Charli XCX live at Glastonbury: ‘Brat’ goes up in flames
Of all the cultural moments around the singer’s huge 2024 album, this Other Stage headline slot might be the pinnacle
Charli XCX’s Brat had been out in the world for two weeks when she came to Glastonbury 2024 to host her PARTYGIRL DJ night. The album wasn’t quite a global phenomenon then, but was gathering steam, and the whole Silver Hayes area was shut down, given the enormous crowd that gathered.
In the year since, Glastonbury have significantly increased the capacity of the Other Stage, somewhat due to overcrowding at Avril Lavigne’s 2024 set, but also surely with one eye on Charli’s top slot on Saturday night, which felt like the real headline slot of the evening.
As expected, crowds turn up in their droves and there’s barely space to move even in the enlarged area. They then join Charli in 70 minutes of high octane, chaotic abandon. Most of Brat is played alongside sprinkles of what got Charli here (the resurgent lockdown song ‘party 4 u’, Pop 2’s playful ‘Unlock It’ and the Icona Pop megahit ‘I Love It’) and it’s all performed with a dazzling sense of confidence.
Through its remix album and high-profile guest spots, it might seem strange that not a single other person joins Charli on stage tonight, but after a decade of bubbling under and being a critic’s choice (“I’m famous but not quite,” goes ‘I might say something stupid’), it’s fitting that she headlines to such an enormous crowd with no-one but herself.
The production is minimal, as is her on-stage chat, but her superb dancing and energy, as well as the cultural behemoths that Brat songs have become, carry it easily. The imagery for the impending end of Brat has been all over Charli’s 2025 shows, and gets even less subtle here – after a one-two of the ‘365’ remix and ‘360’, the stage backdrop goes up in flames.
While Charli is clearly conflicted about the end of a defining era, her Glastonbury show has given the revelation of an album its crowning moment. Much like Matty Healy during The 1975’s Pyramid Stage headline show the night before, it’s enough to through pierce the mask. “I’m known to have a heart of stone,” Charli says to the crowd. “But this is very fucking emotional.”
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