Olivia Rodrigo bossed yet another festival headline gig last night (July 12), bringing her record-breaking Guts World Tour to Mad Cool and Spain’s Iberian Peninsula for a sensational pop show of the highest order. But, you know, quite a lot worth mentioning happened before that…
Read more about Rodrigo’s big moment in Madrid here, but if you’re wondering what went down on the many other stages across the Villaverde site – well, we can help. Scroll down for all of Team NME’s fave sets from Day Three at Mad Cool.
Words: Rhian Daly, Liberty Dunworth, Alex Flood, Andrew Trendell
Girl In Red (6.55pm, Ouigo Stage)
Drawing one of the biggest crowds that the Ouigo Stage has seen all week (especially in the still-punishing early evening sun) Marie Ulven – AKA Girl In Red – brought a whole lotta rockstar bravado to Mad Cool 2025. “Got my Ray-Bans on and I’m rolling with the boys – having all this swagger was never a choice,” she sang on ‘Doing It Again’. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.
“This is my first time in Madrid,” she hollered, “and it’s a really fucking good idea, bitch,” introducing the punky indie of old fan favourite ‘Bad Idea!’. Her Spanish faithful had clearly been holding out for the Norwegian queer-pop icon. “This song is iconic for me because I’m a fucking lesbian,” she said, introducing the defiant and anthemic ‘Girls’ – a song about journeying through self-discovery to reach a place of pride. The crowd was with her every step of the way. The fiery ‘Dead Girl In The Pool’, a mass wave-along for ‘I’ll Call You Mine’ and the heart-wrenching, addiction-tackling new song ‘Hemingway’ made for set highlights, before Ulven closed with the euphoric ‘Seratonin’ and invited “hopefully Mad Cool’s biggest fucking wall of death” to kick off during ‘‘I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend’. Girl In Red’s first trip to Madrid was one to remember. AT
Finneas (7.35pm, Orange Stage)
“We all slept like two-and-a-half hours last night to come play for you guys, but there’s nowhere I’d rather be,” Finneas told the Orange Stage crowd on Saturday, but there were no signs of lethargy during the singer-songwriter-producer’s set. While belting out ‘Till Forever Falls Apart’, he took charge of a waterhose that was keeping the audience cool and refreshed under the evening sun, spraying the front rows before clambering up onto his piano for the song’s final lines. Each track was delivered with similar levels of energy, from the hook-filled ‘The Kids Are All Dying’ to the grand finale of ‘For Cryin’ Out Loud!’ “I think during my little jump on stage I might have torn my jeans,” he told the sprawling audience at one point – evidence of a performer who was truly giving his all. RD
PVRIS (8.15pm, Mahou Cinco Estrellas Stage)
Over at the Mahou Cinco Estrellas tent, PVRIS delivered one of the most vigorous and impassioned performances of the entire Mad Cool weekend. Long before the doors opened, fans gathered en masse and eagerly waited in a queue that stretched as far as the eye could see. After the boisterous performance that followed, it was clear that their patience had paid off.
“Que pasa, Maaaadrid?” singer Lynn Gunn howled into the mic, forming a heart with her hands and launching into riotous renditions of ‘Snakes’, ‘Burn It All Down’ and more. With Gunn’s vocals on top form, plus immense guitar riffs and flawless on-stage rapport, this 40-minute set may not have been the longest slot for the band, but the impact it left certainly lingered for a while afterwards. LD
Tanner Adell (9pm, Mahou Reserva Stage)
Ubiquitous pop icon Beyoncé surprised everyone last year when she ripped up her own musical rulebook, shouted “yeehaw!” and dropped a country album. Smartly, she remembered to reference some of the genre’s biggest names as well as a few rising artists within ‘Cowboy Carter‘s tracklist. One of those was NME The Cover alum Tanner Adell, who appeared alongside two of country’s other few Black female stars on Bey’s magical reimagining of The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’.
Mad Cool punters were given a closer look at Adell’s significant talents in the Mahou Reserva tent yesterday – and she didn’t disappoint. Moseying onto stage in a pink one-piece and matching white cowboy hat and white knee-high boots, the Kentucky-born singer-songwriter sashayed her way through a collection of genre-blending bangers including hooky hoedown ‘Strawberry Crush’, barroom belter ‘Snakeskin’ and (the highlight) closer ‘Buckle Bunny’ – a classic example of country storytelling that reclaims a sexist slur in the genre: one aimed at women who supposedly ‘chase’ rodeo cowboys – before exiting stage-right with another suitably Southern hip-swivel. AF
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