliners'? Could be wrong. Probably am. Am most of the time.

Yeah this is fair, I'm just assuming the majority - statistically, if you asked a random group of people in this age range - wouldn't be too enthused by the idea, don't think that's too much of a stretch? Music is subjective though and we all have tastes so not knocking it, just not my cup of tea - just do feel like those 3 together does show a lack of variety. Off the back of their last few albums and live shows, I think seeing AM once is enough for one lifetime hahaha. Seems like this might be an other stage year for me - never a bad thing, but always like to have at least one major headliner to really look forward to.