Five times dance music ruled Glastonbury Festival

Posted On June 25, 2025June 25, 2025

People have this idea that Glastonbury is a rock show. A cursory glance at the lineups seems to support this theory, especially if you take the festival’s history into account. The early days were built on performances by the likes of T Rex, David Bowie and Hawkwind. As time has gone on, however, the festival has become a lot bigger than one genre. Arguably, it’s become a lot bigger than one kind of medium.

Glastonbury is, after all, a place where you can see everything from theatre and film to stand-up comedy, and, on some years, at the Pyramid Stage, the English National Ballet. However, it does all come back to music and that music has also branched out from plain old rock music, no matter how much of a conniption certain members of Mancunian Britpop relics have about it in the press. Arguably, the best example of this today is the fact that dance music is now considered part of the festival’s lifeblood.

However, had you told Michael Eavis this in the late 1980s, the man would have probably had kittens. He was famously anti-repetitive beats when headlines about rave music were first hitting news outlets. Perhaps because they were stealing his idea of taking a field in rural England, throwing a massive party there with all the hippy-esque ideals that entail, except this time with synths and E rather than guitars and LSD.

He soon came around to the idea, though, and today, it’s unlikely that there’s a single moment of a modern Glastonbury Festival where a DJ isn’t hyping up a field of bleary-eyed ravers. So let’s have a look at five of the moments when dance music truly ruled Glastonbury!

Five times dance music owned the stage at Glastonbury:

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