A lot has been said about how Reading Festival 2019 was a textbook example of how to revitalise a festival that had lost its way over the last few years.
Some journalists have noted how this year’s bash had a decidedly lighter, more youthful audience than previous years’ editions; others, on the other hand, have merely commended the cohesion achieved between stages and genres, observing with pleasure that the mish-mash of genres that is the average young person’s music taste was reflected far better across the numerous stages of this year’s festival than it has been for many years prior.
None of that, however, was said by us. For, dear reader – and we really do hate to admit it – this was Team One on One‘s first-ever Reading Festival. That means that not only have we just slid a bit further down every indie cool-kid’s Hot List, but that we were able to approach this year’s festival with nothing more than our usual clear, objective, and integral journalistic mindset.
Our findings, beloved one, were simple.
Reading 2019 was – in a nutshell – fucking epic. We spent three days scouring the stages of Berkshire’s premier alternative music weekender in order to furnish you with our definitive verdict on the very best sets, singalongs, and surprises from across this year’s Reading Festival and here’s what we found.
The 1975
It’s safe to say that nobody had higher hopes for The 1975‘s Reading Festival headline set than Matty Healy himself. The frontman has – for better or worse – spent the last few years proclaiming both himself and his band to be one of the most important cultural installations of the last decade – but, based on their performance at Reading, who could blame them?
Not only did Healy and co. use their headline slot to wheel out some of the most vital – and, let’s not forget, best – pop songs of recent times, but they also found time to give a sixteen-year-old girl a four-minute monologue about the necessity of climate change action, play a three-minute-long instrumental techno track to a huddle of pissed-up indie-rockers, and repeatedly impress upon the crowd how this was, for them, absolutely fucking mental. To call it a triumph doesn’t even come close: all hail The 1975.
Billie Eilish
If 2019’s been Billie Eilish‘s year, then Reading was her festival. The American goth-pop star is still only seventeen – seventeen! – years old, but based on her performance at Richfield Avenue, we’d be majorly surprised if she wasn’t headlining festivals outright by the time that she reaches her twenties.
Bad Guy, You Should See Me In A Crown, and Xanny may not be seasoned classics, but if the reaction of the tweens and teens at the front of the stage were anything to go by, they’re already era-defining. Combine that with the fact that her Reading set attracted, according to the organisers, literally the biggest crowd that Reading Festival has ever seen, and you’ve got the makings of a superstar.
You Me At Six
We forgot how many #hits they had until they trotted them all out on the Main Stage on Friday afternoon. Respect to anyone who can accidentally borrow a guitar riff from another band and then dedicate said track to that band at a major festival, too.
YUNGBLUD
We’ve told you before that a YUNGBLUD live set is the audio-visual equivalent to a right hook from Anthony Joshua. Now, take that, throw in thirty-degree heat, a crowd of screaming teenagers, and a circle pit that was entirely too large for 2:40pm on a Sunday afternoon, and you’ve got YUNGBLUD’s Reading Festival set. Batshit crazy? Yes. Undeniably, unequivocally brilliant? Why, of course.
Twenty One Pilots
They may have been shunted into a co-headline slot with Post Malone, but within about twenty minutes of their set, there was absolutely no doubt in the minds of anybody in the vicinity that they could’ve headlined the thing outright. If there’s anything that a Reading Festival crowd loves, it’s a stadium-pop song that segues into an Eminem-esque rap verse via a slow, synth-driven breakdown: or, at least what you’d think, judging by the near-frenzied reaction of precisely everybody in the vicinity when they dropped Lane Boy. And Jumpsuit. And Car Radio, Heathens, and Chlorine. Need we go on?
Machine Gun Kelly
Cleveland’s Machine Gun Kelly – or, ‘Kelz’, as his friends call him – may not be a global star in the same vein of Billie Eilish, Dave Grohl, or Matty Healy yet; but, based on the strength of his set at the BBC Radio 1 stage, it’s only a matter of time. He delivered half an hour of near-perfect rap-rock, unleashed enough pyro to make any self-respecting Health & Safety inspector raise what’s left of their eyebrows, and even brought out YUNGBLUD for a jolly ol’ rendition of I Think I’m OKAY. What a guy.
Honorable mentions must also go to…
Georgia
Yes, she is as good as everyone keeps saying she is. No, we don’t know why she isn’t supermassive yet, either. STOP PRESSURING US
Foo Fighters
THEY’RE THE FLIPPIN’ FOO FIGHTERS. YOU DON’T NEED US TO TELL YOU THAT THEY’RE PRETTY BLOODY GOOD.
