Our take on this years Reading & Leeds festival lineup.

The iconic, annual music festival duo is taking place once again over the August bank holiday weekend. We’re here to take a look at the history of the festival, give our comments on this year's line-up, and the public opinions on the two. Let us know in the comments who you’d be most excited to see on the line-up and who you would like to add, given the chance.

Taking it back to 1961 when Harold Pendleton put on the National Jazz Festival, held on Richmond Athletic Ground. However, as time went on, the festival moved all over London before reaching Reading in 1971. The lineup for the National Jazz Festival was exclusively jazz performers, but in 1963, they added a lot more rhythm & blues acts, for example, the Rolling Stones and, Long John Baldry. Unfortunately, by 1969, jazz had completely disappeared entirely from the lineup. During the 1970s, the lineup became heavily influenced by rock and blues acts, going on to become the first music festival to include punk rock. However, in 1984 the local council banned the festival as they refused the grant licenses for any sites in the Reading area. Unfortunately, fans had already purchased and booked their tickets, and promoters tried to find a new site in Northamptonshire but failed. In 1986 permission was given back to the festival to go into the opposite field with a short-notice lineup being put together.

As of 1999, the festival added a second venue in Leeds due to increasing demand. The performers played Leeds, being repeated the day after at Reading, running from Friday to Sunday with the Leeds venue running from Saturday to Monday. However, this changed in 2001 as the acts would play Reading and then go on to play Leeds the day after in a loop. Moving on to the early 2000s as they introduced more indie bands and several hip-hop acts over the years, for example, Eminem, Ice Cube, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and The Streets. Fast forward to the 2010s, the festival hit a new record capacity of 105,000, in 2019 with 200 artists playing at both festivals.

In current time, on February 28th, 2023, the Reading and Leeds official Instagram released both of this year's festival line-ups in full, in comparison to their post on December 9th, 2022, showing the few headlines and some of the big names to be featured, for example, Tion Wayne, Central Cee, and Becky Hill. Sam Fender is shown to be headlining Reading festival on Friday, followed by Loyle Carner, Wet Leg, Mimi Webb, Tion Wayne, and Yard Act, followed by American rapper, Trippie Redd, Meekz, and D Double E. Being the most rap heavy day of the festival. Followed by Saturday, with headlining acts from The Killers, Central Cee, Nothing But Thieves, Lewis Capaldi, Slowthai, Chase Atlantic, and Inhaler. Following by Clavish, Kenny Allstar, Queen Millz, and JBEE all on the Radio 1Xtra stage. Leaving Sunday packed with all types of genres including, Billie Eilish, Steve Lacy, Declan McKenna, Bakar, and The Amazons. With appearances from Lil TJay, K-Trap, Songer, Lancey Foux, and J Fado.

As the lineups have all been released, the comments on their Instagram posts weren’t too promising as a lot of people were commenting negatively on who was appearing on the posters, for example, “Worst lineup in the festivals history”, “wtf is this”, “Complete rubbish. What the hell has happened to Reading Festival. Where are the Rock and Indie bands. Feel scammed out of my money. HOPEFULLY THIS IS A JOKE. Completely wrong music for this festival stood for. Disappointed”, and “I didn’t think the lineup could get any worse than the headliners… and then you drop this”. People were not happy on Twitter either, with comments like “Heavily considering selling my ticket at this rate”, “What time does the actual lineup get announced??”, and “wtf happened to the 1extra tent. You lot used to get good rappers”. Let us know in the comments down below your opinions on the lineup, who would you add given the chance?