Neil Young has reversed course on boycotting playing at Glastonbury in 2025 just hours after he accused the festival of being under the BBC’s “corporate control.”
“Due to an error in the information received, I had decided to not play the Glastonbury festival, which I always have loved,” Young wrote on his website on Friday. “Happily, the festival is now back on our itinerary and we look forward to playing! Hope to see you there!”
Earlier this week, Young announced that, despite “looking forward to playing Glastonbury,” he and the Chrome Hearts pulled out of the festival after learning that “BBC was now a partner in Glastonbury and wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in.”
“It seems Glastonbury is now under corporate control and is not the way I remember it being,” he wrote previously. “We will not be playing Glastonbury on this tour because it is a corporate turn-off, and not for me like it used to be. Hope to see you at one of the other venues on the tour.”
Following his reversal, Glastonbury organizer Emily Eavis shared the news on the festival’s Instagram page, noting the “Harvest Moon” singer is “an artist who’s very close to our hearts at Glastonbury” who “does things his own way and that’s why we love him.” “We can’t wait to welcome him back here to headline the Pyramid in June,” Eavis wrote.
The festival, which will take place from Wednesday, June 25 through Sunday, June 29, has yet to confirm its full 2025 lineup, though Young and Rod Stewart have been confirmed to perform. Last year’s performers included Dua Lipa, Coldplay, LCD Soundsystem, Cyndi Lauper, SZA, Burna Boy and Janelle Monáe, among others.
Young took a similar stand by boycotting Spotify beginning in January 2022 due to concerns that Joe Rogan was spreading “fake information about vaccines” on the platform via his “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. In March 2024, Young ended his Spotify boycott after Rogan’s podcast lost its exclusivity with Spotify and his “disinformation podcast features” were made available on Apple and Amazon.
“I cannot just leave Apple and Amazon, like I did Spotify, because my music would have very little streaming outlet to music lovers at all,” Young explained in a statement posted to his website. “So I have returned to Spotify, in sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it.”
