Charli XCX teases a different show for Reading & Leeds festival

Charli XCX is preparing to headline Reading & Leeds for the first time, and she is promising a show unlike anything she has performed at the festival before. In a new interview with BBC Radio 1, the singer watched back clips of her past sets there and reflected on how far she has come.

Looking at footage from 2017, when she performed "Boys," Charli winced at her old stage setup. "It's cringing me out, if I'm honest," she said, though she remembered the show fondly, recalling she used to tour with a live band. She followed that with a sweltering 2019 performance of "I Love It," joking about the "unfortunate" fringe hairstyle she wore that day.

Charli called Reading & Leeds "the festival that I grew up at," describing the crowd's intensity both from her performing days and from attending as a fan before she was famous. Watching a clip of "Beg For You" from 2022, she poked fun at her old haircuts before summing up her history at the event: "It happened. I had fun. It was a different time and a different era."

This year's headline set, her first at Reading & Leeds since 2022, follows the release of her album "Music, Fashion, Film" and arrives after a summer that cemented her as one of pop's most in-demand festival guests, including a surprise cameo during The Strokes' Outside Lands set and a turn alongside Lorde at Lollapalooza. The run also included a limited run of $25 tickets for her North American arena tour, which fans can track alongside other autumn dates in the tour guide. She will play the festival's main stage, now called The Grid, at 7:45pm Friday in Reading and 7:10pm Saturday in Leeds.

Charli joins a bill that also includes Florence + The Machine, Fontaines D.C., Dave, RAYE and Chase & Status atop this year's lineup, which she says has grown less bound to any one genre over the years she has watched it change.