Meltdown 2025: The Streets

The Streets, led by frontman Mike Skinner, opened the 2025 Little Simz curated Meltdown festival, which was the 30th edition of the country’s longest-running artist-curated music festival at the world-famous Southbank Centre. This was my first trip to the Southbank Centre for any sort of event and I was certainly wowed by the venue. The London weather on the day definitely helped, but it’s not often you can stand on a balcony before the event kicks off with a view overlooking the Thames with Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye all in your line of sight. The beautiful all seated venue held approximately 2,500 excited gig-goers and there didn’t seem to be a spare seat in the house. The Streets were formed in the 1990’s and burst onto the scene years later with their first album, Original Pirate Material, released in 2002. Ever since then they’ve gone from strength to strength performing to wild audiences knowing every word of Skinner’s nostalgic anthems. 

What you can always expect from Mike Skinner is that he’ll take you on a weird and wonderful journey throughout the night and tonight was absolutely no different. Opening the night with their regular opener Turn the Page, Mike soon turned his attention to ensuring we all knew to remain seated and to not ruin the event for those behind us. If we could manage this throughout the night there was the promise of a trip to the house of his friend Fred again… for an after party. Sadly, we’d soon failed the task as The Streets belted out their back catalog of hits including Don’t Mug Yourself, On the Edge of the Cliff, and Everything is Borrowed, with the crowd on their feet singing along with the band.

Throughout the night it became apparent that the event was a family affair with Mike’s wife, children and friends in the audience. A particularly poignant moment occurred after performing Never Went to Church, which was a song about his late father who sadly his children never had the chance to meet. Mike spoke of how proud he would be of his grandchildren and congratulated his daughter on completing her GCSEs, which was met by a wild round of applause from the audience.

Throughout the night, Mike reminded the audience that himself and the band were dreaming of a standing ovation. After heading offstage for a brief moment after playing their huge hits Dry Your Eyes and Fit but You Know It, a frantic crowd were reminded to sit down after the last song of the night so The Streets could receive the standing ovation they’d always dreamed of. The audience delivered, however, this was never in doubt. The ovation was always coming from an overjoyed crowd. The Streets delivered as they always do and if the opening night of Little Simz’ Meltdown Festival is anything to go by then the event should be a huge success.