Change of panorama in Mad Cool: from the hardened rocker and follower of Foo Fighters on Wednesday to the young audience of yesterday to enjoy a girls’ night out. The power of female pop represented from four parts of the world: the South Korean Jennie, the New Zealander Lorde, the Swedish Zara Larsson and the English Florence Welch at the head of Florence and The Machine. The magnetic disturbing presence of the latter took away the best moments of a day that saw the extremely uncomfortable Zara Larsson concert on a new day with a full house: 57,000 people at Iberdrola Music, in the Villaverde neighborhood, south of Madrid. There is still a festival today, Friday and Saturday.
It is worth starting with the incantations of Florence Welch, who staged her exorcism in the form of songs while thousands of people chanted her baroque hymns. So it was fitting that it happened after midnight. At 00:30 a.m. the witches took Mad Cool. The ritual queen emerged in a Gothic-inspired chiffon dress with extra-long sleeves that gave a winged effect. Choker. All in black. Barefoot and with messy red hair. In front of her, performing a pagan dance, the members of her dance group and choir moved. She began to sing, as if making her way through the mist, Everybody Scream. The atmosphere was electric, mysterious. For the next piece the witches knelt before their goddess, and she, like an emulator of Hecate, calmed them thanks to a slow gesture with her hand while intoning Shake It Out.
Florence and The Machine offered an almost gospel-inspired concert. As melodies made with “ooooos” proliferate in her repertoire, at each signal from the protagonist a chorus of thousands of people acceded to her wishes. Their songs with a resilient theme transformed the venue into a kind of concentration for healing. Anyone could overcome their evils if they let themselves be guided by Welch’s witchcraft. Much of the performance was based on their sixth and final album, Everybody Scream, in which Florence tells how she almost died after a serious hemorrhage caused by a pregnancy where the fertilized egg was left outside the uterus. In the past, Florence wrote about psychological trauma; This time the end of the road was presented to him in an operating room. He avoided it and wanted to share the terrible experience.
He exhibited a voice that seemed like an indomitable bonfire and that went through antagonistic moods: from the thread on the verge of breaking to a mad roar. They were heard Which Witch, Spectrum, Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up), Hunger… In King She put her arms crossed, looked up, closed her eyes and it seemed as if some spirit possessed her. He finished the song on his knees. Despite the intensity of some gestures, the songs were offered in an accessible, even danceable, format. It was a wonderful, stimulating concert. Not a single hitch.
But we must talk about less edifying aspects, things to improve in Mad Cool. Stage two, called Orange, is beginning to be a conflicting point at the Madrid festival. On the first day, complaints said that since Moby performed in that space while the stars, Foo Fighters, performed on stage one, called the Region of Madrid, the guitars of Dave Grohl and company sneaked into Moby’s performance. A little uncomfortable, to say the least. The issue is that they are relatively close scenarios. But last night the problem was overcrowding. It seems that the organization did not expect Zara Larsson’s pull. This secondary venue became too small and many people, especially young people, who attended the call of the young Swedish star, barely watched the performance. The sound, logically, was muffled, especially in the most crowded area, the side where most of the people were going to stop, since they were on their way after seeing Lorde on the main stage.
Other years the two stages were aligned in the largest part of the venue. They were actually two main spaces. If Larsson had performed in the supposed location two last year, as Alanis Morissette did in 2025, there would not have been the crowds that occurred last night. Perhaps the organization is considering some compelling reason for having changed the position of the secondary stage, but, for now, many people missed Larsson’s pizpireto pop.
But the public, who travels the world with a terrible desire to have fun, joined in wherever they could, danced the choreographies and sang the pop hits of a young woman who follows the Swedish tradition of sticky commercial bubblegum pop. Accompanied by a generous corps of dancers and by a band with a majority of women (or so this chronicler appreciated from a distance) she offered all those choruses that flourished on TikTok: Midnight Sun, Lush Life o Never Forget You. Larsson demonstrated the qualities of an unmitigated youthful diva: she dances and sings well and knows how to put on a sizzling show for the enjoyment of the youthful spectator… and some fathers and mothers too.
Jennie happens to be the most talented of the four members of Blackpink, the largest K-pop girl band, just a few steps below the kings of the genre, BTS, in popularity. With a first solo album published in 2025, Ruby, He performed at Mad Cool as the day’s headliner: at the best time (it was scheduled for 10:30 p.m., but was delayed 15 minutes) and on the main stage. He met expectations with a commercial pop that embraces Western codes to the detriment of South Korean specificity. That’s why your project loses its uniqueness. A better dancer than a singer, Jennie was categorical and demonstrated her status as an artist with charisma. The most celebrated moments occurred with Dracula, his remix of a Tame Impala song (curious society) and Like Jennie, with which he closed the recital.
Interest in Lorde has been easing in recent times. Her emergence was powerful at a time when mystical girls attracted a lot of attention. And she was a child prodigy who, at the age of 16, recorded her debut, the still stimulating album Pure Heroine (2013). The exposure got the better of him (and who wouldn’t, at that age) and he preferred to take his time between albums. More mature and confident, she released her fourth album in 2025, Virgin. Today he is 29 years old and he is not worried about acting during daylight hours (8:30 p.m.), assuming a less leading role, at least in Spain.
Its staging was attractive despite its simplicity. She came out dressed like any other morning at gym time. Adidas sneakers, pants and top. He even carried a bottle that he refilled from a water fountain that he placed on the platform. Her flexible movements looked like something out of a cardio or strength class. The musicians operated on one side and two dancers accompanied her.
He began performing a shortened version of Royal and then deliver What Was That y Broken Glass. Their songs with slow, programmed rhythms immediately caught on with the public. Her voice was good, with a timbre that seems to follow Björk’s drama, although several degrees of intensity below. He turned to recorded choruses.
In Louvre ascended to the sky of the stage mounted on a structure, and before Liability He gave a motivational speech about “living real things, taking off your sunglasses (as is) and hugging the person next to you.” He used this very fashionable trend that consists of projecting closed planes of his face on the screens and took a couple of puffs on a cigarette to dramatize a theme. Original show. Tomorrow and the next day the tall audience will return to delight with Pixies, Nick Cave or Pulp. We will tell it…