The response to Charli XCX’s Glastonbury slot on the Other stage on Saturday night has been seriously divided, to the point where the star has spoken out on the ‘discourse’ it has caused.

The Brat singer played some explosive tracks from her acclaimed 2024 album, such as Von dutch, 360 and Girl, so confusing, opening her set by “burning down Brat” by burning down a huge flag bearing the word ‘brat’. What a statement.

But some have taken to the Internet to throw some serious shade at Charli. One critic posted ‘It’s official Charli XCX is the worst performer I have ever seen at Glastonbury,’ while another called her performance ‘one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in my life’. 

‘Barely singing, autotune in the rare moments she does sing a bit and horrendous dancing,’ they wrote. ‘Be fuming if you spent ages getting into that crowd only to see [that].’ One even called Charli ‘one of the worst headline acts ever at Glastonbury.’

The Brat singer waded into the conversation on social media, posting on X: ‘like the idea that singing with deliberate autotune makes you a fraud or that not having a traditional band suddenly means you must not be a “real artist” is like, the most boring take ever… yawn sorry just fell asleep xx.’

She went on to explain that although these assessments of her performance are ‘boring’, she does enjoy the discussion that her art has opened up.

‘But to be honest… i enjoy the discourse,” she wrote. ‘imo the best art is divisive and confrontational and often evolves into truly interesting culture rather than being like kind of ok, easily understood and sort of forgettable.’

She also posted that she’s been ‘really enjoying these boomer vibe comments on my glastonbury performance,’ calling it ‘super fascinating.’

Charli supporters have posted in agreement about the ‘boomer’ attitude that she describes. ‘Boomers talking s— about charli xcx’s glastonbury performance,’ one posted. ‘Like she didn’t just give us an amazing performance and visuals she literally burned down brat… charli xcx you will always be famous’.

Another wrote that even though the singer’s music wasn’t their favourite  ‘she was extraordinary.’ ‘On that huge stage, alone, nowhere to hide, no one to hide behind. She was mesmerising. Almost shamanic.’

‘It takes a supremely confident performer to get up on that huge stage all on your own and hold that enormous crowd in the palm of your hand for an hour,’ one fan wrote.
At the end of Charli’s Glastonbury set, a message appeared onstage from the star, reflecting on what the burning down of Brat actually meant.

‘Thank you so much Glastonbury. So we burnt it down – does that mean Brat is finally over?? Maybe it is. But probably NOT. But we had to do it. And it looked cool,’ the onscreen text read.

It continued: ‘I think you all have proven to me that Brat is forever <3. I don’t know who I am if it’s over. It wasn’t just a summer thing…it’s a forever thing xx.’

Charli also surprised fans with an appearance alongside her fiancé The 1975 drummer George Daniel, where they played a DJ set with his electronic label. She joined Daniel on the decks, with The 1975’s Ross MacDonald also joining them on stage.

She has opened up before about feeling jealous of Daniel and the band’s success while being on our with The 1975 and what the band members had to say about that.
‘Sometimes I’d look onstage and be like, “Oh my God … I’m never going to play these rooms, ever”. That made me feel jealous,’ she said in an interview with Vulture. ‘I told Matty that. And George. They were both like, ‘Shut up. What are you talking about?'”.

Charli is part of an exciting groundswell of female performers who are topping the charts, such as Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter. However, although she went on stage with Taylor Swift as part of her Reputation tour, speculation began that the pair had issues after Charli released her track Sympathy is a knife was a diss track about Swift, even though she made a PSA announcing that there were no such tracks on the album.

‘People are gonna think what they want to think,’ she told Vulture. ‘That song is about me and my feelings and my anxiety and the way my brain creates narratives and stories in my head when I feel insecure and how I don’t want to be in those situations physically when I feel self-doubt.’ 

Fans, though, believed that the track was grounded in jealousy felt by Charli when she was on tour with The 1975 and Swift was dating frontman Matty Healy. This led to Charli XCX fans chanting ‘Taylor is dead!’ in Portuguese during a DJ set in São Paulo.  
This prompted Charli to post an Instagram Story: ‘Can the people who do this please stop. Online or at my shows. It is the opposite of what I want and it disturbs me that anyone would think there is room for this in this community. I will not tolerate it.’

She has gone on to explain the complexities of being a female artist and the expectations and fabricated rivalries that are formed by fans, often involving women being pitted against each other.

‘It’s so complicated,’ she explained, elaborating about the impact of being ‘a female artist, where you are pitted against your peers but also expected to be best friends with every single person constantly. If you’re not, you’re deemed a bad feminist.’