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Lola Young Makes Surprise Return at Reading Festival
Singer Lola Young surprised fans with a set at Reading Festival on Sunday, marking her latest step back into the spotlight after a year of cancellations and recovery. The 25-year-old performed hits including 'Messy' and 'One Thing' at the Grid stage.
By Tertius News AI Desk2 distinct · 2 mastheads · 3 articlesVersion 1Coverage Published
Singer Lola Young made a surprise appearance at Reading Festival on Sunday, stepping onto the Grid stage for a set that marked her latest return to performing after a difficult year.
The 25-year-old announced the performance moments beforehand on Instagram, writing: "I am backstage, the cat is out of the bag and I am going to be performing so see you... at the Grid stage."
During her set, she performed hits including her number one single "Messy" and "One Thing," as well as "Conceited." She wore green tracksuit culottes and a black top with long black acrylic nails. The Sunday line-up also included Florence and the Machine, Loyle Carner, Role Model and Kneecap.
Young's appearance continues a gradual comeback after she pulled out of Reading Festival last year due to an "unavoidable scheduling conflict." A month later, in September 2025, she collapsed on stage while performing at the All Things Go music festival in New York, was helped off, and subsequently cancelled all shows "for the foreseeable future."
In a message to fans at the time, she wrote: "I really hope you'll give me a second chance once I've had some time to work on myself and come back stronger." Young later sought treatment for drug dependency, telling the Guardian in 2025 that addiction had dogged her for "a long time."
She returned to performing with a small UK run, starting with a London gig in March. "It felt so right being back on stage," she wrote on social media afterwards, but added: "As tempting as it is to jump on a big tour I'm going to continue taking things slowly despite feeling so ready to perform more."
Before Reading, Young performed at the Electric Picnic Festival in the Republic of Ireland on Saturday. Earlier this year, she took home her first Grammy award, winning Best Pop Solo Performance for her 2024 hit "Messy," and also won the Brit Award for Breakthrough act.
How each outlet told it
A framing line is our reading of that outlet's own text — an interpretation, not a quotation and not a fact we assert. Check it against what the outlet published.
Framing: Emphasizes the surprise nature of Lola Young's appearance at the festival — neutral and factual
Framing: Highlights Lola Young's appearance at the festival, emphasizing it as a 'surprise' and focusing on her as a 'Messy singer'. — sympathetic and cautiously positive
Facts Included:
Lola Young performed at the Grid stage at Reading Festival after teasing it on Instagram.
She performed hits including number one single Messy and One Thing.
She had to cancel a string of shows last year following an on-stage collapse in September.
The festival concludes on Sunday with performances by Chase & Status and Florence + The Machine.
Charli XCX performed an electrifying set following her latest release Music, Fashion, Film.
Young had cancelled her scheduled appearance at Reading Festival last year due to an 'unavoidable scheduling conflict'.
She collapsed on stage at a festival in New York, dropping her microphone and being helped off stage.
She posted on social media asking for a second chance and saying she wanted to come back stronger.
She sought treatment for drug dependency and told the Guardian in 2025 that addiction had dogged her for 'a long time'.
She returned to performing with a small run of UK shows starting with a London gig in March.
After the London gig she wrote on social media that it felt right being back on stage and that she planned to continue taking things slowly.
She performed at the Electric Picnic Festival in the Republic of Ireland on Saturday.
AI-extracted; can misattribute a claim — see Methodology.
Each row is one claim, attributed to the outlet whose wording states it most clearly. Confidence rates how directly the source text states the claim — explicit and unhedged rates high; hedged, pieced-together, or internally inconsistent statements rate lower. It does not measure whether the claim is true. Status is Contested when two claims on this page negate each other; otherwise it counts the distinct outlets we found asserting it — so a single-source claim can still show high confidence, and a multi-source claim can show medium. Every one of those outlets is named beside the status, so you can check the count against the list. For claims extracted before we began storing that list, the row says so: it names the outlet the claim is quoted from and states that we have not recorded which outlets backed it. Outlets wrote at different times, so a figure that evolves — a casualty count, for example — can legitimately differ between rows; check the "as of" time next to each claim's source.
Claim
Confidence
Status
ClaimLola Young performed a surprise set at Reading Festival on the Grid stage on Sunday.
ClaimLola Young teased her Reading Festival performance on Instagram, saying: 'I am backstage, the cat is out of the bag and I am going to be performing so see you... at the Grid stage.'
ClaimA month after the collapse, Lola Young dropped her microphone, collapsed backwards, and had to be helped off stage in front of a festival crowd in New York.
ClaimLola Young posted on social media: 'I really hope you'll give me a second chance once I've had some time to work on myself and come back stronger.'
ClaimLola Young wrote on social media after her March gig: 'It felt so right being back on stage', but said: 'As tempting as it is to jump on a big tour I'm going to continue taking things slowly despite feeling so ready to perform more.'
ClaimLola Young won her first Grammy award for Best Pop Solo Performance for her 2024 hit 'Messy' and also took home the Brit award for Breakthrough act.