Media and Music

Rose Quartz

I love going to see live music, in any environment really, but you can totally argue for a festival like Leeds being the ultimate form of live music. Although there are definitely benefits to a solo show, a festival gathers together musicians of varying scales for what is ultimately a pretty reasonable price. But I think that having all of these acts back-to-back highlighted the difference between acts that used crowd involvement and acts that did not. Personally I much prefer crowd involvement at live shows, but thought it would be interesting to discuss the differences in more depth.

Charli XCX

Out of all the performances that did not include a lot of crowd engagement, Charli XCX’s was my favourite. Having seen recordings of her set at Glastonbury in 2025, I expected her set at Leeds to be very similar in a lack of live singing. This was not the case at all, with all her songs including live singing to go alongside a very extravagant visual performance. Charli’s strength is definitely in her stage presence, the way she was able to captivate her crowd was very impressive. However, this was ultimately the extent of her crowd engagement.

I wanted to discuss this performance first because I think its lack of crowd engagement actually enhanced her performance overall. From my experience, crowd engagement lets the artist almost feel like part of the crowd themselves — and that would have been negative for the performance Charli delivered. Specifically, Charli XCX’s performance was as sexually charged as possible and I think keeping herself and her performers separate from the crowd created spectacle. That is instead of the performance being at all intimate, Charli manufactures distance between herself and the crowd — I think that factor was instrumental in the diversity of her crowd.

Broadly, the audience at Leeds was skewed towards the younger end. This was pointed out by the artists during later performances, with 16-18 year old people seeming to make up the majority of the attendees. However, Charli’s performance attracted people of all ages. I think the distance that she created between herself and her audience was what made this possible. In that regard, the lack of direct crowd engagement seemed to result in the crowd broadly engaging with the performance in a similar or at least compatible way. Regardless of how they might have engaged separately in a more intimate venue or with more crowd engagement. This performance was a good example of how a lack of crowd engagement can be positive.

Fontaines DC

On the other end of the spectrum, I found Fontaines DC’s headliner performance following Charli’s to be underwhelming. Not only did they arrive 20 minutes late, but there was absolutely no crowd interaction throughout their act. Whilst this meant that they could play more music, I felt that the performance overall was negatively impacted by this. This was not helped by the gimmick used for their visuals.

As with most festival main stages, the grid at Leeds had two large screens to the sides and one large screen to the back. These screens show footage of the stage so that the audience can see what is happening regardless of where they’re stood. For their performance, Fontaines DC limited the displays on these screens for the first half of their performance. Starting with only the bottom third being shown, then the bottom half, then the bottom 3/4, until finally the entire screen was showing. There has been a lot of debate as to what this was meant to symbolise, but ultimately I think it had a massively detrimental effect on the crowd. Alongside this, the band did not acknowledge their audience — relegating them simply to viewers rather than being at all involved in the performance. Whilst Charli’s performance benefited from this distance, I think that the screen gimmick made the distance too broad for any audience member outside of front standing.

Ultimately, I think that Fontaines’ performance was really hurt by their lack of crowd engagement. But as Charli’s performance showed that crowd engagement was not necessarily required for a good performance — I think the issue might have been the screens more than the crowd engagement.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I think that crowd engagement generally makes a show better. Whilst Charli XCX’s Leeds performance was enhanced by her lack of crowd interaction, I think that this was a special case. When comparing it to Fonataines DC, that seems clear. This is an area I’d really like to write more on and in more depth — so expect future posts to be about similar things!