Westside Cowboy have spoken to NME about how it feels to have won a slot at Worthy Farm this June after winning Glastonbury‘s Emerging Talent Competition 2025.
The Emerging Talent Competition was launched in 2004 and previous finalists include Mercury Prize winners English Teacher, Flohio, Declan McKenna, She Drew The Gun, Scouting For Girls, The Subways and Izzy Bizu.
The Manchester-based four-piece and NME 100 alumni Westside Cowboy were this year triumphant over thousands of online entries before beating eight finalists at the live final in Pilton on Saturday (26 April). They impressed a judging panel that included an array of Glastonbury Festival Stage bookers as well as DJ Huw Stephens and Glasto bosses Michael and Emily Eavis.
“It feels amazing but it’s really hard to process,” vocalist Aoife Anson O’Connell told NME moments after being crowned winner. “We’re so lucky, we’ve had the most insane luck for a year and it’s just happened again. We’re the most jammy people in the world, maybe I should start gambling!”
“We’ve had so many achievements that mean so much to us in such a short space of time but this means the most,” she added. “It means so much to everyone in the band, I just vividly remember growing up watching the Glastonbury sets on the telly.”
The band’s sound – inspired by the likes of slacker rock giants like Pavement alongside more contemporary influences like Nice Swan labelmates English Teacher – won a £5,000 PRS slot and earned the band a slot on the iconic Woodsies Stage at this year’s festival. Speaking on those influences, O’Connell explained the band are humbled by comparisons to such big names.
“Reuben (Haycocks vocals / guitars ) and Paddy (Murphy, drums) formed their first band because of their love for Pavement. We all saw them together and they’re a huge influence for us. Even travelling down in the car we had a lot of The Flaming Lips on the playlist, so we channel a lot of those cool guitar sounds but hopefully we bring something of our own as well.”
The band performed two songs on the night, with the second song ‘I’ve Never Met Anyone I Thought I Could Really Love (Until I Met You)’ their only released material so far. Speaking on the track O’Connell explained how it was “the first thing that solidified the band,” adding that “it’s really fun to play and sing, it really brings all of us together.”
Speaking on the lengthy title, she said: “The song title is really long because we really love The Magnetic Fields who do a lot of stuff like that. We very jokingly call that song ‘the hit’ because we think it’s the only song that’s going to do well.
“We try to keep the meanings behind our lyrics under wraps, but I wrote the first song we played tonight a week after I saw a Lankum gig. I’m really inspired by that band and folk music in general. We all love English folk and definitely channel a lot of those influences.”
O’Connell added: “If today has taught us anything, it’s that despite the stature of Glastonbury it still feels very grassroots and family orientated. It’s amazing how something so big can still feel so intimate. It’s incredible they let the likes of us have a chance, it feels like it’s open to anyone.”
DJ Huw Stephens said he and fellow judges were ‘blown away’ by the quality on show amongst the finalists, which included runners up Nat Oaks and Mali Hâf who both received a £2500 PRS Foundation Talent Development Prize.
“We agreed that Westside Cowboy should win, they delivered a great performance and they had some really interesting ideas within their songs,” said Stephens. Looking ahead to their slot on Woodsies, he added: “I think their sound is down really well on a stage like that and I think it’s going to be one to remember.”
This year’s Glastonbury Festival will take place from June 25-29, with headline sets from The 1975, Neil Young and Olivia Rodrigo alongside the likes of Biffy Clyro, Wolf Alice, Charli XCX, Deftones, Doechii, Kneecap, St Vincent and many more. This weekend saw the last batch of re-sale tickets sell out within less than 20 minutes.