Always Worth Saying’s Glasto Review

Always Worth Saying, Going Postal — Image generated using GROK AI

Glasto 27th-29th June 2025

Present:

Charli xcx
Bob Vylan
Neil Young

Venue: Glastonbury

What a struggle it was, but on your behalf this humble reviewer — devastated by the absence of Question Time during the House of Liars and Thieves’ summer break — finally got to Glasto, and on the hottest day of the year.

No, I don’t mean travelled the length of England on a crowded train with a heatwave-proof yurt on my back and a crate of Pimm’s on a trolley. Nor squeezing onto a shuttle bus to a West Country tor before paying £400 to get to the other side of a no-borders-emblazoned, 20-foot-high razor wire fence complete with guard towers.

No, that would have been too easy, for I was trying to watch it on the telly. Gone are the days of a row of buttons and the reassuring hum of warming valves. I have one of those smart TVs. What a carry-on.

Ordinarily, it takes 80 clicks of the ‘remote’ (which has to be pressed against the screen before it works) to get me from a standing start to one of my favourite railway videos. The big, black, oblong household god in the corner always misbehaves. It jumps about, asks me to sign up for a newsletter, goes blank, shows an animated logo in Korean, starts again, presents row after row of menus, none of which light up to allow you to know which one you’re clicking on. Grrrrr.

Finding the right Glasto stream last Saturday night was even more difficult as a truculent teenage girl called Neil Young hid in the ladies’ portaloo, tantrumming about allowing the BBC to use his footage. Not to worry. Step forward and take a bow, the adult in the room — or rather on the Pyramid Stage — that is Charli XCX.

With my octogenarian Canadian’s notes ripped up in frustration and thrown in the bin Like a Hurricane, I front-room-camped in front of Ms XCX’s opinion-dividing set of belting, strobe-exhausting rhythm. At least one boomer Brat bopped the night away while a repentant Neil Young droned to himself on another iPlayer channel.

As for the teenage thing, Charli XCX (not her real name, Charlotte Emma Aitchison) is approaching her twenties, but from the opposite direction. Born in 1992 in Cambridge, the 32-year-old has been part of the rave scene for many years.

After DJing and releasing numerous competent tracks, she hit the big time last year with a summer – and demographic – defining album called Brat. Yes, as Lady Gaga has the Monsters, Going Postal has the Puffins and the BBC attracts Jew-hating racists, so Miss XCX enjoys a fandom called the Brats.

Obviously, all in show business is false. Elsewhere at Glasto, tribute band Bob Vylan proved to be less Bob Dylan’s Maggie’s Farm and more Black September’s Dawson’s Field. As for the artist, Bob ‘Death to the IDF’ Vylan, despite the Arsenal shirt and North London youth vibes, is 34-year-old Pascal Robinson-Foster (his real name), who hails from Chantry in Suffolk — where the pleasant suburban houses change hands for an average £230,000.

As for Miss XCX, she addresses her background more honestly in the autobiographical tune Apple, which includes the quintessential, icon-defining lines:

Do you, do you, do you, do you
Do you, do you, do you, do you
Do you, do you, do you, do you
Do you, do you, do you, do you
Do you, do you, do you, do you
Do you, do you, do you, do you
Do you, do you, do you, do you
Do you, do you, do you, do you
Do you, do you

From elsewhere in the piece, we shall translate into middle-age-ese her self-descriptive lyric:

As the apple never falls far from the tree, Charlotte Emma wants to throw her own apple high into the sky so that when it falls to the ground and breaks, she can look inside and see of what she is made. The young songstress suspects that the insides will be of two shades and wonders of what colour they will be?

Tellingly, the song includes the following verse:

To the airport, the airport 
The airport, the airport 
The airport, the airport
 The airport, the airport

This part of the addictive, poppy track refers to mother Shamerra, a one-time nurse and flight attendant, who is of Gujarati origin, her family having been expelled from East Africa by Idi Amin. Charlotte’s father, Jon, is a Scot.

Mr Aitchison is widely described in mainstream media, even in Singapore Vogue (yes, Mrs AWS still subscribes), as an entrepreneur and showrunner. This is pushing it a bit, even by the standards of the foreign country that is the bastard child conceived in an unnatural act involving fake media and pop hype.

For Glasto Review HQ can reveal that Jon is a fellow of The Royal Philatelic Society London who runs stamp collecting exhibitions. Those entrepreneurial skills are put to use buying and selling Channel Island locals and 1972 Winter Olympic ice hockey sheetlets. By the by, his mighty work Stamps and Postal History of Lundy Island: An Illustrated, Specialised, Priced Guide and Handbook doesn’t appear in the Amazon bestsellers list, perhaps because it’s a bit too niche.

As for his daughter’s niche (no, don’t, behave yourselves, stop it), a friend tells me Charlotte specialises in a blend of hyperpop, electronic, and experimental pop with catchy hooks, glitchy production, and futuristic sounds. Notable for pushing boundaries, she mixes mainstream appeal with avant-garde elements. Her style often features bold, synth-driven beats, emotional lyrics, and collaborations with innovative producers like A. G. Cook and SOPHIE. Oh.

The Guardian newspaper adds that her music has been called dark wave, witch house, gothic pop, synth pop, pop punk, and avant-pop. Crikey.

Presumably because of her mother’s trolley-pushing career, rather than living in the barrios of gang-infested Los Angeles, the family resided close to Luton Airport. There, Charlotte grew up in the mean streets of a Bedfordshire hamlet while surviving the blackboard jungle that is the hood containing Bishop’s Stortford College.

Life was tough. In the interview with Vogue Singapore, Charlotte noted being victimised by a worse-than-MS-13 crazed gang known as the stereotypes.

“There were a lot of jokes from my schoolmates about corner shops and things like that. But also, my grandparents actually did have a corner shop. So it was very confusing.”

No matter. What of her Glasto set? Well. A giant stage and big screens did the strobe thing in the Gloucestershire night while Charlotte jumped about. Not going to lie, the flashing lights melted this reviewer’s head, in particular the eyeballs, but it was great fun.

The chanteuse — refreshingly not toned, and with lumps in all the right places (accompanied by one of THOSE Gujarati aunty backsides) — was in her underwear. If a friend needs to know, tell him of a shiny black bra with pink under-bra, and black panties with a gold buckle (just about keeping everything in).

Besides not bothering with clothes or a band, she didn’t bother with singing either. A backtrack including her own voice did all the lifting, heavy and otherwise. Making little attempt to mime, when she did, her lips were nowhere near the words.

Think Hong Kong cop film from the 1970s, badly dubbed into English by people who can’t speak English. When she did sing, she was nowhere near the music or even her voice on the backtrack. Autotuned to death, under her own (albeit enhanced) steam she did little more than chant the F-word.

It was tremendous fun. I loved it. When she spoke to the audience, “Glas-ton-bury!”, the autotune stayed on, making her sound more deviant than diva. Imagine E. L. Wisty rapping about gay astronauts in the library in an out-of-control, all-dials-to-the-max Maplins. What a laugh.

Elsewhere, sad people were pondering the primeval grunting of Neil Young and digging into the reviewing box to pile up the five-star ratings. They have their raw, soulful, reflective, and rebellious proto-grunge. They are welcome to it. Me and the other Brats have overdone synthetic pap to invent dances for on TikTok. Wouldn’t swap.

However, beyond myself, Miss Charlotte Emma received mixed reviews. In response, she took to Twitter. Summoning her inner Neil Young, she huffed:

“Like the idea that singing with deliberate autotune makes you a fraud or that not having a traditional band suddenly makes you not a real artist is like the most boring take ever. Yawn, sorry, just fell asleep xx.”

After taking a subsequent swipe at boomers, she added:

“but to be honest… I enjoy the discourse. imo the best art is divisive and confrontational and often evolves into truly interesting culture rather than being like kind of ok, easily understood and sort of forgettable.”

This boomer is now a big fan. In the modern age of technology-driven everything — even the female singing voice — I’ve awarded Miss Charli XCX the highest Glasto Review accolade: following her on Instagram. One of only two, she sits beside my other following: a concern in Japan that sells cheap model railway accessories from a shed in Osaka.

Be confused about that in your next Vogue interview, sweetie xx.