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The National
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Here's how TRNSMT gender balance looks in 2025. It needs work
New research by The National has found that while the representation of female artists at the festival has improved significantly since it launched in 2017, the number of women performing is still far behind its contemporary events. While festivals like Primavera and Glastonbury have been putting on gender-balanced line-ups for several years, TRNSMT – which has taken the title of Scotland's largest music festival since the demise of T in the Park – is not keeping up. Our findings also show there is a stark difference in gender balancing between the festival's premiere Main Stage and its much smaller King Tut's area. Meanwhile, just one woman has been in a headline act at TRNSMT – Pulp keyboardist Candida Doyle. That means just one act out of 26 headliners has featured a woman, representing 3% of all headliners over the years. Pulp on stage (Image: Adam Kennedy) The festival's lack of women has long been a source of discussion, with DF Concerts CEO Geoff Ellis, TRNSMT's director, previously saying that organisers would "love there to be a higher representation of females". To do that, he said we "need to get more females picking up guitars, forming bands, playing in bands". But other UK and European festivals are already achieving gender balanced line-ups, with plenty of women with guitars and bands taking to the stage. Our research found that in 2017, TRNSMT started out with 10% of its Main Stage acts featuring at least one woman. By 2019, this had improved to 19%, and by 2023 had hit 42%. But this year that figure is back down at 29%, meaning less than a third of this weekend's Main Stage performers feature at least one woman. But elsewhere, the percentage of women on the King Tut's stage is nearing gender balance. This year, 48% of acts feature at least one woman – undoubtedly a huge improvement on the 10% recorded back in its debut edition. There are plenty of women available to perform in the festival's secondary area, but not to take the top spots on its flagship stage. READ MORE: Main stage act pulls out of TRNSMT Festival in Glasgow Next year, it would be great to see at least one woman take the main headlining slot at TRNSMT. While the King Tut's stage championing women in the earlier stages of their careers is welcome, the truth is that women aren't sitting around waiting to break through into the mainstream. Women in music are running things in 2020s, sweeping the awards shows, selling out festivals like Primavera Barcelona and literally boosting the economy with huge spectacles including Taylor Swift and Beyonce's arena tours prompting massive spending among fans. It's time for TRNSMT to recognise that, and be brave with their curation for 2026.
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pulp's secret Glastonbury set review – still the magnificently misshapen oddballs of British pop
'Sorry for people who were expecting Patchwork,' says Jarvis Cocker, in reference to the mysterious name that appeared on the Glastonbury bill in lieu of Pulp's. 'How did you know we were going to play?' In fairness, Pulp did their best to conceal their appearance at the festival (as Cocker says, it's 30 years and four days since they were parachuted into the Glastonbury headlining slot, a now-legendary performance that sealed their ascendancy). Keyboard player Candida Doyle even gave an interview to a local Somerset newspaper insisting that while they wanted to play, Glastonbury 'weren't interested'. But clearly no one was convinced – the Pyramid stage is headlining-set heaving. There's something charming about the fact that they open with Sorted For E's & Wizz, a song that takes a pretty equivocal, even steely view of the kind of hedonism that prevails at Glastonbury: proof, should it be needed, that Pulp remain a band who seldom go about things the straightforward way. Listening to them play their 90s hits – Mis‐Shapes, Disco 2000, Babies – you're struck by how little they had in common with their ostensible Britpop contemporaries. Their wonky collision of 70s glam, French pop, disco and analogue electronics didn't sound like any of their peers, nor was the prevailing mood of their songs much in tune with the supposed mood of the era. They're substantially darker and grubbier, consistently sticking up for oddballs and outsiders at a time when alternative music was making a lunge for a mainstream audience. It's as if they became huge coincidentally, rather than as part of a movement. This means that, for all the nostalgia their old songs evoke in anyone who can remember the 90s – and a quick scan around the audience reveals a number of people looking distinctly moist-eyed as they play – they aren't welded to the era in which they were first recorded, so they haven't really dated. Moreover, there isn't really any diminution in quality when they drop in Spike Island and Got To Have Love, two songs from their comeback album More, a smart reapplication of their longstanding approach to a later stage of life. Cocker, meanwhile, remains a fantastic frontman, dispensing sage wisdom about the festival itself – 'to enjoy Glastonbury, you have to submit to it' – and reflecting on how terrified the band were to find themselves filling in at short notice for an indisposed Stone Roses in 1995: 'But I feel very relaxed today – how about you?' You'd probably feel quite relaxed too if you knew you had Common People as your closing number. Surely the most straightforwardly rousing anthem ever written about class rage, it causes delirium on a scale not so different from that you can see in old footage of their headlining appearance: a highlight then, it's also one of the most joyous moments so far in this year's festival. Presumably somewhat by coincidence, the Red Arrows stage a flypast midway through the song. And off Pulp go, Jarvis promising to see the audience in Arcadia later. This review was updated on 29 June with a correction: it was 30 years since their last appearance on the Pyramid stage, not the broader festival.
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pulp's secret Glastonbury set review – still the magnificently misshapen oddballs of British pop
'Sorry for people who were expecting Patchwork,' says Jarvis Cocker, in reference to the mysterious name that appeared on the Glastonbury bill in lieu of Pulp's. 'How did you know we were going to play?' In fairness, Pulp did their best to conceal their appearance at the festival (as Cocker says, it's 30 years and four days since they were parachuted into the Glastonbury headlining slot, a now-legendary performance that sealed their ascendancy). Keyboard player Candida Doyle even gave an interview to a local Somerset newspaper insisting that while they wanted to play, Glastonbury 'weren't interested'. But clearly no one was convinced – the Pyramid stage is headlining-set heaving. There's something charming about the fact that they open with Sorted For E's & Wizz, a song that takes a pretty equivocal, even steely view of the kind of hedonism that prevails at Glastonbury: proof, should it be needed, that Pulp remain a band who seldom go about things the straightforward way. Listening to them play their 90s hits – Mis‐Shapes, Disco 2000, Babies – you're struck by how little they had in common with their ostensible Britpop contemporaries. Their wonky collision of 70s glam, French pop, disco and analogue electronics didn't sound like any of their peers, nor was the prevailing mood of their songs much in tune with the supposed mood of the era. They're substantially darker and grubbier, consistently sticking up for oddballs and outsiders at a time when alternative music was making a lunge for a mainstream audience. It's as if they became huge coincidentally, rather than as part of a movement. This means that, for all the nostalgia their old songs evoke in anyone who can remember the 90s – and a quick scan around the audience reveals a number of people looking distinctly moist-eyed as they play – they aren't welded to the era in which they were first recorded, so they haven't really dated. Moreover, there isn't really any diminution in quality when they drop in Spike Island and Got To Have Love, two songs from their comeback album More, a smart reapplication of their longstanding approach to a later stage of life. Cocker, meanwhile, remains a fantastic frontman, dispensing sage wisdom about the festival itself – 'to enjoy Glastonbury, you have to submit to it' – and reflecting on how terrified the band were to find themselves filling in at short notice for an indisposed Stone Roses in 1995: 'But I feel very relaxed today – how about you?' You'd probably feel quite relaxed too if you knew you had Common People as your closing number. Surely the most straightforwardly rousing anthem ever written about class rage, it causes delirium on a scale not so different from that you can see in old footage of their headlining appearance: a highlight then, it's also one of the most joyous moments so far in this year's festival. Presumably somewhat by coincidence, the Red Arrows stage a flypast midway through the song. And off Pulp go, Jarvis promising to see the audience in Arcadia later.
BBC News
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Glastonbury's mystery band Patchwork were Pulp, after all
Glastonbury's worst-kept secret is out. The mystery band billed as Patchwork were, in fact, Pulp. Still, no-one was prepared to believe it until it happened."If Robbie Williams comes out? No, I'm leaving," said a woman next to me in the audience, as the stage filled with random people - common people - dressed in plastic Jarvis Cocker strode onto the Pyramid Stage, receiving a hero's welcome as he launched into Sorted for E's & Wizz, from Pulp's career-making 1995 album Different Class. "Sorry to the people who were expecting Patchwork," he drawled after the song ended. "Did you know it was us?" The crowd responded "yes", with what I can only describe as a collective eye-roll."But how?" Cocker the run-up to the festival, the Sheffield band had tried in vain to keep their identity said they'd only attend if it was a "life or death situation", while keyboard player Candida Doyle told BBC 6 Music that organisers "weren't interested" in booking course, it was all an elaborate double bluff. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the band's historic 1995 headline set on the Pyramid Stage - and they're currently enjoying a renaissance, with a new album called More! topping the charts. With Glastonbury taking a fallow year in 2026, it was now or never. Their set featured several new songs, including the celebratory Spike Island and a gospel-flavoured Got To Have Love. But everyone was really waiting for the big hits: Babies, Misfits and Common the crowd bounced, Cocker flapped across the stage like a washing line in a stiff breeze, his arms flailing and pointing at during Acrylic Afternoons - a hymn to the mundane realities of suburban sex - he walked along the front of the stage, tossing tea bags to fans. His idiosyncrasy remains intact. Among the fans singing along (and taking videos) in the audience were Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis and former Radio 2 DJ Zoe Ball, who said she was experiencing "total euphoric recall"."Hearing all those songs again, with my old mates, jumping up and down... I love being here with all these people who love them as well," she said."It was a real high." A poem from Robbie Williams Pulp's 1995 headline slot has gone down in history as one of Glastonbury's most memorable and triumphant sets - but it was actually a last-minute booking, after Stone Roses guitarist John Squire broke his collar later revealed "it was the most nervous I've ever been in my life"."But then Robbie from Take That came and wished us luck," he told Vox magazine."Robbie read us some of his poetry. I was dubious at first, because sometimes poetry can be embarrassing, but it was really good."The performance came just a couple of weeks after the release of what would become their signature song, Common People. With the anthem lodged at number two in the charts, the band held it to the very end of their set for maximum he introduced the track, Cocker gave a heartfelt speech about the band's slow-burn career."If you want something to happen enough, then it actually will happen – and I believe that," he said."In fact, that's why we're stood on this stage today after 15 years, because we wanted it to happen, do you know what I mean?"So if a lanky git like me can do it, you can do it too."And with that, they launched into a celebratory, communal, 7-minute singalong that confirmed Pulp's status as the poet laureates of Britpop."That was the event that made the success a concrete fact," Cocker later told Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. The band went on to sell more than 10 million records before taking a decade-long hiatus in toured again sporadically after that, but only committed to making a new record last year after receiving "an offer we weren't sure we could refuse".On stage at Glastonbury, Cocker explained how they'd gathered in a "living room in the north of England" to make a decision."We had one poor quality acoustic guitar, and out of tune piano and an African drum, and we attempted to play this song and at the end of it we somehow decided to tour."That song was Something Changed, possibly the band's most romantic moment, which they played on those same instruments, gathered in a circle at the centre of the Pyramid the rest of the set, it was a sentimental gesture, steeped in finished, naturally, with Common People - enhanced by a Red Arrows flypast at the song's climax. The timing of the stunt finally explained why the singer had spent the majority of the set checking his he left the stage, Cocker thanked the audience and promised, "I'll see you at Arcadia later, alright?" It's a date.
Perth Now
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Chappell Roan rumoured for surprise set at Glastonbury
Chappell Roan is rumoured to be the mystery artist, Patchwork, who is scheduled to perform at Glastonbury. The Pink Pony Club hitmaker has made no secret of the fact she loves patchwork, having worn a pink patchwork ensemble to the 2025 Met Gala, and just before the world-famous festival opened its doors on Wednesday morning (25.06.25) , the pop star posted a picture of her holding a colourful patchwork throw when she was little. She simply captioned the carousel that included the throwback picture: "Insane vibe." Whoever Patchwork is, they are due to play the Pyramid Stage on Saturday (28.06.25) at 6.15pm. Pulp had their name attached to the slot too, but the group's keyboardist Candida Doyle has claimed Glastonbury "weren't interested" in Pulp this year. The Britpop legends achieved widespread acclaim after their defining headline Glastonbury Festival performance in 1995, which saw them step in for The Stone Roses. Jarvis Cocker and co returned to top the bill on the Pyramid Stage in 1998, before a surprise appearance on The Park Stage in 2011. However, Candida claimed Michael and Emily Eavis didn't want the Common People hitmakers playing a set to mark their 30th anniversary. She told BBC Radio 6 Music: 'We wanted to [play Glastonbury], just because it's the 30th anniversary and that kind of thing, and they weren't interested. 'And then we were thinking maybe next year, and then they're not doing it next year.' Frontman Jarvis also previously ruled out a Glastonbury return for Pulp - who released their first album in 24 years, More, earlier this month - but suggested he could do an impromptu DJ set. He told Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2: 'I will be going to Glastonbury, and I might DJ. 'Well, you know, I do occasionally DJ at Glastonbury in a place called Stone Bridge near The Park Stage. I will be happy to see what is going on there." Asked if a Pulp set was on the cards, he replied: 'I don't think that's going to happen. If it was a life-or-death situation, but I really don't think it's going to happen.' Neil Young, The 1975, and Olivia Rodrigo are the 2025 Glastonbury headliners. Sir Rod Stewart will play the Sunday afternoon legends slot. Charli XCX, Loyle Carner, The Prodigy, Raye, The Maccabees, Wet Leg, Doechii and many more will perform at Worthy Farm this weekend.
