Having been eight times, I’d never felt unsafe at Glastonbury.
Murmurs of crowds becoming claustrophobic and even potentially dangerous felt like a myth or unfortunate chaos that belonged in the past.
That was until I was in the crush to get to Sugababes.
In 2022, they were performing at the Avalon stage, a pop-friendly area with my name written all over it. It has seen some of the greatest artists from the Smash Hits era finally make it to Worthy Farm, when it would have been unthinkable to see them on the bill 20 years ago.
The Avalon stage has a capacity of around 3,000 people and Sugababes were playing in the early evening. They’ve had six number one singles, four platinum albums and headlined the 02 Arena this year – clearly a 3,000 capacity stage wasn’t going to accommodate one of the most successful artists on the Glastonbury bill.
But somehow we managed to make it into the stage. I couldn’t see Mutya, Keisha or Siobhan at any point but we made it in when thousands of others didn’t, and endured the fresh hell of being part of the stampede trying to get into the tent.
The Astroworld crush, which killed 10 people during rapper Travis Scott’s gig, was just the year before and while Glastonbury would never let anything like that happen, it was still suffocating enough to cling onto friends and begin to panic.
It was the first time I’ve ever been genuinely quite scared at Glastonbury and was sure I would never find myself in the same precarious situation again.
Jump two years and Sugababes were back at Glastonbury, this time bumped up to the West Holts Stage – a significant upgrade with a 30,000 capacity, but still, it was obviously going to be another health and safety nightmare.
Stewards were trying to enforce a one-way system but there’s only so much a handful of volunteers in high-vis jackets can do when there are thousands of fans with tunnel vision slipping through the net.
They played on a Friday afternoon, clashing with Paul Heaton who was on The Pyramid, and once again it was an unnerving crush to see Push The Button live at Worthy Farm.
I’ve spoken with friends and, after our previous experiences, many of us are concerned about this year.
Subsequently, I’ve made the decision to avoid seeing the artist I was most excited to see.
Charli XCX has by far been the most colossally important artist of the last 12 months. It was impossible not to get swept away by the Brat summer of 2024, whether you were a party girl functioning on Golden Virginia and Smirnoff Ice or you were just a spectator enjoying the ride from afar.
She is the moment and I don’t have a doubt she’ll bring in the biggest crowd of the entire festival.
Last year, she played a DJ set at Silver Hayes and thousands of people turned up just to watch her spin decks.
Huge crowds were turned away disappointed and it became one of the most celebrated moments of the weekend.
It wasn’t even a full Charli XCX show and the crowd was determined, engrossed and, more importantly, humongous.
It is unthinkable, then, that she isn’t topping off her Brat era on The Pyramid Stage where almost the entire festival could – and would – descend as one 170,000-strong army.
Instead, she is on at The Other Stage, which has under half the capacity of the Pyramid, and sadly where I wouldn’t dare try to see her.
Last year Avril Lavigne performed on The Other Stage, her last hit single now 14 years old, and crowds complained they felt crushed as the swarm of fans expanded into camping areas.
The thought of Charli on The Other Stage is genuinely terrifying and while every single person I know is dead set on watching her set, reluctantly I just can’t face it.
Glastonbury offers assurances every year that it always has a ‘robust, dynamic crowd management plan in place’, which I don’t doubt, and Emily Eavis has admitted they’ve sold fewer tickets this year in an attempt to avert crushes.
But logistically, I don’t see how they can possibly keep the enormous Brat army confined to the limited space surrounding The Other Stage. At best it will be unbearable, at the very worst, potentially dangerous.
There is a clash which might thin the crowd ever so slightly with rapper Doechi performing at the same time, but I can’t see that being much of a deterrent for fiercely loyal Charli fans.
It’s sad that Glastonbury seems to specifically treat its pop artists this way, sidelining them to smaller stages, undermining their enormous fanbases and essentially losing grasp on its evolving identity.
Granted, Olivia Rodrigo is closing the Pyramid Stage, but would it have been too much to have two humongous popstars headlining the same weekend?
Glastonbury needs to realise what it is and who it’s for before someone gets hurt.
Yes, I am very lucky to be able to be in the field come the last weekend of June, but I can’t deny I’m absolutely gutted that seeing Charli just feels like a dangerous option, which could so easily have been avoided.
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