Mad Cool 2025 is all about the legends. It’s easy to see why Muse were top of the list of names to replace Kings Of Leon after they cancelled their headline appearance at the Spanish festival due to injury. Kicking off with new single ‘Unravelling’, the band giddily slink between ruthless guitar riffs and loved-up pop bangers. They keep the onstage chat to a minimum but dust off a handful of tracks about division and the need for unity (‘United States Of Eurasia’, ‘Map Of The Problematique’) that feels deliberate, but with Muse, it’s always hard to tell. There’s no question about the impact rabble-rousers’ Knights Of Cydonia’, ‘Plug In Baby’ and ‘Psycho’ have on the crowd, though, while the burst of streamers during the funk of ‘Compliance’, the ‘Starlight’ fireworks and Matt Bellamy’s many guitar riffs are the perfect reminder of Muse’s stadium-commanding prowess.
Weezer have always been a reliably brilliant festival act, even if watching them play at 1am feels wrong. Sticking to the classics, 2008’s ‘Pork & Beans’ is the most recent track that makes the cut tonight at Mad Cool while half the set comes via their influential debut album. It’s a comfortable, confident performance from a band who’ve stopped acting like they’ve got something to prove. Technical difficulties mean Iggy Pop has to abort opening track ‘T.V. Eye’ twice, and it takes twenty minutes before he can finally unleash his raucous rock & roll. Despite the fragile sound system, Iggy still plays like he’s trying to blow the speakers for a third time, while the addition of brass to his backing bands elevates the scuzzy punk attack.
Nine Inch Nails are a hugely influential band, but they’re an odd choice for a festival headliner. Fellow 90s groups Deftones and Korn have been embraced by a new generation on TikTok, and while Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross may have soundtracked the beloved ‘Challengers’, it’s not exactly given them a crossover hit. Their set at Mad Cool isn’t designed to win over any new fans either. But Nine Inch Nails have never been about pandering. From the grungey warning of ‘The Beginning Of The End’ and the knotty ‘Wish’ to the disco angst of ‘The Hand That Feeds’, they deliver their punishing industrial metal without compromise. Footage of the band is displayed on the giant festival screens via a handheld video camera that adds to the menacing intensity of the gig, while the closing ‘Hurt’ remains a poignant expulsion for both Nine Inch Nails and their fans.
It’s all solid stuff, but it doesn’t compare to the excitement caused by the next generation.
“I love you so much,” Gracie Abrams tells the crowd of Mad Cool before she even reaches the chorus of opening track ‘Risk’. Her songs are open-hearted declarations of feeling your feelings and live, she performs with the same fearless energy.
“Being together again is the best feeling,” she says before the searing ‘I Love You, I’m Sorry’, explaining that each track is a love letter to her very loud fanbase. “I’m just trying to be a sponge and soak all this in, because you’re magical,” she adds before the biting ‘Cool’. And for the first half hour, Gracie’s set is absolute wizardry.
‘I Told You Things’ is warm, tender and flecked with pain, ‘Friend’ is cut with smirking venom and the fizzing ‘Mess It Up’ builds to an explosive purge that literally blows the speakers, the video screens and the lights. Undeterred, the crowd screams the rest of the song with even more intensity. At this point, most artists would scurry backstage, but Gracie defiantly stays at the end of the runway – performing acoustic tracks for the front rows and hanging out with fans, until she’s practically dragged offstage as people try and get things working again. It’s a nightmare for all involved. Eventually, Gracie returns in time for a cathartic, celebratory ‘Close To You’. “I feel so lucky to be a tiny part of this community that you’ve built,” she tells the huge crowd that’s stuck around. After a summer of sleek festival performances, Gracie’s set at Mad Cool could easily have been a disaster, but she makes something incredibly special out of the chaos. It’s a night no one is going to forget in a hurry.
There’s a similar energy with Girl In Red, who’s performing in Madrid for the very first time. From the grinning ‘bad idea’ to the “low key iconic” ‘girls’, it’s a celebratory hour of following your gut. “I hope you don’t fall asleep,” she grins before fuzzy heartbreaker ‘Hemingway’ while the closing ‘I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend’ has her conducting the biggest, loveliest (and only) wall of death of the weekend.
Plenty of people hate on Benson Boone’s feel-good pop music, but they clearly don’t like fun. Walking the fine line between sincere and sparkly, ‘Beautiful Things’ is an unashamedly huge song, but there are plenty more where that came from. Today’s set is a glorious hour of elation and overblown glam pop bangers. It’s flipping good stuff. Elsewhere, Noah Kahan promises to “wipe the smiles off our faces” at the top of his first-ever gig in Spain. Yes, all his songs are about sadness and loss, but there’s a warmth to be found in screaming those pained lyrics alongside thousands of others. “Oh, you guys actually know all the songs,” he adds, looking surprised. “I thought it was just going to be stick season.”
St Vincent’s seventh album ‘All Born Screaming’ has injected a giddy, urgent energy into her already fierce live show and she tears into her set with a vicious lust for life today. Glass Animals typically inspire summertime escapism with their tropical pop but new album ‘I Love You So F******g Much’ works surprisingly well just after the sun goes down. A little darker, a little more menacing, but still a celebration of togetherness, newbies ‘A Tear In Space (Airlock), ‘Creatures In Heaven’ and ‘Wonderful Nothing’ are just as vital as festival classics ‘Heat Waves’ and ‘Tokyo Drifting’.
“I’ve got a really good feeling about tonight,” smirks Olivia Rodrigo, a handful of songs into her spectacularly joyous headline set. She may have broken through with the tender heartbreak of ‘Driving License’, but she’s become a superstar via scrappy pop-rock anthems that capture the confusing excitement of new experiences.
Live, her coming-of-age bangers couldn’t be more electric. Opening track ‘obsessed’ is a fiery declaration of living life with your heart on your sleeve before the snotty ‘ballad of a homeschooled girl’ breaks down the barriers of acting cool. It’s no surprise that the following fury of ‘Vampires’ provides the first of many screamalongs.
For this festival run, Olivia has ditched the sleek choreography of her recent sold-out arena run and takes to the stage with the support of a ferociously good live band. It gives the 90-minute set grit and spontaneity, but also lets Olivia soak in just how much fun everyone is having. People climb on shoulders for the folksy ‘pretty isn’t pretty’ before the spiky sneer of ‘happier’ and the loved up ‘so american’. She disappears to the barrier during the snarling ‘jealousy, jealousy’ and comes back wearing a tiara. All hail the queen of festival headliners.
There’s depth to this gig as well, though. Olivia leads the crowd in screaming their hearts out during the venomous ‘all-american bitch’, makes them go deathly quiet during the playful ‘bad idea, right?’ and watches them break down in floods of tears during the surprise return of ‘All I Want’. From giddy excitement to overdue catharsis, she creates space to let it all out.
Recent gigs at BST Hyde Park and Glastonbury have seen Olivia pay tribute to those that came before her, taking to the stage with Ed Sheeran and The Cure’s Robert Smith. But tonight at Mad Cool, she comfortably steps up as a festival headliner by doing things her own way. As Olivia sings on ‘all-american bitch’, “I know my place and this is it”. Sung back by tens of thousands of young fans at the very end of the festival, it feels like the next generation is ready to take over. It doesn’t get more legendary than that.
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