Sorry, but I just don’t get Glastonbury

Glastonbury is the topic of conversation this weekend. Everywhere you go it’s there: on your TV screens, filling up your snapchat stories, endless posts on Instagram of the exact same fucking thing every time. And you know what? I’m sick of it. Because as far as festivals go, Glastonbury is nowhere near the best one, and it doesn’t deserve the hype it gets. And I just can’t keep quiet about it anymore.

Let’s ignore for a minute the sub-par music acts (I mean, Katy Perry, really? Isn’t she more at home at, I don’t know, V Fest or something?), and talk about the fact that pretty much every single year the ground gets so muddy and wet that within five minutes of arriving everyone looks like something from a horror film in the 80s. And you’re like that for six days.

It’s not like it’s easy to get a shower: you’re in the middle of a field for fucks sake. So you get caked in mud, booze, and whatever else, then you sleep like that in your tiny little tent, and repeat the same thing over and over again. And yes, this can happen at other festivals (believe me, I’ve been there), but more often than not there’s a lot less mud, which makes it a bit easier to handle your greasy, booze covered hair by day four.

You don’t have to worry about greasy hair when you’re wearing a mask I guess

Plus, at least with other festivals you know what you’re getting. You know when you book your tickets what the vibe’s probably going to be like, who’s likely to be playing etc. etc. You know if you go to Reading and Leeds it’s going to be mroe edgy, alt stuff like Bastille, Greenday, Blink182. You know that at V Fest and T in the Park it’s going to be pop, chart music. Even at Coachella you know that you’re not really going for the music, but to get covered in glitter at the most aesthetically pleasing festival there is, all for the gram. Who even cares if Beyonce is switched out for Lady Gaga because she got pregnant. But at Glastonbury? Not so much. It has a reputation for being that hippy festival perfect for oldies and students alike, with the likes of Blur, Kasabian, and the Kings of Leon all playing there.

Do it for the gram

Now, what you get is a hastily put together line up of whoever’s released an album this year, or some one hit wonder from the 90s/early 2000s that’s going to attract all the millennials who just can’t get enough of nostalgia. I mean, you had Ed Sheeran on the pyramid stage on the Sunday, the slot to play if you’re going to Glastonbury, all because his album was all over the charts so he’d def pull in some ticket sales. Except the people that actually want to go to Glastonbury don’t want to listen to Ed Sheeran. Or Shaggy doing a ridiculously terrible version of his own fucking song “It Wasn’t Me”. No, you’re right Shaggy, it wasn’t you. It wasn’t you singing, giving the crowd a good time, putting on a show, or literally anything people pay £238 to see.

Glastonbury has become the “cool” place to be, making it very suddenly not cool at all. Instead of putting on the show it’s famous for, and creating such a killer line up that tickets sell out within seconds – and deservedly so – the producers behind the show are bowing to popular opinion, and filling their slots with whoever they can think of that might have been in the top 10 over the last few months. Sure, music only equates to about 10% of the entertainment, as I have been repeatedly told, but that’s not right. You should be going to a festival because you want to enjoy the atmosphere and the music. Not just putting up with the music cos “well, there’s so much else going on like a circus, dancing, theatre” etc.

Is this the circus they’re referring to?

If I wanted to get drunk with my mates in a tent in some field, I would do exactly that, and I wouldn’t spend over £200 to do it. Music should be important at a festival, and the only reason people are trying to pretend like it’s not is because of one simple fact: it’s just not as good as it used to be. And it doesn’t deserve the hype it’s still getting year on year.

Sort it out, Glastonbury.