Glastonbury’s Saturday-night headliners are normally the gateway right into a wild night time of escapades within the competition’s madly diverting 900-acre web site. However after Coldplay’s record-breaking fifth time headlining the Pyramid stage, I wanted a lie-down in a darkened tent. This was a retina-dazzling, synapse-frying, sensory overload of a present. I discovered it insufferable.
Thoughts you, everybody else crammed into the huge Pyramid area, which holds greater than 100,000 individuals of the 210,000 individuals current on the competition, appeared to like the efficiency. From the second the British band launched into their opening quantity “Yellow” — one in all their earliest and finest anthems — to their finale with blandly comforting new single “feelslikeimfallinginlove”, the place was a ferment of flares, arms in air, ladies perched on lads’ shoulders, flags, fireworks, confetti, flashing digital bracelets and lasers.
This was a spectacle designed to be seen from outer area: Chris Martin and his bandmates had been out to make a Large Glastonbury Assertion. They had been joined by a big, random assortment of company: a string orchestra, Femi Kuti’s Afrobeat huge band, a choir led by the singer-songwriter Laura Mvula, rapper Little Simz, the actor Michael J Fox (now sadly affected by Parkinson’s illness) — an inspiration to the band, so Martin defined, for his guitar-playing flip in Again to the Future.
The factor binding all this collectively was positivity of probably the most relentless and overbearing selection. Martin, selecting his phrases fastidiously, held the competition up as a paragon of inclusivity in a world “that may be perceived as divided”. This was an evening, he added, for Israelis and in addition Palestinians, Ukrainians and in addition “peaceable Russians”. Chants of eh-oh and ah-ay had been crowbarred into songs as an instance the theme of togetherness. The agelessly athletic Martin, 47, twinkled and beamed and sang craving excessive notes because the fireworks, confetti and many others erupted round him — a prophet of supercharged feelgoodism for the wellness age.
I a lot most popular the earlier night time’s headliner, Dua Lipa. She placed on a 90-minute big-pop present, easily powered and effectively resourced, however not straining for a grand assertion. Songs from her underwhelming new album Radical Optimism (a Coldplavian title) had been sharpened up. Hits from its predecessors sparkled. There was loads of choreography with backing dancers: cue synchronised hair flick and exhausting stare on the digital camera. A runway main into the viewers was a Glastonbury innovation — and wanted too. The Pyramid stage’s former proscenium-limited set-up has turn out to be an anachronism within the current period of enviornment pop with a number of performing areas.
At one level, Lipa informed viewers to get off their sofas and dance. The reference was to her different viewers, the one watching on tv. Final yr, when Elton John’s headlining set was watched by greater than 7mn individuals, Glastonbury prolonged its broadcasting cope with the BBC. This yr there will likely be greater than 125 hours of TV and radio protection, probably the most ever.
The scrutiny of unseen hundreds of thousands will be double-edged. Some viewers accused Lipa of miming, which she denied. (From my vantage level, she gave the impression to be singing reside, and doing so effectively too.) However the BBC hyperlink, with its public funding, additionally compels Glastonbury to open itself up. Not like final yr’s all-male line-up of headliners, the 2024 equal managed to drag off the difficult stability between broadening attraction and serving up typical Glasto fare. (Following Dua and Coldplay, the ultimate headliner, to be reviewed tomorrow, is SZA, the Gen-Z favorite whose typical habitat is TikTok, not rock festivals.)
“Making historical past, Glastonbury” was the slogan on an indication held on the Pyramid stage on Friday. By way of “I used to be there moments”, this one wasn’t fairly up there with Jimi Hendrix doing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock. I can’t beckon my future great-grandchildren to collect spherical as I mumble about witnessing it. However nonetheless historical past was certainly being made. Glastonbury was internet hosting its first Ok-pop act.
The pioneers had been Seventeen, a sprawling boyband with 13 members, principally wearing ripped darkish denim and vests. The signal with the slogan was held by one in all them. Though the group had been second solely to Taylor Swift in album gross sales final yr, their slot was scheduled for mid-afternoon, a low-status billing. Acutely aware of their function as history-makers, Seventeen rose above the demotion. Limber dance routines and hooky songs had been delivered with the type of seriousness that makes frivolous chart-pop all of the extra pleasurable. “Very Good” impressed one thing of a singalong, the competition’s seal of approval.
Glastonbury, after all, has its personal wealthy historical past: the primary one was held in September 1970, the day after Hendrix died. Its co-founder, Michael Eavis — Sir Michael now, following his knighthood this yr — did his conventional flip singing Frank Sinatra requirements on the Park stage on Thursday, earlier than the official programme started. The 88-year-old ploughed by means of the songs trying frail in a wheelchair, however sang about doing it his means in a sturdy farmer’s voice. (For the remainder of the yr, a lot of the competition’s web site is a dairy farm.)
Within the early hours of the chilly night time that adopted, I joined a hardy crew of proggers and psychonauts for a efficiency by head-music veteran Steve Hillage of his 1979 ambient album Rainbow Dome Musick. Joined by French singer Miquette Giraudy, he appeared on a brand new out of doors stage with glorious encompass sound. Though known as out infrequently for paying comparatively low charges to performers, the competition doesn’t stint on the standard of its sound programs.
“It’s Latin, so you need to transfer your hips,” mentioned Peruvian digital musician Sofia Kourtesis, introducing a music on the West Holts stage. A dry weekend, heat on Saturday, meant that ft had been in a position to transfer as effectively: the dreaded Glastonbury mud was absent. On the identical stage, a 79-year-old attendee of Woodstock, Indian singer Asha Puthli, made her Glasto debut with an evergreen set of classic funk and soul. On the Avalon tent, a 75-year-old survivor of the Swinging Sixties, Lulu, closed her set with a canopy of Elton John’s “I’m Nonetheless Standing” earlier than issuing a trouper’s plug for her autumn tour.
West Holts was overwhelmed by too many individuals desirous to see 2000s lady group Sugababes, who ought to have been scheduled for a bigger area. Australian dance music duo Confidence Man drew a giant crowd on the Different Stage for his or her ultra-aerobic party-starting routines: dazzling and witty to look at, however in peril of outshining the standard of the songcraft. Rock band The Final Dinner Celebration had been well-liked attracts on the identical stage, enjoying tracks from their chart-topping debut album with an abandon lacking from the mannered recorded variations.
Northern Irish rappers Kneecap packed out the Woodsies tent for an incongruous morning set of entertainingly belligerent tracks rapped in English and Irish. In the meantime, Femi Kuti preceded his Coldplay visitor spot with an look on the Pyramid stage. His oldschool Afrobeat was adopted by fashionable Afrobeats from fellow Nigerian Ayra Starr, who was accompanied by a starry retinue of dancers however watched by a comparatively sparse crowd.
Considered one of my highlights was chanced upon throughout a nocturnal go to to Shangri-La, the competition’s dance-music zone. It was an early-hours set by Australian band Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, who belied the new buttered mess of their horrible title with a knockout set of heavy psychedelic rock, together with a music about seeing God in a tomato. However after all.
The opposite spotlight was Little Simz, who performed instantly earlier than Coldplay on the Pyramid stage. The Londoner rapped with a mesmerising combination of gravity and nimbleness, shifting round beats whereas seeming to weigh every phrase for significance. Her sense of feat at enjoying the most important viewers of her profession was transmitted with out gush or complacency. “I don’t do limits,” she rapped in her rapturously obtained final monitor “Gorilla”. Right here was a giant Glastonbury assertion of the most effective sort.
