NEWS
The Great Escape Festival has added 120 names to its 2025 line-up and announced a spotlight show with Pete Doherty and Warmduscher.
Taking place in Brighton from May 14-17, the festival welcomes Doherty and Warmduscher for a special Spotlight Show curated by Doherty’s record label, Strap Originals. It takes place at the Deep End venue on Brighton’s beachfront.
Further additions to the festival’s weekend bill include: Jordan Adetunji, Lynks, The K’s, Donny Benét, The Moonlandingz, Black Fondu, Real Farmer, Shortstraw, Bold Love, and Namesbliss.
The festival has also shared that The Road To Great Escape, its annual showcase of events, will take place in the preceding week at Glasgow’s King Tut’s (May 9-10) and Dublin’s Whelan’s (May 12-13). Here, some of the acts who are billed for the festival will perform in their hometowns before going down to Brighton to play at The Great Escape 2025.
Last year over 125 artists boycotted the event due to its ties with Barclays Bank, who were accused of investing in a number of companies that supply arms to Israel. In October it was announced that Barclays will no longer be a partner of The Great Escape Festival in 2025.
Campaign group Bands Boycott Barclays shared on social media: “CONFIRMED: Barclays is not a partner of The Great Escape 2025! BOYCOTTS WORK!”
“After hundreds of artists and music industry professionals took collective action in solidarity with Palestine this year, Barclays are no longer in any way affiliated with The Great Escape Festival!”
Every artist that had been booked to play the 2024 opening party in Brighton cancelled their appearance, alongside more than 100 others, including Picture Parlour, Miso Extra and Alfie Templeman. Over 1,200 artists including IDLES, Squid and Massive Attack also signed an open letter addressed to The Great Escape, asking them to remove Barclays as a sponsor.
The festival has been running since 2006, and previous performers include Charli XCX, Sam Fender and Fontaines DC.
The Darkness have shared that their holiday anthem Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End) came together on the spot after a night of heavy drinking.
Guitarist Dan Hawkins looked back on the moment the band’s label encouraged them to deliver a festive release following their breakthrough in the UK.
He told NME, “I was in the Met Bar getting absolutely wasted with Max Lousada, our A+R guy back then.
He said, ‘We have to start thinking about a Christmas single, right? What are you thinking: Love Is Only A Feeling?’ I told him, ‘Well, that is not a Christmas single, is it?’ He asked if we already had one and I said ‘Yeah’… even though we did not.”
The following day, while on the way to open for Metallica at Dublin’s RDS Arena, the group jumped straight into creating it. Hawkins picked up fairy lights and Christmas sweaters for the tour bus, and the 2003 track came together quickly.
He continued, “Justin had that chorus lying around as something he messed with years ago.
We figured out how to shape it into a real song and it was wrapped up within a couple of hours in the back of the bus. We honestly just blagged the whole thing.”
Even with its quick creation, Hawkins explained that the band wanted to craft an authentic Christmas single rather than simply dropping sleigh bells onto an already finished idea.
He added, “At that moment, I really wanted to compete. I wanted to be involved in the race for Christmas. You can tell instantly when someone just tosses in bells and the word ‘Christmas’ to an ordinary song. We wanted to make something that felt real.”
The track eventually grew into one of the band’s most iconic releases, placing The Darkness securely among modern Christmas rock staples.
The song narrowly missed the top spot after losing out to Gary Jules and Michael Andrews’ cover of the Tears For Fears track Mad World.
