The Reading Festival crowd was dead – I blame the teenagers

I’m usually opposed to tired tropes about something young people have ruined. 

But I have to confirm the rumours are true – audiences at live shows are duller than they’ve ever been, with Reading Festival taking the heat for the dead crowd epidemic sweeping gigs.

I braved the rain at the ripe old age of 29 to dance my heart out to the likes of Jade, Sombr, and Raye on Saturday. I quickly found myself in a mass of teenagers who simply didn’t move. It was so depressing. 

Honestly, I started to feel bad for the artists. How confusing it must be to look out and see a crowd who has chosen to watch your set standing like zombies.

There were pockets of movement, don’t get me wrong, and when a megahit came on like Jade’s Little Mix mashup, the crowd was enthusiastically singing along, but at times, even a gentle sway seemed to be a struggle. 

Sombr’s crowd was particularly dire, with one guy (aged about 20) in front of my four-person group getting visibly annoyed whenever we danced too enthusiastically.

But he wasn’t the only one – our singing and dancing seemed to be a source of confusion and entertainment for the teens surrounding us.

It was only 11 years ago that I, like many teenagers before and after me, made the pilgrimage to Reading at 18, armed with a tent I’d never put up, a raincoat I didn’t wear, and some tinnies I definitely drank.

I remember being awkward, standing quietly at the side when a mosh pit opened up, or clinging onto my friends so we didn’t lose each other in the huge crowds. Mostly though, I remember dancing and singing my heart out.

There’s been a lot of chatter online about the Reading and Leeds lineup being weaker than previous years but I’d call it adapting to changing times.

The 2000 edition is being hailed online as an all-timer, boasting Oasis, Pulp, and the Stereophonics as headliners. 

Undeniably a great festival I’d give my right arm to attend now.

If you’d offered me that run in 2015, though, I would have told you that I was far more excited to see Panic at the Disco, Catfish and the Bottlemen, and Kendrick Lamar. 

So maybe the music isn’t worse; you’re just older, and it’s not your generation’s big names on the lineup. 

Reading and Leeds’ core demographic is notoriously teens and young adults, so the lineup is tailored to their tastes. You might not know who Sombr is, but I can guarantee a large portion of Gen Z do.

Which makes the lack of enthusiasm I saw all the more confusing. 

It’s not just Reading and Leeds suffering from this boring crowd epidemic.

Tyler, the Creator called out his night one All Points East crowd when he returned for his second day headlining, branding them ‘f****ing dead’

There’s still hope.

I was lucky enough to be in the crowd for one of the biggest festival moments of the year – Pitbull at BST Hyde Park, with the good vibes carried right from when Lil Jon took the stage hours before until Mr Worldwide’s final verse of Fireball. 

However, the nature of the audience meant I didn’t see as many teenagers or younger Gen Z among the baldcap wearing mass, and it turned out experience was all the better for it.

But it seems the dead crowd issue also isn’t just one festival having a bad day; it’s a shift in the way young Brits engage with live music. 

As older gig-goers, it might be time to admit we’re failing them.

One glaring factor was the lack of alcohol seemingly being consumed in the field. I barely saw anyone carrying pints or even a sneaky hip flask.

It’s long been a trend that youngsters are drinking less, but this was a whole other level, making me feel incredibly out of place by just sipping my cider. 

Undoubtedly, part of this phenomenon is coming from the lingering effects of Covid, which is likely having far more social consequences across all generations than we’re willing to admit. 

These kids lost three very important years of socialising, learning how to exist in public, and just being messy teenagers to lockdown. When were they supposed to develop a taste for clubbing if they never even had school discos?

It’s easy to brand phones as the big problem but we rarely mention the impact of being filmed and farmed for content at all hours of the day.

Often teens can be seen looking uncomfortable in the background as an enthusiastic fan films themselves singing. 

All of this compounds into one motionless crowd, staring up at Sombr, waiting for 12 to 12.

And that social decline is before we even talk about the charts and the way songs with catchy, repeatable choruses dominate. No wonder they’re not dancing to Jade’s Church – it didn’t go viral on TikTok.

Some of the Sombr fans around us did start to dance along after a few songs. I choose to believe they realised nothing they did was going to be as embarrassing as a group of 30-somethings butchering the lyrics.

Crowd mentality means we look to those around us – particularly those who look older or more confident – to work out what to do. 

Rather than dismissing these deer-in-headlights teens, as I did at first, the best thing older gig-goers can do is to channel the most Boomer quote of all and continue to ‘dance like no-one is watching.’

Maybe by doing that we can all free teens from the dead crowd epidemic, one muddy splash at a time.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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