Festival had faced criticism for its 2024 line-up

Eminem 'lined up' for Glastonbury 2025 headline slot | The Independent

A report has claimed that music giant Eminem is being lined up to headline Glastonbury Festival for its 2025 event.

The festival, which takes place every year in Worthy Farm, Somerset, had faced criticism for its line-up of headliners this year. Topping the bill at Glastonbury 2024 were Dua Lipa, Coldplay (returning for their fifth headline set), and SZA, while the Legends slot was occupied by Shania Twain.

According to an “insider”, Glastonbury organisers are seeking to avoid similar criticisms next year by securing one of the biggest names in music for the Pyramid Stage.

Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, has never performed at Glastonbury before, though has headlined other prominent European festivals, including Reading and Leeds in 2017.

The report, published by the Daily Mail, claims that discussions are already underway between Glastonbury and Eminem’s representatives, with the festival eager to acquire the “Slim Shady” rapper’s talents.

The Independent has contacted Glastonbury Festival for comment.

Among the other major acts to have been rumoured for a headline slot in recent years are Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Stevie Wonder.

Eminem performing in 2022
Eminem performing in 2022 (Getty Images for The Rock and Ro)

At Glastonbury 2024, SZA was met with one of the smallest headline slot crowds in recent memory, thanks in part to the multiple big names playing on other stages.

In a four-star review of the set, The Independent’s critic Jazz Monroe wrote: “For many a Glastonbury headliner, the Sunday night crowd is the ripest of low-hanging fruit. Survivors are sleepless, restless and mentally depleted, vulnerable to the laziest heartstring thrums and the faintest pangs of nostalgia.

“But an artist like SZA, the 34-year-old singer born Solána Imani Rowe, offers neither. After Dua Lipa’s laser-guided precision and Coldplay’s pyrotechnic catharsis, SZA – a Grammy-sweeping R&B phenom with an arsenal of candid heartbreakers – is perhaps a tough sell, less cultural colossus than a secret shared between millions.”

Next year’s festival at Worthy Farm is rumoured to be the final one before a so-called fallow year. Every few years, the organisers opt not to host the festival in order to allow the site to ecologically recover.

The most recent fallow year was in 2018, though the festival was also cancelled in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the Covid pandemic.