Charlotte Church

The "Yes is More" gig at the Tramshed in Cardiff was a landmark cultural event for the independence movement. It sold out and brought together artists and activists, demonstrating that support for independence was moving beyond political meetings into the cultural mainstream. Charlotte Church's participation as the headline act brought significant media attention.

Church's performance at the sold-out "Yes is More" concert marked the moment when Welsh independence crossed from a political movement into a cultural one. As one of Wales' most internationally recognised performers — with over 10 million records sold — her public association with the independence cause gave it a celebrity profile that traditional political campaigning could never achieve. The event brought together artists and activists in a format that felt more like a festival than a rally, appealing to audiences who might not attend a political meeting but would come to hear Charlotte Church sing. The concert became a template for subsequent cultural events associated with the movement, establishing that independence was, as Church herself would later put it, "normal" — not a radical fringe position but a natural expression of Welsh identity.

At the start of 2021 — a year that would see independence polling reach record highs and YesCymru membership surge past 17,000 — Church collaborated with YesCymru to release a New Year tune declaring that "independence is normal." The campaign coincided with Dafydd Iwan's "Yma o Hyd" reaching number one on the UK iTunes chart.

Church's "independence is normal" song for YesCymru became one of the movement's most memorable cultural moments, encapsulating its core message in three words. By framing independence as "normal" rather than radical, Church challenged the default assumption — reinforced by UK-wide media — that Wales' position within the UK is the natural state of affairs. She explicitly rejected the idea that her support was about nationalism, saying it was about "democracy" and that Wales had "an opportunity to be a shining beacon of environmentalism and wellbeing." Her comment "why not make Welsh independence your New Year's resolution?" captured the movement's aspirational, forward-looking tone. The animated video YesCymru produced for the song — showing a cartoon Church in a Welsh flag dress — was shared thousands of times on social media, reaching audiences far beyond the traditional pro-independence community.

Church recorded a formal endorsement video for YesCymru in which she explained her journey from being "tentative" about independence to throwing her "full support" behind it. The video was part of YesCymru's broader strategy of securing high-profile endorsements to normalise the independence position.

In her most detailed public statement on independence, Church described a political journey that mirrored many Welsh voters' evolution: raised in a "very strong Labour household" where the narrative was "well, we'll be made to speak Welsh," she had initially been uncertain about independence. But after Brexit and COVID — which, she said, made it "impossible to ignore the fact that for Westminster we're an afterthought" — she concluded that independence was necessary. Her framing was deliberately inclusive: "it's not about being Welsh, it's just about being human — we have to have a much more caring, cohesive society." This emphasis on values rather than identity was strategically important for the movement, demonstrating that independence support extends beyond Welsh-speaking nationalists to English-speaking, urban, pop-culture-connected audiences. Church's endorsement was particularly significant because she represents a demographic (Cardiff-born, English-speaking, globally successful) that was historically assumed to be uninterested in Welsh self-governance.