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Of all 2025's major music festivals, Wide Awake was arguably the most imperilled. In the weeks leading up to the staging of London's most diverse, eclectic and consistently excellent alternative music all-dayer, Wide Awake was in danger of losing both its headline act (Kneecap) and indeed its home (Brockwell Park in South London), for legal reasons that you very likely have read about.
Happily, on May 23, the event went ahead as planned, drawing 20,000 music fans for a fabulous day out which not only featured artists from across the musical spectrum, but also main stage appearances from Jeremy Corbyn (MP for Islington North since 1983) and doctors from Médecins Sans Frontières, who spoke movingly about their humanitarian efforts in Gaza. It will later be revealed that Kneecap donated their whole fee for playing the festival to the organisation.
On a day characterised by brilliant music, passionate speeches, and a genuine sense of community, here are nine artists who helped define Wide Awake 2025.
Gurriers (Shacklewell Arms stage)
Given their uncharitably early slot, it’s a surprise to find the tent housing Gurriers already packed to the point of serious overspill by the time they take the stage. But perhaps it shouldn’t have been, given the Dublin-based quintet's position as one of the frontrunners of the latest wave of excellent Irish punk music making its way from that ever-fertile scene. People crane their necks to get a glimpse of the band as they make their way through tracks from 2024’s Come And See album, including apparent fan favourites Des Goblin and Approachable, with a tent-wide chant along to Sign Of The Times. Meanwhile, members of the crowd fly Irish and Palestinian flags, respond raucously to the band’s calls to “free Palestine!” and crowdsurf with an intensity rarely seen this early on a Friday afternoon. It’s noisy, it’s fun, and it’s precisely how we like to kick off a festival. [BE]
Nadine Shah (Wide Awake stage)
Following an extremely well-received main stage appearance from Jeremy Corbyn, the greatest Prime Minister Britain never had, Nadine Shah delights the late afternoon crowd with an energetic, and at times emotional, set largely drawn from last year's Filthy Underneath album. The moodily pulsing Ladies For Babies (Goats For Love) and Greatest Dancer might be songs better suited to the hours of darkness, much like the all-black attire chosen by everyone onstage, but they translate perfectly in the sunshine, and Shah's decision to bring on The Pogues' Spider Stacy for an uproarious whirl through The Boys From The County Hell goes down brilliantly with a crowd largely drawn from London's Irish community. Out The Way is another masterstroke, a song about cultural alienation which takes on an extra resonance in the current climate with lyrics such as "Where would you have them go? A generation searching for a home". Powerful stuff. [PB]
Mannequin Pussy (Bad Vibrations stage)
One of Wide Awake’s strengths is the genuine diversity of its bills each year – if you want punk-tinged country, indie-rock big-band hybrids, or nn-tss nn-tss dance music, you’re covered – but sometimes at a festival you just want to watch a punk band who make you want to chuck your beer in the air and rampage your way to the front, which is precisely what Mannequin Pussy deliver.
There’s a lot more to the US group than that, however, as they showcase their chameleonic ability to marry that furious energy with intricate songwriting and a sprinkling of pop nous, flitting between dreamy jangle pop, grunge and hardcore beatdowns often all within the space of a single song. Their set is underpinned by a sense of righteous resistance, with frontperson Marisa Dabice’s precise showmanship interspersed with rousing speeches decrying their government’s ongoing "complicity in genocide", and the by this point obligatory calls for a free Palestine. [BE]
Frankie & The Witch Fingers (Shacklewell Arms stage)
At Wide Awake 2021, the festival's inaugural staging, Slift played the So Young tent and absolutely blew away an audience who knew very little about them beforehand. In 2025, in the Shacklewell Arms tent, Frankie & The Witch Fingers hit with similar impact. Self-identifying as "psych-punk shapeshifters" the Los Angeles-based quintet share more than a little of the Oh Sees' restless creativity, and they're an absolute blast, crashing through a thrillingly intense set largely drawn from 2023's Data Doom album, with the cleverly-titled Mild Davis and the full-tilt Electricide among its highlights. The band have headline club shows in Brighton, London, Bristol and Birmingham this week before they head back across the Atlantic: go see them if you possibly can. [PB]
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets (Moth Club stage)
One of the more depressing sights of last summer's UK festival season was the BBC's coverage of Scotland's TRNSMT festival showing Psychedelic Porn Crumpets playing to a lacklustre crowd that could have been comfortably fitted onto a local bus. Happily, at Wide Awake the Perth, Australia sextet receive an infinitely more enthusiastic welcome, the Moth Club tent packed out as Jack McEwan's band take the stage. It's a measure of the PPC's confidence that they perform no fewer than three songs from new album Carpe Diem, Moonman, which only came into the world one week ago, with Weird World Awoke a very fitting choice given the setting. But its fan favourites Hymn For A Droid and Found God In A Tomato which gets those in attendance cutting loosest, securing another victory for a gloriously imaginative band whose time has definitely come. [PB]
English Teacher (Wide Awake stage)
As with many bands on today's line-up, English Teacher are unafraid to give vocal support to Kneecap in the wake of rapper Mo Chara being charged with a terror offence. Referencing the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, vocalist/guitarist Lily Fontaine tells the crowd, "This particular conflict will end, and when it does, like all others, there will be those who took the side of the oppressor and those who took the side of the oppressed. We are proud to share the stage with people who stand up against oppression." Deserved winners of last year's Mercury Prize, the Leeds quartet showcase the excellence of This Could Be Texas in their 45 minutes onstage, with superb singles R&B and The World's Biggest Paving Slab particular high points. [PB]
Sprints (Bad Vibrations stage)
The first time I saw Sprints play, at the tiny Waiting Room venue in Stoke Newington in May 2021, they played every song they had, and were forced to bang out a cover of Wet Leg's Chaise Longue in order to appease a crowd begging for encores. Today, it's a measure of how far the band have come, and their confidence for what lies ahead, that, playing beneath Fat Dog and Peaches on the site's second-largest stage, the Dublin quartet roll out a clutch of new songs destined for the follow-up to 2024's Letter To Self. This might not be the most crowd-pleasing approach - there's a woman from Dublin standing behind me who screams out for Literary Mind every single time Karla Chubb prepares to introduce a song- but you have to respect the flex. Of the more familiar tunes, it's Up And Comer, Little Fix and - yes - Literary Mind that connect best, but it'll be fascinating to hear these muscular new songs on record, whenever that may be. [PB]
CMAT (Wide Awake stage)
CMAT's punky/country-tinged pop music might not be standard Louder fare, but what an outstanding performer Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson is. Resplendent in orange, the 29-year-old Dubliner grabs Wide Awake's attention from minute one, and draws effusive praise from Kneecap later in the evening. There's a live debut for the singer/songwriter's deceptively spiky recent single Take a Sexy Picture Of Me, and for the unreleased, and gloriously-titled, The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station - featuring the instantly iconic chorus lyric "Okay, don't be a bitch" - while Have Fun! and I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby! are tried-and-trusted party starters. CMAT is already a star, but she's going to be an even bigger one when her forthcoming third album Euro-Country emerges in August. [PB]
Kneecap (Wide Awake stage)
A lot has been written about Kneecap in the weeks since their performance at Coachella festival made them the most world's notorious band, almost all of it written by people who had never previously listened to the band, or saw the band perform, much less actually spoken to rappers Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh), Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Cairealláin) or DJ Próvaí (JJ Ó Dochartaigh). In the days before Wide Awake, founder and booker Keith Miller admitted with commendable honesty that the noise around the trio, and specifically uncertainties as to whether the group might be forced off the bill, had impacted on ticket sales for the event, making their presence here atop the bill in front of a 20,000-strong crowd a statement in itself.
"They tried to stop this gig," Mo Chara says at the outset. "Honestly lads, you have no idea how close we were to being pulled off this gig. Has anybody been watching the news?"
But if anyone was expecting Kneecap to return to the stage with heads bowed, they truly know nothing about the West Belfast/Derry band.
"What a privilege it is to play in front of you sound cunts", Mo Chara says following Amach Anocht, the set's second song, before referencing the criminal charge hanging over him.
"I went for an interview with the counter-terror police," he says, "and within days, they came to a verdict that they were going to charge me. Never has it been that quick. And the reason it was that quick, is because Glastonbury is just around the corner. They're trying to silence us from speaking onstage at Glastonbury the way we did at Coachella. That's a fact. Fuck them."
"There's your headlines for tomorrow, Daily Mail," adds Móglaí Bap.
Truthfully, anyone seeking attention-grabbing soundbites tonight could garner enough to fill a tabloid newspaper front page within minutes.
"Anybody else getting done for terror offences or just me?" Mo Cahara says at one point, before his fellow rapper suggests that "if anyone is about on the 18th of June" they should come along to Westminster Magistrates' Court to support his friend.
"Get a big bag of ket [ketamine] and we'll go and sit on the steps," Mo Chara says.
When they're not making light of the upcoming trial, re-affirming their support for Palestine, or being forced to pause to accommodate chants of "Free Mo Chara", the trio play the songs which have propelled them to festival headliner status less than 12 months on from the release of their debut album, Fine Art, a remarkable state of affairs by any metric.
So here's a non-controversial opinion about this most controversial of bands, the truth of which can be easily verified by analysing the plentiful footage of tonight's set online, or indeed by reading the rave reviews printed this weekend in even the most right-wing British newspapers : Kneecap are among the very, very best live acts on these islands. And accordingly, songs such as I'm Flush, infectious new single The Recap, riotous dance anthem Rhino Ket and set-closer H.O.O.D. cause absolute pandemonium here among the biggest audience they've ever played to. It ensures that Wide Awake 2025 ends in euphoria, and doubtless no small amount of relief for the promoters who backed the band under the most challenging of circumstances.
And the truth is that, regardless of what happens on June 18, the Kneecap story is only just beginning. [PB]
