Gen Z Diary: There's nothing quite like the chaos of a music festival

Jane Cowan: 'Last week, I attended All Together Now festival. The best thing to come from Waterford since the Blaa.'

If you’ve ever started your day by waking up in a pool of your own sweat, mascara smudged under your eyes, and the vague scent of a burger radiating from the jacket you had to layer onto yourself in the middle of the night, you have experienced the holy trinity of the music festival experience.

Well done! You may feel like you’ve died and gone to hell, but really, you’re just a girl in your 20s. And you should probably be basking in the uncouth glory of this phase of your life.

You see, last week, I attended All Together Now festival. The best thing to come from Waterford since the Blaa.

Yes, it’s a music festival. But not in an ultra cool Coachella sense. It’s less glamorous influencers drinking spicy margaritas and more unshowered, hairy men drinking Bulmers.

Music festivals, particularly the kind that involve camping in sweat boxes we like to call tents, are not for the faint of heart.

Because if you’re not put off by the people urinating two metres away from your tent, you’ll surely be shocked to learn that half the people there will swipe some baby wipes across their pits in the morning and call it a shower.

I wish I was that laid back. They say it’s too much effort to queue for cleanliness. I say, it’s a small sacrifice to make for the greater good (my nostrils).

Like Coachella, some people will wear cool outfits. They’ll have their hair tied up in vintage silk scarves, wear flowy dresses with chunky leather boots, stick gems in their hair and dot colourful eyeliner across their lids. Others, however, choose substance over style and shamelessly wear the same pair of shorts and sweaty GAA jersey for the whole weekend. Not to profile them, but of this, Mayo people were particularly guilty.

I know Mayo people are experiencing county pride as they’ve never known it before. And I’m happy for them. But the smell of those jerseys by Sunday was strong enough to resurrect Sam Maguire himself. And I’m not sure that’s something to be proud of.

All Together Now 2026. Picture: All Together Now

Sure, it’s not a crime to rewear clothes that are stale with sweat. But if you plan on dancing beside me in the crowd at a DJ set? It certainly should be.

Other things you should be prepared for at a festival include being charged €20 for a pizza that looks like it was cooked with a heated argument; throwing tomorrow’s dress over your pyjamas in the hope that it’ll prevent the onset of hypothermia; and being able to listen to the animalistic snoring of the person in the tent next to yours as you attempt to sleep.

Oh, the glamour… Now, I don’t mean to sound negative. All in all, I loved the festival. But I’m not going to sugarcoat this to anyone considering attending a festival. You need to know what you’re signing yourself up for. I truly believe the music festival unlocks parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed. Until this week, I didn’t think I was woman enough to make it through such an intense experience.

People lose all sense of normal human behaviour once they cross into the unknown territory of the festival grounds. Time does not exist. Hygiene is immaterial. Friendships become intimate in ways you’d never previously considered.

One hungover morning as I made my pilgrimage to the communal showers, I witnessed some such intimacy. I saw a group of friends sat on camping chairs arranged in a circle, chatting. I smiled at the wholesome image. No phones, just good old-fashioned gossip.

Then I noticed one of the friends was brushing their teeth. When it came time to spit, they leaned forward and proudly ejected the toothpaste from their mouth into the centre of the circle, for all of their friends to see. And everyone carried on chatting as nothing had happened. A festival is the kind of place where your friend might ask you to clean the dirt from between their toes. And for some bizarre reason, the kind of place where that friend, in a haze of alcohol and exhaustion, will probably agree to do it.

For years, the thought of this base existence deterred me from attending music festivals. As my Instagram feed invariably filled with posts of people looking to buy second-hand tickets to festivals every summer, I would scoff at the idea. But I have been reformed.

There’s nothing like a weekend of running between gigs with your friends. Waking up to debrief the night before over a beer. Even if your hair could do with a triple shampoo. The chaos is why it’s fun. I get it now.