Charli xcx, LIDO Festival, London • Festivals • DIY Magazine

It’s been almost exactly one year since the arrival of the lime green juggernaut that took over mainstream culture, broke the internet (a few times over), and spawned a whole aesthetic/movement/lifestyle in its image. 12 months on from ‘BRAT’’s birth, Charli xcx now stands as THE pop star of the moment. But, given the sheer ubiquity of her latest album last year, Charli’s 2025 festival season arrived with an implicit question hanging over it: has the moment passed? If her specially-curated ‘Partygirl’ day at London’s inaugural LIDO Festival is anything to go by, the answer is that dedication to a good time never goes out of style.

For anyone who happens to be in the vicinity of Victoria Park today - or, actually, anywhere on the TfL network more generally - it’s as if they’ve accidentally stumbled into an episode of Skins, or the Berghain queue. A bastardised version of Swifties sartorially honouring their fave ‘era’, or Beyoncé fans donning cowboy getup, these partygirls pledge allegiance to Charli’s Angels by way of wraparound sunglasses, lower back tattoos, and countless Marlboro Golds.

The result is the sort of cult atmosphere you usually only get at huge arena or stadium shows - not festivals, where the crowd’s adoration is split between myriad different artists on the bill. The masterstroke of LIDO, though, is that each day’s lineup is essentially selected by the headliner themselves; for Charli, this means the likes of collaborators, electronic experimentalists, and ‘BRAT’ contributors The Dare, Bladee, and A.G. Cook - all artists who this audience are already primed to go wild for.

And go wild they do. A.G. and offbeat alt-pop duo Magdalena Bay bring the energy early in the afternoon - no mean feat, given the blazing sunshine - but it’s easily The Dare who provides the day’s first capital-M Moment, as he swiftly shuts down the festival’s tented second stage. It’s a set which, on reflection, would have been better suited to the Main Stage, but for those who have managed to squeeze in, the enclosed space just adds to the fervour: by the time the indie sleaze revivalist brings out PinkPantheress to perform their collab ‘Stateside’ (and gallantly holds her handbag, to boot), the atmosphere is nothing short of feral.

Ahead of Charli taking to the Main Stage, then, things have reached fever pitch - members of the crowd staunchly claim their spot in this neon-hued sea, proving surprisingly resistant to any attempts to weave forward for a dance. Indeed, for some, actually dancing seems to be the last thing on their mind, preferring instead to document the whole performance on their Instagram Story. The woman herself, though, is utterly in the moment. Storming through opening numbers ‘365’, ‘360’, and ‘Von dutch’, there’s no sense of her having played her trump cards too early; anyone who’s paid even the slightest attention to her ‘BRAT’ tour knows Charli always has some tricks up her sleeve, and tonight it’s Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg who makes a surprise appearance as our ‘Apple’ girl.

Obvious highlights come courtesy of the huge ‘Girl, so confusing’ and ‘Guess’ remixes, both of which sound as jaw-dropping and vital as ever (although, for canny fans who have noticed Lorde is currently in London, it’s a source of minor disappointment that she doesn’t pop up to deliver her verse in the former). Instead, Charli brings out Bladee - fresh from his headline go on the second stage - and PC Music stalwart A.G. Cook, who together laugh off a mis-start of ‘Rewind’ to conjure as close to a ‘house party afters’ atmosphere as is possible in a 32,000 capacity park.

Though ‘BRAT’ might have been the album to launch the rocket, the fuse for Charli’s astronomical trajectory was lit long ago. And this is something she seems keen to recognise, too, mining her discography to finish with a fan favourite line-up of ‘party 4 u’, ‘Vroom Vroom’, ‘Track 10’, and ‘I Love It’, revelling - soaking wet from her on-stage shower - in this final, unabashed expression of euphoria.

“So tell me the truth… will you hate me if I stick around???” she asks via the stage’s flickering screens, “because honestly I don’t know who I am if it’s over”. If tonight’s LIDO headline - her biggest London show to date - has proved anything, it’s that the appetite for her brand of messy, candid, markedly real pop hasn’t abated; in fact, it might just be stronger than ever. In her own (digital) words: “It wasn’t just a summer thing… it’s a forever thing xx”. The year of the brat may be over, but Charli’s time as a festival headliner is only just beginning.

Tags: Charli XCX, LIDO, Festivals, Reviews, Live Reviews