Lola Young told the crowd it felt good to be back performing as she returned to a major festival stage at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland on Saturday night. The 28-year-old appeared earlier in the evening on the main stage, marking her first festival set since she collapsed on stage at New York’s All Things Go last September.
Young’s set leaned on the songs that have pushed her into the biggest stretch of her career, with d£aler, Post Sex Clarity and One Thing all making the list before she closed with Messy. That track won her the Grammy for best pop solo performance and the Brit Awards breakthrough prize earlier this year, turning a return from injury into one of the night’s most watched moments.
Young had taken a few months out to focus on her physical and mental health after the collapse last September. Since re-emerging at the Grammy Awards in February, she has been easing back through a run of intimate gigs, and Big Weekend was the first time she had played a festival in months. For fans in Herrington Country Park, the set carried the sense of an artist still rebuilding after a sudden stop, but doing it in front of a crowd that knew every word.
The weight of the night, though, also sat with Zara Larsson, who headlined the festival later on Saturday and used the platform to underline how far she has come since winning Sweden’s version of Britain’s Got Talent in 2008 aged just 10. Radio 1 said it was her first time headlining a major European festival, and the 25-year-old treated the slot like a victory lap, mixing tracks from Midnight Sun with Stateside and Ain’t My Fault.
Larsson also brought Kayleigh on stage to perform the Lush Life dance, a nod to the song that helped turn her into a global pop name after 2016, when Lush Life became one of the year’s defining soundtracks. She later leaned into the crowd, pointing to the summer weather and telling fans: “Summer isn’t over... summer has just started.” The line fit the mood of a set built around momentum, familiarity and the kind of hooks that keep a festival field moving late into the night.
Her Big Weekend appearance was her fourth time at the festival, which gave the headline set an added sense of familiarity even as it marked a new peak in scale. Larsson’s path to that stage has run through a string of career markers, from the 2017 collaboration with Clean Bandit on Symphony to the sustained pop reach that allowed her to close the night as a headliner in Sunderland.
James Blake also performed on the New Music stage during the evening, adding another layer to a bill that mixed established names with current chart forces. But the story of the night belonged to the return of Young and the ascent of Larsson: one artist back after a health break, another claiming a first major European festival headline slot. In Sunderland, both turned Big Weekend into a reminder that festival stages still reward the comeback and the payoff at the same time.
Big Weekend took place at Herrington Country Park, and Young’s appearance was the clearest sign yet that her recovery has moved from pause to restart. The answer to the night’s biggest question was there in her own words: she was back, and she sounded ready to stay.
