KennyHoopla is driving the pop-punk hype train straight into Reading 2021

Not that he seems to mind. Fresh from a run of shows with Yungblud and with perhaps the most intense headline show in London this side of lockdown in his back pocket, he takes to the Dance Stage today with a certain swagger. The crowd is just as hyped. In the toilets before his set, a group of lads can be heard singing the refrain from ‘How Will I Rest In Peace If I’m Buried By A Highway’, and the cheers when he takes to the stage are the sort usually reserved for headliners.

It has all the foundations of a brilliant set but true to form, KennyHoopla over-delivers. This is the making of an icon.

It takes KennyHoopla roughly 2 minutes before he dives off the stage and into the crowd. He spends the entirety of the set ping-ponging between the two, perhaps trying to fit the experience of both punter and performer into his first trip to Reading Festival. He crowd surfs, he moshes, he breaks a microphone. It’s all gloriously chaotic.

While his music pulls heavily from the early 00’s scenes that thrived back then on the Main Stage here, KennyHoopla is more than a genre revivalist. Sure, ‘Hollywood Sucks’ is heavily influenced by the pop-punk thrash of Blink 182, ‘Inside Of Heaven’s Mouth, There Is a Sweet Tooth’ has bursts of post-hardcore fury and ‘9-5 (Love Me)’ is very Taking Back Sunday but it’s smarter than simple cover versions. Twisting the old with a Gen-Z disregard for history, his music is very much the future.