The embarrassment of Glastonbury 2025

Acts like Kate Nash and Bob Vylan abandoned the music in favour of the 3 P's of dumb liberalism: protest, pantomime and Palestine.

It’s not often I turn my attention to the follies and hypocrisies of the British cultural elite. But I am doing so this week, because boy do they deserve it!

America gets blamed for globalising woke, and fair enough. However don’t let anyone tell you, American friends, that the rest of the English speaking world is not just as insane.

Last week was the annual Glastonbury music festival, a long-running romp in the bucolic English countryside for Britain’s artsy middle and upper classes. It’s a big deal. It’s like a mix between Coachella and Burning Man with an origin story like the 1968 Woodstock festival, but even more embedded in the national consciousness. It’s extensively covered by mainstream media because — surprise surprise, the party-goers and the journos are the same demographic.

Here at Saving Culture we are all well aware that it is this very demographic, along with their besties in the arts and activism sectors, that is the fulcrum from which rises all the terrible ideas of our time. This group is Patient Zero for woke fuckery, Trump Derangement Syndrome, and narcissistic projection. And we also know that these symptoms of socio-spiritual malaise are getting worse, not better.

So you will not be surprised to hear that this year’s Glastonbury absolutely outdid itself in terms of toxic nonsense.

In the run up to the festival, a relatively minor singer by the name of Kate Nash was getting a lot of traction over a “song” she composed in reaction to the recent UK Supreme Court ruling that men — even if they wore a dress — could not access women’s intimate spaces in public facilities.

“I took the ruling very personally,” she said when it was announced a few months ago. Of course you did love. Taking things that have little or nothing to do with you personally is kind of an obligation for woke lefties and Affluent White Females.

Her song is called GERM, which stands for Girl, Exclusionary Regressive Misogynist. The song itself offers about as much enjoyment as being harangued by a disgruntled student union woman’s officer. It’s barely a song: inane lyrics — “girl, you’re not radical. You’re not rad at all” — over a charmless, leaden beat.

Honey, if you want to go all out to support the gays, from now on please take your inspo from this:

Nash was featured in a documentary a few years ago, which seemed to mostly be her complaining about how hard it is to be in the music business. She comes across as though she thinks that because she loves making music, the world is obliged to love her in return, as if her internal perceptions entitled her to our attention. She does that classic Millennial whinge: one of the most privileged demographics ever to exist comparing her performing art work to actual work and claiming she and her fellow starlets should form a union. Theatre kids are annoying enough. Theatre kids who are also communists make me reconsider my no-violence stance.

After all the the adulation she received from hormone-addled trannies male and female, being on stage at Glastonbury was really supposed to be her moment of triumph. But she had her thunder stolen, somewhat, by an act by the name of Bob Vylan, who came quite literally out of nowhere with a set that managed to be both menacing and banal. The lyrics of one of the songs?

“Heard you want your country back?

Uh uh you can’t have that.

Ha!

Shut the fuck up!”

While delivering these lyrics Pascal Robinson Foster, the front man for this sorry excuse for a musical act, makes a fake crying face, like a middle school bully after shoving a fat kid to the ground.

He continues:

“The only place I know

Stolen right under my nose

By ignorant scum.”

He’s a vegan poet. From Ipswich.

Are these people, like, actually retarded? Can they not come up with a pithy rhyme? Have they ever heard music before?

The set also included leading the dimwitted audience in the now obligatory chants: “Free free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea.” But because the whole purpose of this guy is to be edgy, he added “death, death to the IDF.” And now he’s been dropped by his management, is under criminal investigation, and has been refused entry into the United States.

Of course, being under criminal investigation alongside now-world famous Belfast edgelords Kneecap is the best thing that ever happened to these talent-free outrage peddlers. “First it was Kneecap, now it’s us two,” they said. They will now dine out on this for the rest of their days. Meanwhile, Lucy Connolly rots in prison.

As this was playing out on stage and being broadcast to the nation by the BBC, the camera panned to the audience. I spotted a chunky white concert-goer, wearing an enormous sunflower headdress and a Hawaiian shirt, singing along with the lyrics advocating for his (or her, I honestly couldn’t tell) extinction. This is further evidence of what I have been saying all along: the white progressive libtard is a threat to us all.

We are all being subjected to the astroturfed fame of talentless sixth graders in adult bodies. It’s a veritable plague. This guy, for all his big muscles and manly glare, opens up his mouth and the problem child comes out. He’s just ‘trying to wind people up,” he says, so that he can “derive enjoyment from living in this country.”

One interesting comment on X pointed out that Pascal was a no-name act, who for some reason was given a prime slot in the most important cultural event in the UK. Why? “Because he hits all the right ideological notes. Anti-nationalist, ethnocentric, overtly left-wing. That’s what got him the stage, not talent or reputation,” wrote Mike Jones.

Perhaps the most embarrassing Glastonbury moment was Gen X icon Fat Boy Slim, trying to keep up with the idiot youth by exaggeratedly giving the finger to a large image of President Donald Trump. This is what passes for cool now? Yikes.

As I was writing this, I thought back to the influential bands of my own youth — a lot of them were pretty edgy. Why did I happily bop along to their anger-filled songs, while this leaves me horrified? Am I just getting old and conservative? Well, yes, but that’s not the reason. It’s because those artists created work that felt organic, that told a story of a time and place which grounded their anger and their edginess in a story that felt authentic. What these Millennial and Gen Z acts are doing doesn’t create that story for the audience. They simply spew slogans created by other people. It sounds like it was written by a disgruntled 12 year old. It’s about them, showing off their takes.

And the sound! The terrible, terrible, sound! The dreary, rhythmless, grating sound of their songs. It cannot even be called music. If it was played in Guantanamo human rights lawyers would complain. Public Enemy’s off-kilter beeps and bops were like popcorn for the ears. Even Alanis Morrisette’s screechy vocals were underpinned by a lush, thick bass.

Pascal, son, if you want to make good protest music, I suggest you listen to this.

Roisin Murphy, an Irish singer who makes innovative and insanely catchy dance music and wears highly eccentric costumes on stage, wrote this on X on Tuesday:

“It’s broken almost beyond repair. Division is running through it’s veins. Ego and selfhood are destroying the music scene. There’s almost nothing left to bring us all together. No fun, no unity. Creativity last. Never thought I’d see the day. It’s empty. So many tears.”

I’m guessing she was referring to Glastonbury.