Lola YoungMain Stage, Electric Picnic★★★★☆Lola Young’s surprise appearance at Electric Picnic on Saturday quickly answers two questions. The first is who’ll be filling the midafternoon gap in the Main Stage line-up that was announced earlier in the week.The second, by way of one high-profile fan it draws, is whether CMAT will make it to Stradbally after having to cancel her Friday slot at the Rock en Seine festival, just outside Paris, because of gastroenteritis.But the self-styled Dunboyne Diana is here checking out Young’s hour-long performance, which brings her raw vocals and catchy riffs to an appreciative rain-soaked crowd.A tone-setting early treat is One Thing, the tongue-in-cheek erotic pop song from the London neosoul star, whose tracksuit is emblazoned with “I Heart Me” logos. Such perhaps radical self-acceptance and self-compassion are part and parcel of Young’s music, but there’s also an undeniable vulnerability to her performance. Managing to be catchy yet real, authentic yet technically polished, songs such as D£aler, Post Sex Clarity and Spiders invite you to acknowledge uncomfortable truths around addiction, sexual relations and womanhood yet never drag down the momentum of her set.Electric Picnic 2026: Lola Young on the Main Stage on Saturday. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Electric Picnic 2026: Lola Young on the Main Stage on Saturday. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Although there’s a temptation to categorise Young’s music as being like that of Kate Nash or Lily Allen, with its feistiness and sometimes flippant lyricism, there’s a degree to which it’s more like that of Amy Winehouse or Adele. Young, who took a six-month mental-health break after collapsing on stage in New York last autumn, is all soul, and songs that the Grammy, Brit and Ivor Novello winner has already performed live hundreds of times retain a sense of urgency and emotion while sounding almost studio perfect.That’s certainly true of the crowning glory of the 25-year-old’s set: Messy, aka the “ADHD anthem” that Young released in 2024. It’s the track that catapulted her to stardom, via TikTok virality, and she delivers it with such immediacy and sincerity this afternoon that it’s as if she’s singing it for the first time. It’s a rare gift.