Charli XCX ushers in a new era with Reading Festival headline set

Her first UK festival performance after her latest studio album release

The production was bigger than her last Brat tour, with more elaborate staging, numerous costume changes, dramatic pyro and strobe lighting, a live band and a host of dancers.

What Charli XCX played at Reading

Distorted black-and-white videos of the singer opened the show and recurred throughout.

Tens of thousands at the main stage erupted as the chords of the new album's lead single, Rock Music, struck up.

After punchy renditions of Wink Wink, Yeah and Card Declined, she changed from a black sparkly blazer into a black corseted dress.

The second act showed the breadth of the back catalogue, moving from the 2017 mixtape track Track 10 to the melancholic House, co-written for the recent Wuthering Heights soundtrack album.

Later came Club Classics, 365 and the Grammy-winning Von Dutch, from Brat, the sixth album that became a cultural phenomenon in 2024.

An ending borrowed from Cronenberg

She returned to the punk style of Music, Fashion, Film to close with its final track, No One Lasts Forever.

The song ends with filmmaker David Cronenberg saying "no one lasts forever / they are dead, they are gone" and "oblivion is freedom".

Charli let those be the last words to ring out as she stared across the crowd.

Elsewhere at the festival, Skepta powered through the downpours to hype up the main stage crowd.

It has been a strong week for British music more widely, with Paul Heaton scoring his first solo number one in this week's chart.