You can move around, you can shake your body. We're meant to dance.
At Herrington Country Park in Sunderland, BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend opens its stages entirely to dance music — a programming choice that mirrors something deeper than festival scheduling. A 73 percent rise in dance consumption among under-25s since 2020 suggests a generation is reaching, deliberately, for a form that offers rhythm, release, and the rare sensation of belonging to something larger than oneself. From bedroom producers uploading tracks to SoundCloud to veterans like Fatboy Slim anchoring festival lineups, dance music has quietly become the era's most honest emotional language.
- Dance music has crossed from underground subculture to generational mainstream, with streaming data and festival bookings now confirming what young listeners already knew.
- The old gatekeepers — record labels, radio programmers, industry tastemakers — are losing their grip as bedroom producers reach billions of streams without permission or precedent.
- Artists and DJs describe something almost primal at work: the repetitive beat, the collective movement, the shared release of pressure in a world that offers few other sanctioned escapes.
- Radio 1's decision to dedicate an entire festival day to dance signals that institutions are finally catching up to where youth culture has already arrived.
Herrington Country Park in Sunderland will become a vast dance floor this weekend, as BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend opens with something unprecedented: an entire day dedicated to dance music across all its stages. Fatboy Slim headlines alongside Fisher, Sonny Fodera, and a generation of emerging producers — a lineup that reflects not just a booking decision, but a cultural reckoning.
The numbers are striking. Spotify reports a 73 percent surge in dance music consumption among under-25s since 2020. TikTok saw a 50 percent rise in electronic music content in 2024 alone. Radio 1 DJ Charlie Hedges, performing on the main stage, offers a simple explanation: music is one of the best ways to bring people together. But dance music's particular hold on this moment runs deeper than that.
Birmingham singer Clementine Douglas has watched the genre move from underground to mainstream in real time. British producer Cassö, just 23, made that journey himself — uploading a bedroom track called Prada to SoundCloud and watching it reach a billion streams and number two on the UK singles chart. The gatekeepers, he notes, no longer control the door. A laptop and an internet connection are now sufficient credentials.
Yet the surge isn't only technological. Artists speak of something ancestral in the form — the repetitive beat, the collective gathering, the physical permission to release what daily life compresses. Hedges describes being moved to tears on stage. Cassö puts it plainly: we are meant to dance. In a world that feels fractured, dance music offers a temporary but genuine reprieve — a space where presence and belonging arrive at the same time, without explanation required.
Herrington Country Park in Sunderland will transform into a dance floor this weekend, with tens of thousands expected to converge on BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend. The festival's opening day—a first for the event—will dedicate all its stages to dance music, with veteran DJ Fatboy Slim anchoring the lineup alongside Fisher, Sonny Fodera, MK, and a roster of emerging producers and performers. It's a deliberate programming choice that reflects something larger happening in music right now: dance is no longer a niche pursuit. It's become the sound young people are reaching for.
The numbers tell part of the story. Since 2020, consumption of dance music among listeners under 25 has surged 73 percent globally, according to Spotify. On TikTok, videos tagged with #ElectronicMusic climbed 50 percent in 2024 alone. This isn't a marginal trend. It's a generational shift. Radio 1 DJ Charlie Hedges, who will perform on the main stage during Friday's dance-focused programming, frames it simply: "Music is one of the best ways to bring everyone together." She's not wrong, but the question worth asking is why dance music specifically has become the vehicle for that togetherness right now.
Clementine Douglas, a Birmingham-born singer performing with a live band on the main stage, has watched dance music "emerge out of the underground and go more mainstream." The crossover is real. Artists like Charli XCX and PinkPantheress have revitalized hyperpop. Fred Again and Samly Virji headline major festivals. British producer Cassö, just 23, created a track called Prada in his bedroom, uploaded it to SoundCloud, and watched it accumulate over a billion streams and reach number two on the UK singles chart in 2023. The gatekeepers have lost their grip.
Cassö credits bedroom production and social media distribution as transformative for the genre. "If you're talented, you have a much higher chance of shining through," he says, contrasting the current landscape with an earlier era when record labels controlled access. The democratization is real. You no longer need permission to make dance music or find an audience. You need a laptop and an internet connection.
But the surge isn't purely technological. There's something about the form itself that resonates. Hedges describes the experience of standing on stage, playing to thousands, as something that moves her to tears. "When I'm standing on that stage and playing to thousands and thousands of people, the amount of times I get emotional... because it's just incredible," she says. Cassö puts it differently but arrives at the same place: "You can move around, you can shake your body. What more do you want? We're meant to dance." Douglas speaks of the "repetitive beat" and the collective act of "gathering to release some pent-up energy" as something that taps into ancestral memory—a way of connecting to something older than ourselves.
Dance music's history in Britain runs deep. Disco, acid house, and techno drew crowds in the 1970s and 1980s. The 1990s saw jungle, garage, and drum and bass fuel underground raves and clubs. The 21st century fragmented the genre into countless sub-genres, each with its own devotees. What's happening now isn't entirely new, but the scale and the youth adoption feel different. The Big Weekend's decision to make Friday an all-dance affair—with bassline DJ Notion, trance-focused Marlon Hoffstadt, and German hardcore DJ HorsegiirL sharing the bill—reflects a festival programming around what young people actually want to hear.
There's an escape in it, too. In a world that feels fractured and pressurized, dance music offers a temporary reprieve. Whether you're alone in your room or in a field with thousands, the repetitive beat and the permission to move your body without restraint creates a kind of collective forgetting. Hedges captures it: "I don't think there's anything else in the world that gives that to you." The specificity matters. Not live music in general. Not concerts. Dance music, specifically, with its emphasis on rhythm, its invitation to physical release, its promise that you can be present and part of something larger than yourself all at once.
Citações Notáveis
Music is one of the best ways to bring everyone together. I think that's what we need right now—good music, good times.— Charlie Hedges, BBC Radio 1 DJ
You can move around, you can shake your body. What more do you want? We're meant to dance.— Cassö, music producer
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why do you think dance music specifically is surging right now, rather than, say, rock or hip-hop?
Part of it is the form itself. Dance music is built on repetition and physicality. It doesn't require you to sit still and listen. It invites you to move, to release energy. In a world that feels pretty constrained, that's powerful.
But that's always been true of dance music. Why now?
Access, partly. A 23-year-old can make a track in his bedroom and reach a billion people. That's new. But also—and I think this matters—there's something about the moment. People are looking for ways to feel connected, to escape, to be part of something. Dance music delivers all three at once.
The statistics show under-25s driving the growth. What does that tell you?
That generation didn't grow up with the gatekeepers. They don't see record labels as the arbiters of taste. They find music on TikTok, on SoundCloud. They're used to discovering artists directly. Dance music, with its emphasis on production over personality, fits that world perfectly.
Is there a risk it becomes oversaturated? That the novelty wears off?
Maybe. But dance music has survived multiple cycles already—acid house, rave culture, the 2000s EDM boom. It adapts. The sub-genres keep multiplying. There's always something new to discover.
What about the communal aspect? Is that just nostalgia for something people feel they're missing?
Possibly. But I think it's more than that. There's something primal about moving together to a beat. It's not new—humans have been doing it for thousands of years. Dance music just makes it accessible, legal, and socially acceptable in a way that feels urgent right now.