BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend 2020 To Take Place Remotely

BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend 2020 is still taking place this year amid the coronavirus pandemic – however, for the first time ever, it will be done remotely.

The event was planned to take place over the May bank holiday weekend (May 22-24) in Dundee’s Camperdown Park, but was understandably cancelled in March. Now, BBC Radio 1 have announced an awesome alternative, with over 100 artists performing live sets – remotely – for fans to enjoy online.

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So far, Biffy Clyro, Sam Smith, Anne-Marie, Young T & Bugsey and Rita Ora have been announced to perform, with the event hosting across five 'stages' (the Radio 1 Stage, the Radio 1 Dance Stage, the Headliner Stage, the 1Xtra Stage and the BBC Music Introducing Stage) and many more acts – which will be revealed in the coming weeks.

“We are delighted to be performing at Radio 1’s Big Weekend UK 2020,” say Biffy. “As much as we’d love to be performing live onstage, this will be a whole new experience for us and we cannot wait!”

Radio 1 Breakfast host Greg James adds: “I’m so pleased we can bring the listeners a brand new version of our Big Weekend this year. It’s our absolute favourite event of the year and we love saying thanks to our listeners for being such a big part of the radio station. It’ll be a great opportunity to re-live some of our favourite performances from over the years and although it’ll be a technical nightmare, having some new performances from artists’ houses will be great for everyone to have something fun to watch and listen to over the Bank Holiday Weekend. And if it all goes wrong, we can just blame the pandemic and say that at least we tried.”

Speaking to Kerrang! about the situation we're all finding ourselves in right now, frontman Simon Neil recently pondered, “I feel the one good thing to have come from all this is that, even though we’re isolated, I do feel like we feel more together than we have been in a long while. That’s a strange situation to be in. Every Thursday when I stick my head outside the door to applaud the NHS and see my whole street doing the same, it gives you the little bit of fortitude and belief in society that most people are decent.”

He added that it all sort of ties in with the Scottish rockers' upcoming album, A Celebration Of Endings, which is due out on August 14.

“Because of what we’re going through now, there’s no way that we can come out the other side of this without some kind of enlightenment,” he said. “I feel like even the darkest, dumbest souls will come out of this with some kind of realisation about what you value, and I hope that Celebration Of Endings will be about no longer valuing things that bring nothing of virtue to the world.

“The title A Celebration Of Endings has become more prescient that I ever could have imagined. There’s no doubt that this is the end of something and the beginning of something else, and I hope that we get rid of people like Boris Johnson, Trump, all these fucking liars that are still gaslighting the people of their countries, still lying even when it’s coming down to people’s lives. Look, I want our economy and our country to do well, but when it comes down to you weighing up whether to open shops being more important than people dying, I think we’ve got a real problem.”

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