Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Noel Gallagher have been announced as headline acts for the BBC’s four-city music festival, Biggest Weekend.
The event is an upgraded version of the BBC’s annual Big Weekend festival, in lieu of coverage of Glastonbury festival, which is taking a fallow year. It takes place in Belfast, Coventry, Perth and Swansea from 25-28 May.
Other names confirmed so far are Grammy-winning US songwriter Beck, Northern Irish arena rockers Snow Patrol, Welsh veterans Manic Street Preachers, 80s pop star Billy Ocean and Australian indie rocker Courtney Barnett. Nigel Kennedy will play everything from Bach to Gershwin and Jimi Hendrix, while folk star Eliza Carthy will play with her Wayward Band. Public Service Broadcasting will perform in Belfast, playing specially commissioned music about the Titanic.
Each of the station’s music channels – Radio 1, 2, 3, 6 Music, 1Xtra and Asian Network – are involved with the festival, which still has many further names to announce. Tickets, of which 175,000 are available, are £18 each and go on sale on Monday 12 February.
