The 1975 live at Glastonbury: Matty Healy and co play it straight

“Let me be sincere,” The 1975’s Matty Healy tells the crowd at Glastonbury roughly five times across their headline set on the Pyramid Stage. For a man and his band who have become known for their winking irony and controversy above all else, it’s surprising and fascinating in equal measure that this is to be the main mode of their biggest ever gig.

In the nine years since they last played Glastonbury, on the Other Stage, the Manchester band have consistently topped betting tips to finally headline, as they quickly became one of the biggest UK bands of their generation. Today, they’re the first British band to headline the festival for the first time since 2014.

When the call finally did come in from Emily Eavis, they had no new music ready and no other gigs planned for 2025, and it makes their Friday night headline set a true one-off, as well as one that has reportedly lost them a stunning amount of money.

That money is spent on a dizzying array of screens that guide casual fans in the field and on television through the band’s greatest hits, flashing up lyrics that justify Healy calling himself “the greatest songwriter of his generation” in between songs. He does take time to also refer to himself as “a poet,” nodding to the recent album title of his ex, Taylor Swift. The song that immediately follows the declaration, though, is the notoriously hard to decipher ‘Chocolate’. When gibberish lyrics then come across the screen, karaoke-style, it’s one of the only times in the set that the self-skewering, ironic Matty Healy we know best comes out to play.

Otherwise, he plays a genuinely overwhelmed and bracingly sincere songwriter. “Oh Jesus,” he says at one point, when the house lights come on and he sees the extent of the crowd before him. “Yeah, it’s normal, it’s fine.” He appears on the verge of tears at countless points during the set, and departs the stage at the show’s end after a tender and heartfelt embrace with his bandmates.

For a band so associated with conceptual live shows, gags that toe the line between humour and unacceptability and a chaotic energy that teeters gloriously close to collapse, the Glastonbury set sometimes feels like a safe and palatable version of Healy and The 1975, designed to allow those at the back of the field and on their sofas at home through the door. It doesn’t have the ragged and blurred edges that have given them as many haters as adoring fans, and that also saw them sued by a Malaysian festival last year when Healy kissed bandmate Ross MacDonald.

Maybe it’s genuine emotion and overwhelm on the band’s part that gives the set this vibe – if there was a punchline for his watery eyes and sincere gratitude, it never arrived – or purely a determination to let the songs do the talking. If the latter, this greatest hits set proves that they have the tunes to top the Pyramid Stage and a lot more.

“In 2025, with zero irony, a guitar solo!” Healy shouts before Adam Hann rips through the spiky solo to ‘Love Me’, while ‘Somebody Else’ and ‘Paris’ are tender tearjerkers. They also have balls-out hits (‘It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You)’, ‘If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)’), energetic rockers (‘Sex’, ‘People’) and their Oasis moment on the sublime ‘I Always Wanna Die (Sometimes)’.

While steering clear of trouble largely serves the band well here, Healy’s speech about the “conscious decision” to not make the show political (“People watching this might be disappointed at the lack of politics in this show”) feels a little at odds with the footage of children washed up on beaches during ‘Love It If We Made It’, Healy’s state-of-the-nation masterpiece from 2018, a few minutes later.

In that speech, as with almost the entire show, we get a window into the nervous, sincere songwriter behind all the posturing. Whether it’s a one-off peak behind the curtain or a new mode entirely for Healy, it gives the show a unique slant for die-hards and new converts alike.

“We love you guys,” the frontman tells the crowd before closing with the gorgeous ‘About You’ after stumbling through a final speech where he seems to struggle to get his thoughts out. Instead, he simply fires up the band and looks to the skies, the most verbose and characterful songwriter of a generation finally lost for words.

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