Round Table The Great 2025 Debate 

In: Trying hard

Felix Mackenzie-Barrow: I don’t know about anyone else, but as soon as I finish a song I feel like I’m never gonna write a song again. But I kind of would never want to lose that fear.

Amy Love: You do think: ‘how did I do that? Where the fuck did that come from?’

Matt Marcantonio: Not to speak from experience, but I feel like it’s giving birth, right? Every time, you forget how bad it is. That’s what it’s like every time I finish a fucking record!

Georgia South: I’m glad everyone can actually honestly say that writing albums is hard! Some people say ‘I love to write a song every day’...

Amy: Oh, fuck those guys!

Matt: Yeah, that’s bullshit; it’s romantic nonsense. I don’t think it’s easy for anyone. Nor should it be. Nothing good ever came from something that was easy.

In: Dancing like no one is watching

Felix: I think our set at Green Man was probably the best show we’ve ever played. We were terrified that no one would come and watch us because we were in a bigger tent than I think we’d ever done, but it was full, and everyone was singing along, and then this kid came up on stage to dance - I think his dad rigs one of the stages or something - and really got everyone going.

Matt: So he’s an industry plant?

In: Staying present

Georgia: We released our third album this year! It was a difficult album to write and make, so it was nice to see it have a whole life outside of our heads… the tour kind of created a whole new world out of it, so that was really special.

Amy: You can spend a long time running AT music, trying to get to this magical end goal which doesn’t actually exist… but now we can actually slow everything down and enjoy small moments. Music takes everything, and takes so much sacrifice, but to slow down and enjoy things - in music and outside of it - has been such a highlight.

In: Mosh pits in the mainstream

Gretel: I hadn’t really ever been to a more metal kind of show until I saw The Smashing Pumpkins at Gunnersbury Park, and it was INSANE.

Amy: Heavy music never left, it just didn’t get supported in the same way it used to. What’s really lovely to see is that the commercial support of it is enabling people to have access to actually enjoy and experience that type of music. People come to our shows and say ‘this is my first heavy show’ or ‘this is my first mosh pit, and I loved it!’. And I think a lot more people would if it had the right backing. So it’s really exciting to see artists like Turnstile getting their flowers. It takes a while for people to catch up!

Gretel: I wonder whether culture is still catching up after COVID… people are on their phones so much, and I think they’re bored of having these secondhand experiences through a screen, so when they go to a show and see you guys rocking out or going in a mosh pit, they understand how much more fun that is. So it’s nice that that’s coming into the mainstream a bit more.

In: IRL community

Amy: Around our campaign, we started doing these free events with our core audience - maybe it was a night designing some shoes or making a t-shirt or whatever - and that was so special, and it made us feel really excited because it was happening in real time. We wanted it to be in real time and not just this vacant thing where we’re connecting via a screen.

Georgia: I think the small towns have that [sense of community] because there’s not so many options, so you do build up friends and a repertoire of people, which is really special.

Felix: Yeah, I grew up in Derby, and it wasn’t the coolest place to grow up - I wanted to move to London as soon as I could. But there’s almost too much in London. Maybe something that’s in for 2026 is scarcity [of choice]. Just pick a cafe and go there all the time: meet the people that work there, make it your local.

Amy: It’s really hard to make friends as you get older, and it’s hard to keep up connections with people. So I think there’s definitely something to be said about somehow making time to really connect: I feel like that could be the new year’s resolution.

In: Dating

Gretel: I think dating’s back in. I don’t think people my age - around the early to mid twenties - know how to have conversations and go on dates. We kind of had that robbed from us [by the pandemic]; in those formative years, we weren’t allowed outside, and that two year span is really important. So I think maybe now people are gonna take their confidence back a little bit and just go for it.

In: Talking to strangers

Felix: It’s the best thing. I’m really scared of flying, and usually if we’re flying as a band I’ll sit next to someone and they’ll hold my hand. But we’ve been getting the cheapest possible flights we can, so we all get split up. And I’ve found that actually, if I just take my headphones off and look around a bit, there’s always one person who’s up for a chat.

And it’s amazing - it stops me from feeling afraid of flying.

Georgia: That’d be me, I love a chat with randoms. You never know what you’re gonna learn.

Amy: You do love a chat…

Felix: It breaks down people’s barriers as well. You might be speaking to someone who you’d assume you wouldn’t have much in common with, but actually in that moment, it’s very disarming.

Out: AI

Felix: The state of the world is so terrifying that people want to be able to invest in something that feels real.

Matt: The problem is just trying to cut through the noise as an artist, as well as the lack of money in people’s pockets. I think there will be a general movement back towards live shows, as people become more and more inundated with things that aren’t even real… there’s nothing realer than being in an audience covered in someone else’s sweat, you know? It doesn’t get more real than that.

Felix: I heard from some friends the other day that a label has just signed an AI band…

Gretel: Who’s the hot one?

Out: AI (again)

Matt: I saw a YouTube comment about our third record saying ‘that sounds AI generated’; not a single second of anything on that album was AI. So with this new record I’ve been mixing and producing, I started out with my usual perfectionist tendencies and then realised ‘you know what, we recorded this in nine days in the middle of the desert - let’s make it sound that way’. What we can do is be as weird as possible, and fluff a vocal, and leave all those mistakes in… and hopefully it won’t learn how to replicate those.

Amy: It’s the connection and the emotion; you can’t replace it. We have to have that, and I think we long for that.

Gretel: So much of writing music is hearing someone fuck something up and then going ‘play that again - that was amazing’.

Matt: Human creativity is the thing that connects these things that have never been done… so we do have the upper hand.

Georgia: Don’t tell them that!

Out: Traditional Halloween costumes

Gretel: My friend dressed up as Claudia Winkleman, and she kind of killed it; a really glossy fringe down here, concealer on the lips - she went all out.

Georgia: I saw a lot of the Louvre robbers: high vis and a crown.

Felix: I completely fucked it… I went as a ham and cheese panini. I’m not even that into them.

Georgia: We went basic bitch.

Matt: I can’t believe that, nothing about what you do is basic.

Amy: It was stylish, but it was basic in concept… I just wore a glitter outfit and a crown, so I was basically like glitter Barbie or something.

Out: Eating out

Felix: It’s really nice to cook, because when you’re touring a lot it’s really grounding when you come home and finally cook a meal.

Gretel: I don’t like eating out - working in the food industry and actually seeing that health codes aren’t really followed…

Matt: I love eating out, please don’t.

Gretel: Okay sorry - it’s very clean.

Out: Social media

Matt: Can we put TikTok at the top of the fucking list? TikTok’s gonna die in 2026, that’s my prediction.

Gretel: I think people are gonna stop trying so hard to be content creators… and this is coming from someone who has been getting on the content creator train. I think it’s hard not to scroll through social media and just compare yourself to every other artist, so I think people are gonna start realising - or maybe they already have - that you can be so much happier if you’re just not on it.