Key events
Caribou loving that near-solstice sunset.
Scissor Sisters reviewed
Ammar Kalia
It seems 2025 is the year millennials fully took over Glastonbury. The lineup is packed to the gills with acts innately familiar to anyone British over the age of 30, from the radio sing-along fodder of the Kaiser Chiefs and the Fratellis to indie darlings the Maccabees, righteous storyteller Kate Nash and nursery-rhyme rappers Rizzle Kicks.
The majority of these acts are little more than neatly packaged nostalgia – churning out decades-old hits without much to show for their ensuing time spent in the wilderness. That isn’t the case for Scissor Sisters, whose catalogue still feels as fresh as it did when it was first released.
Celebrating 21 years since their self-titled debut, the queer cabaret pop group prove to be so popular during the clash-ridden Saturday night lineup of Charli xcx and Doechii that the Woodsies stage is temporarily shut down, with crowds sprawling outside the tent to reach the treeline of the woods behind.
Frontman Jake Shears is unperturbed, launching into a slick set filled with latex body-con choreography and hit after hit after hit. Although the current iteration of the band is missing frontwoman Ana Matronic, Scissor Sisters’ sound is undiminished thanks to the addition of two new singers, leading them to launch into a raucous rendition of She’s My Man, the rollicking honky-tonk of I Can’t Decide and the kitsch Tits on the Radio. Throughout, Shears’s piercing falsetto is flawless, carrying melodies so infectious that the millennial crowd sings along word for word from the barriers to the back, drawing on formative years hearing the group constantly on the radio.
There is glitz in the form of special guests Jessie Ware (on Take Your Mama) and – wow – Ian McKellen (on Invisible Light), but it’s the feelgood integrity of the songs themselves that shine through. Closing tracks like the euphoric I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ and Filthy/Gorgeous keep the massive crowd bouncing, proving that these tunes are as relevant now in our bleak times as they ever were.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Charli xcx being various flavours, tones and hues of iconic.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
And now more people are piling into the cabin with eyeballs turned into heart emojis on recounting Doechii’s set. Our subeditor JP said it’s the best thing he’s seen all weekend by far. Some pics from her set here:
In a demonstration of how ridiculously stuffed this Saturday night is, I kind of forgot that Scissor Sisters were even playing. The iPlayer feed was broken at point, so I never went back to it. Our Ammar has just come in rhapsodising about it – we’ll have a review from him soon. And have a read of their exclusive comeback interview with us from earlier in the year:
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
I didn’t even get to check back on that brief but presumably mind-blowing Doechii set. One for when I’m curled in a blanket on Tuesday. Caribou now doing some ersatz Chicago house – how generic are these pianos and bassline? Though the French touch-style cut-up vocal samples are pretty euphoric to be fair, and the Beach Boys vocal harmonising adds a lovely naivety.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Neil Young doing Rockin’ in the Free World now, his savage overview of the devastated, rootless America left by Reaganomics and a free market mindset. So just a teeny little bit relevant today. “She puts the kid away and she’s gonna take a hit / She hates her life and what she’s done to it / That’s one more kid, that’ll never go to school / Never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.” Some of the best lyrics you’ll ever hear. Something about not getting to be cool is so moving.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Charli is maxing out the Auto-Tune to T-Pain levels of robo-insanity, but it sounds totally amazing on Blame It on Your Love as she writhes under a monsoon’s-worth of rain, with plenty of running her fingers lasciviously over her tongue. Hope she’s visited a hand sanitiser station recently.
And then it’s into I :Love It, her hit track with Icona Pop (memba them?), a kind of garage rock song done as electroclash trash – and a track Charli has decided to massively reclaim as the very peak of her Brat-era live shows. And deservedly so – it’s the dumbest and funnest dumb fun you can have.
Neil’s cracked out the harmonica and heavenly vocal harmonising for Name of Love, a song from CSNY’s 1988 reunion album American Dream (made after David Crosby had cleaned up following a spell in prison for having a gun and drugs on him). It might sound sentimental coming from others – “And so I shout around the world / Do it in the name of love / To every boy and every girl / Do it in the name of love” – but from Neil there’s a genuinely beseeching tone, like he really believes, but ever so slightly doubts, that humanity can better himself.
First Charli xcx pic has dropped from the photographers’ pit, and she’s pouting harder than my three-year-old when I ask her to brush her teeth. She’s now doing Party 4 U with what looks like a pint of white wine. Charli xcx that is, unless my three-year-old’s bedtime routine has gone really wayward in my absence.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Charli’s speeding through Speed Drive, Neil’s crunching through another extemporised guitar solo, and now Caribou’s got going up on the Park with an altogether cleaner guitar sound floating through their track Climbing.
And now Charli’s in full voice for Sympathy Is a Knife. I think me and my girlfriend scared a series of teenagers at the O2 Arena when she dropped this. Lot of arms flying around. Did we ever work out if this song is about Taylor Swift or not? Forget what I said about 360 earlier, this is the best Charli xcx song.
Doechii’s West Holts set starts
This is where I really start regretting letting my colleagues have a fun night out, because Doechii has started up on West Holts and we have three icons all playing at the same time. Meanwhile, I’m typing under strip lighting and drinking-room temperature pilsner.
Doechii is doing Alter Ego and does a costume change halfway through under a series of umbrellas, and then there’s some Vogue dancing as the track gets spliced with Gypsy Woman. And then it’s Persuasive mashed up with Daft Punk’s One More Time. It’s Saturday night!!
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Meanwhile Neil Young has tried to one-up Charli by bringing out Addison Rae to do a freeform dance routine to an 18-minute version of Tonight’s the Night. No, I’m just being silly.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
I’m getting whiplash from flipping between the streams here – Charli is doing the exquisitely pretty AG Cook-produced Unlock it (Lock It), and actually doing the most heartfelt singing of her set so far, with a nice bit of pitch-bending Auto-Tune.
Then it’s Apple. I was kind of hoping that Hollywood heartthrob Glen Powell, who is in the crowd, would do the Apple dance – but no, it’s Gracie Abrams! Still pretty great!
Neil just said he’s playing Hank Williams’s guitar: a truly battered old acoustic with wood worn away, used to play Looking Forward by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Our photographer Jonny Weeks was down in the pit just now and came back with these pics.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
After a rendition of 360 – Charli’s greatest work imo – that backdrop gets set on fire as if to underline that we are not in Brat summer any more, Toto. Then it’s down to the front row for a catwalk-crushing walkabout to Von Dutch, Charli shaking her bum in leather hot pants, Alexander McQueen scarf and sunglasses at night. Then a handbrake turn into I Might Say Something Stupid, which Tom Odell could have written, to be honest.
Charli xcx’s Other stage headline set begins
It’s Charli baby! She kicks off with an ultra-hardcore mashup of 365, Club Classics and Von Dutch like something from a Dutch gabber festival – and a curtain falls to reveal the corroded artwork to Brat, signifying how she’s slowly leaving that zeitgeist-defining album behind, letting it rot. Not sure I’m technically allowed to express it in these terms on the guardian dot com, but the cuntiness levels are set very high from the off. “Put your fucking hands up!!” she commands everyone.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Neil Young’s doing Fuckin’ Up, and gives us the first classic guitar solo of the night. Neil in this mode really produces one of the most beautiful sounds in the whole of rock – noise that jerks and spasms, halts and struggles, like the guitar’s got too many things to say and only so many words to say them with.
Then it’s Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black) – and the three steady notes that punctuate the end of the main riff are my favourite sound in the whole Young catalogue, these smears of noise that intimate some kind of warning or barrier.
