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.
NEWS
Brad Paisley has called Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding “one of the least pretentious weddings he’s ever seen”.
The country star attended the ceremony alongside his actress wife, Kimberly Williams-Paisley. They joined around 1,000 guests at New York City’s Madison Square Garden earlier this month as the global pop icon married the American football star.
Although the celebration attracted enormous attention and involved tight security and a stunning makeover of the famous arena, Paisley said the occasion never came across as excessive.
“Ironically, (it) was one of the least pretentious weddings that I've ever seen or ever will see,” Paisley told The Associated Press during an interview. “It meant a lot to be (invited). It was, kind of, a big thank you from her to invite us.”
Paisley, who chose Swift as an opening performer for his tour when she was a teenager in 2007, said he was delighted to be included in what many considered the biggest celebrity wedding of the year.
“They were very clear with the invite, and I took this personally when I got the invite, because in the invite, it said, ‘If you're getting this, you mean a lot to us,’” he revealed.
The musician also explained that guests were not told the wedding’s exact location until the date drew nearer.
“It was really fun to watch the cat and mouse game of, like, ‘We can tell you roughly where it's going to be, we're not gonna say what building... and here's the date. If you're in, we'll tell you more,’” he continued. “I went to my wife, I said, ‘Want to go?’ and she said, ‘Absolutely, we gotta be there!’ So, we did it, it was RSVP yes.”
Other famous attendees included Brad Pitt, Gigi Hadid, Bradley Cooper, Ed Sheeran, Sabrina Carpenter, Hugh Grant, Haim and Tom Hanks.
