Primavera Sound believes in pop

This year’s edition of Primavera Sound was an overdose of musical wealth. The Barcelona festival has always been ahead of the curve in not just understanding the range of taste of modern music fans, but respecting it: it’s a dream festival for the listener who moshes to Turnstile and knows “Pink Pony Club” by heart, or a die-hard Stereolab fan who has “Espresso” on repeat. The 2025 iteration booked dizzying sets by LCD Soundsystem, Stereolab, FKA twigs, and Waxahatchee, but it was the pop trifecta of Charli xcx, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter that the festival pushed the hardest, and it paid off. Where else could you see Beach House and Sabrina Carpenter, or Fontaines D.C. into Chappell Roan within 24 hours?

Affectionately dubbed “The Powerpuff Girls” — there was even a statue erected in their honor on the festival grounds — the trio’s booking marks a major moment in Primavera history. While it’s typical for Primavera Sound to have multiple headliners, in the past, they’ve been rock-heavy; the 2022 edition was headlined by Pavement, Beck, Tame Impala, Gorillaz, and Interpol. The festival’s trend toward more pop-centric lineups over the last decade met its logical endpoint this year, not as a replacement to favored indie rock acts, but in addition to them. Though the festival continues to champion younger bands reinventing the idea of what a “band” can be, they are seemingly aware of the fact that they can’t keep re-booking the same legacy alternative rock acts as headliners if they want to remain current and interesting. Their support of female pop as a traditionally indie rock-leaning festival is refreshing, and needed. All three are mainstream pop stars, sure, but there is an edge to all three of them that suits the alternative reputation of the festival: Charli’s club-kid nu-rave, Chappell’s campy, maximalist pop, Sabrina’s stylish Eurodisco. Each also brings their own sense of individuality that mainstream pop tends to feel lacking in.

The people came to Primavera to party with Charli who put on a glorious set. Tens of thousands packed onto an open-air field in an outdoor rave setting at 1 a.m., meaning bodies melded together as she ran through Brat banger after banger, not in the darkened hues of a warehouse but in the night-time Barcelona breeze. Charli’s joint SWEAT set with Troye Sivan (that quickly lived up to its name as I was drenched with perspiration from the opening bars of “360”) saw each taking turns performing solo and together — but it was obvious that the crowd was yearning for pure, unadulterated Brat. Troye’s portions acted as inadvertent breathers from the pumped-up energy of Charli’s made-for-raving bangers. I have been admiring her minimalist stage set-up and decision to forego heavily choreographed dance numbers and intricate visuals in favor of her taking the stage solo: she is the spectacle, and the crowd are her dancers. The music speaks for itself.

As the “Bubbles” of the Powerpuff Girls, Sabrina Carpenter’s set was playful and full of tongue-in-cheek fun. Mixing old-school Broadway theatrics with vintage Americana, Sabrina’s production was the most elaborate of the three, with retro television commercials and a fleet of dancers. She debuted her new song “Manchild,” a diss track about an immature ex (*cough* Barry Keoghan). If she could learn a thing or two from Buttercup and Blossom, though, it would be to elevate the dance element of her music — “Espresso” is perfect for it — and to fully commit to the campy spectacle. Sabrina did just a snippet of a cover of “It’s Raining Men,” and seemed to hold back on the humor she’s become known for, keeping the performance relatively safe as she focused on hitting all the high notes. To go from being a good to great headliner would be to inject a little off-the-book pizzazz; she was happy to stick to the script, inhabiting the “Bubbles” of it all a little too well.

It’s Chappell Roan who gave the best performance of the three and possibly the whole festival. Chappell’s music is made to be performed live on a platform like Primavera to a 100,000-cap festival main stage, and she took every opportunity to celebrate such a triumphant moment with an ornate gothic castle stage and opulent costumes that played up the occult fairytale theme (“It’s giving Shrek,” my friend commented). “Not overdramatic, I know what I want / We’re leaving the planet and you can’t come,” she screeched on opening number “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl,” where she was joined with a 100,000-strong crowd of backup singers bouncing and dancing nonstop the entire set. Pop music is fun again, hallelujah!

There was a delirious catharsis in the euphoria of Chappell’s set. Yes, it was a safe haven, a congregation of girls and gays and theys, but it also was incredibly purgative to partake in mass chanting of songs that pushed for the decentering of men and the celebration of queer love, female friendships, solidarity, and independence. Tracks like “Casual” pushed back against the normalization of toxic situationships in the name of being treated with basic respect; “My Kink Is Karma” was a public flagellation of an idiot ex-boyfriend; and power ballads like “Good Luck, Babe,” which challenge the concept of compulsory heterosexuality, became even more emotional sung by the tens and tens of thousands in perfect unison. She even managed to pull off a killer cover of Heart’s “Barracuda”.

When Chappell played her newest track, “The Giver,” the innuendo-heavy anthem with hues of Shania Twain, she read off exes’ names from a hard hat onstage, stating the worst of their crimes to mass boos from the audience: “He only knew how to use his fingers to play video games,” she eye rolled. The song morphed into a new beast, fiddles and all, with its simple, but effective, message that perhaps befitted all three Primavera headliners this year: she gets the job done.