Pretty much every major festival in the UK has its version of an up-and-coming artist stage; Reading and Leeds Festival has the BBC Introducing Stage, Boardmasters has The View, TRNSMT has The River Stage for breaking artists… the list goes on. But none seem to have the same level of industry backing that Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition does. Artists all along the country compete for a slot on one of the festival’s main stages, as well as a £5,000 Talent Development prize from the PRS Foundation. This year, the prize was taken by Scottish singer-songwriter Lewis McLaughlin. You can listen to his most recent single, ‘Go With The Flow’ below.
McLaughlin quickly took to his socials after accepting his award, summing it up as “Madness”, before expanding to say “Honestly so stunned, all the other acts were incredible. Big thanks to all the judges and everyone involved in the competition.”. While we’re on the subject of other artists, the longlist for the competition was announced before (you can see that here) and over the course of the night, was slowly whittled down to the top 3. Rapper Crae Wolf and Leeds band English Teacher took third and second place respectively, each securing a slot at Glastonbury 2022 and £2,500 from PRS.
And our 2022 Emerging Talent Competition winner is the amazing @LewisSings! He wins a £5,000 Talent Development prize from the @PRSFoundation and a slot on one of the main stages at this year’s Festival! pic.twitter.com/PwDv5pYts1
— Glastonbury Festival (@glastonbury) April 30, 2022
This makes the first time since 2019 that the winner of the competition will actually get a chance to perform at the world-famous festival. R.A.E took home the prize in 2020, but the festival was cancelled due to obvious complications. So after a few years, poor R.A.E finally got the good news when the festival’s organisers confirmed “The winner of the 2020 competition – which had its entry window before that year’s Festival was cancelled – was the incredible south-east Londoner R.A.E, who wowed the judges with her radiant, pin-sharp hip-hop and R&B. R.A.E will play on one of the main stages at this year’s Festival as part of her prize.”.
2022’s Glastonbury Festival has been attracting attention for a good while. It’s already impossible to get tickets, but the fact they didn’t even try to put on a festival in 2021 means that many punters have just been left waiting. Headliners Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, and Paul McCartney perfectly sum up the cultural and historical significance that Glastonbury has the ability to muster up. Billie Eilish is obviously one of the biggest names in pop these days, she needs no introduction, Kendrick Lamar has been riding a wave of 3 genre-defining albums over the last few years and is in theory releasing another this week… he needs no introduction, and Paul McCartney was in The Beatles… you get the picture. It’s going to be a big one.
