This isn't the Charli xcx of ironic deep cuts and blog-era references. This is Charli, pop world dominator, in full burn-it-all-down mode. She barrels straight into '360' before arriving at 'Von Dutch', but not before setting the BRAT flag behind her ablaze. It's a theatrical gesture but a loaded one: the era that crowned her has already been torched. She's not coasting on Brat Summer; she's incinerating it.
The set that follows is an hour and a bit of delirious, high-contrast chaos, an unrelenting mix of pop maximalism and actual rave euphoria. 'I Might Say Something Stupid' lets her momentarily soften - a reminder that for all its brash bravado, 'BRAT' is an album that also has room for the vulnerable. Then 'Club Classics' kicks in like a steel boot to the jaw, and we're off again.
By the time 'Unlock It' drops the entire field is moving. It's a cult classic with real legacy now, one of those pre-’BRAT' songs that predicted where Charli would eventually end up. From there, it's straight into 'Apple'. Charli appears brandishing a giant glass of white wine, lifting it like a trophy. Tonight's 'Apple' dance girl is fellow Glasto performer Gracie Abrams, it turns out. We'll be honest, we were hoping for George.
If 'Apple' is 'BRAT''s most frivolous pleasure, 'Girl, So Confusing' is its most psychologically twisted. Charli performs the Lorde remix version – the same delicious tension at play – but there's no guest appearance tonight. The vocals remain ghostly, offstage, and the effect is quietly brilliant: an invisible duet about female rivalry and parasocial politics, delivered as a one-woman Greek tragedy. Charli struts out into the crowd, expression unreadable behind the thick, black sunglasses, every lyric landing like a subtweet redrafted.
'Everything Is Romantic' arrives with its heart on show, followed by Barbie soundtrack cut 'Speed Drive'. She's a pop star of multitudes, don'tcha know? The show doesn't sag. 'Sympathy Is a Knife' slices through the field like it's been fired from a railgun. 'Guess', presented in its Billie Eilish remix form, brings a moment of sweet digital sleight-of-hand: Billie's voice filters in over the PA like a voicemail left from another clammy, sleazy dimension. And then '365' returns. The original version, this time; leaner, more melodic, cleaner. It's less about repetition than reclamation: here's the song without the smoke, delivered direct between the eyes. It still slaps.
By the time she hits unlikely TikTok revival 'Party 4 U', the crowd is putty in her hands. 'Vroom Vroom' jolts us all back to attention, and 'Track 10' – performed under a haze of simulated rain and strobes – offers the kind of finale that feels like a curtain call from an alien pop opera. Her silhouette, drenched, flailing in time to the glitchy breakdown. She'll catch a cold like that.
But it isn't quite the end. One more song – and it's the one everyone is sort of surprised she still includes. In many ways, playing 'I Love It' remains the most 'BRAT' thing Charli can do, in all its 2012 glory. She roars it like it's hers again (which, let's be honest, it always kinda was). The field shouts every word. There's no irony here. No kitsch. Just euphoria. The track bleeds into a loop of synths, feedback and pummeling noise as the screens light up. It doesn't promise more music, or tease a new era. It reflects something more complicated – a realisation, maybe, or a reckoning. A discovery that 'BRAT' isn't a seasonal gimmick or an aesthetic phase. It's a lifeline. A mirror. A version of herself that she's no longer sure how to separate from the real thing.
Charli xcx didn't headline Glastonbury because she softened. She did it because she lit the match, watched the flag burn, and walked straight through the fire. It turns out that all she had to do was refuse to bend to the wills of an industry that never truly understood her. You'd bet that, finally, they're ready to listen now.
