Felix Massey proposes his perfect line up for Glastonbury Festival.
The job of Emily Eavis, Glastonbury’s now-chief organiser having taken over from her father, Sir Michael, is seldom an easy one: she has to balance keeping countless local and industry partners happy whilst also satisfying 200,000 annual attendees. That’s not even counting the annual mob that consistently complains about the lineup not being akin to their exact taste. That said, I have a few unsolicited ideas about what a dream lineup would look like over the three main days in 2027.
Firstly, the headliners. I think that you always have to cater to different genres and ages, and to do that my headline picks would be Harry Styles for Friday night, Lady Gaga for Saturday night, and Oasis on Sunday. For Styles, it would be both a sensational and broadly popular festival opener and also a personal triumph for undoubtedly the most successful soloist to come from One Direction. For Saturday, Lady Gaga is about as big of a household pop name as you can get, and her reputation for elaborate and highly detailed staging and production would also make for a sensational looking show.
Oasis closing out the festival on Sunday night provides an impressive and crowd-loved back catalogue that is matched by few, and 100,000+ people singing Champagne Supernova would be the ultimate spectacle to go out on. The warm-ups for these stars would be Tears for Fears before Harry Styles (as per his tour), Chappell Roan before Lady Gaga, and the resurgent Blink-182 coming on before Oasis. Elsewhere, the Other Stage headline slots would be taken by The XX, Olivia Dean, and Limp Bizkit for metal representation, as well as potentially a secret slot for Arcade Fire if they decide to reunite for a 20th anniversary tour of the Neon Bible album. I’d also have prominent roles for contemporary stars like Adéla, Westside Cowboy, Beabadoobee, Geese, Little Simz, Blood Orange and Skye Newman, alongside the iconic and inimitable Grace Jones as the Sunday ‘teatime legend’ slot.
Outside of performers, I’d implement a massive revamp of the shower facilities to ensure quicker queuing and more availability at peak times, as well as investing in a system for people to plan their schedule on an app that could then predict numbers at each stage for crowd control. Ticket-wise, I would try to keep price rises below inflation to protect the festival’s affordability and broad appeal. Overall, this plan would probably be unrealistic. But isn’t that the point?
