I love how Lorde has someone on stage whose only job is to spin her round on a platform every so often. Impressive addition to a CV but ultimately not very transferrable skills.
The stage set is really striking, with a giant pillar resting on a cylinder in a henge-like arrangement that chimes nicely with all the ancient megaliths of Somerset and surrounds.
Lorde adds some special guests
Only a few songs into her set and Lorde – who has a new blonde barnet – is bringing out the crowd-wowing moves, singing Stoned at the Nail Salon with Arlo Parks and Clairo. It’s a bit of a lightweight tune, but their rapport is lovely and it certainly is a perfect mood for any five-pinted woozy brains in the afternoon sun.
Also, apparently James Acaster was in the pit for Turnstile?!
McFly reviewed
Tara Joshi
Avalon stage, 6.30pm
Am I in purgatory? I have been sent to a field where it is now so packed with people that I can’t move, I’m sleep deprived, there’s a tent in the distance with a stage I can barely see, and all of us are waiting for … McFly.
The band take to the stage while YMCA blares, for some reason, and understandably their opening lines when they look out at the crowd are “holy shit!”
I’ll be honest: I was a bit too old and annoyingly pretentious for McFly. I liked Busted, which is a rivalry the band jokingly reference today: “If you’re having a good time, we are McFly; if you’re not, we are Busted.” The sound is not really good enough to carry out to the masses who are here, and unlike with Sugababes, who played a similarly packed Avalon, they don’t open with the singalongs in their arsenal. It’s their first time at Glastonbury (“thank you for breaking our virginity!” – I heard them say this, so you have to read it, too), and they’re certainly enjoying it, from what I can see of the lead guitarist zestfully zipping around the stage.
The rapturous screaming drifting from the tent suggests the people who have been camping out waiting for the group today are now living their best lives. But by the time they get to Obviously, a girl climbs up one of the tent poles, such are the general enthusiasm levels all over the field. And from then on everyone is clapping, singing along with the “oo-oo-oooh”s and “na-na-naah”s while the band play their one-size-fits-all guitar pop. People are climbing on benches, shrieking when a different member of the group takes to the mic to address them. When they get to Room on the 3rd Floor they laugh: “Billie Eilish was two years old when we wrote this song” – a cute little reminder of our mortality, which really hits hard after they’ve just been singing about being young and wild while my knees hurt simply from walking around at a festival.
The biggest, most excitable singalongs come at the end: a cover of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, into All About You – the latter sees people holding each other, harmonising with their eyes closed. And then they leap into the exuberant chaos of their first ever song: Five Colours in Her Hair, which I did not remember having a lyric about wanting to “bone her” – risque! Anyway, it’s no Year 3000, but I’ll grant you that it’s a pretty fun and lovely moment.
Caroline Polachek also referenced Roe v Wade decision during her set. “It feels so poignant to be here in the UK when there’s so much policial meltdown back home,” she said. “Access to so much of our healthcare has just been stripped away. And I hope that can serve as a reminder here in Britain to protect the rights that you have, protect the healthcare that you have.”
Elbow reviewed
Sophie Zeldin-O’Neill
Pyramid, 5.45pm
Sandwiched in a Pyramid stage slot between the very different vibes of Diana Ross and Kendrick Lamar on the final night of the festival, it was never guaranteed Manchester indie rock band Elbow would get a truly appreciative audience. But Glastonbury is full of surprises. With a stage backdrop reading “we still believe in love” they announced their arrival with gutsy anthem Dexter and Sinister – and the crowd go remarkably wild.
Frontman Guy Garvey paused afterwards to say: “There was a period there where we thought we’d never see you again. We’re so happy to be here, in the place love was invented.” And then, seamlessly, they slipped into ballads Magnificent, Kindling and Empires. There was a reverse Mexican wave, an audience singalong to Lippy Kids, and Garvey had us eating out of the palm of his hand.
Briefly, we were back in the room for some of his trademark down-to-earth humour. “I saw a man with a plant pot for a head coming out of the loo. Completely normal.” From there, they were on a home run. The sun began to set as the band blasted out a rocking Grounds for Divorce before bringing out the Citizens of the World choir – made up of refugees – to join them on stage.
Garvey has always had the understated charisma of a bloke you’d meet down the pub on a rainy Tuesday who has a fair few tales to tell from a life well lived. His music is at times melancholic, at times uplifting, often comforting, and usually all three. Exactly what this crowd needed, on the final night of a historic weekend, to heal hangovers and soothe the soul. Swaying among tens of thousands to the lyrics “one day like this a year would see me right”, I looked across the enraptured crowd and just thought: too right.
Jack White doing Seven Nation Army, meanwhile, sounded like one of the biggest moments at Glastonbury 2022. “Fucking wild!” says Keza. “I thought football matches and drunk people outside my window had ruined that song forever, but no.” Apparently the entire crowd were jumping up and down in perfect unison, which is no mean feat on that sloping hill. Hope everyone’s ankles are fine.
Brendan from Turnstile, as buff as a superhero, is seemingly thanking everyone in the front row after their John Peel set. “Thank you for letting me see myself,” he tells them – I just know that this was one of the sets of the weekend, which Gwilym will review for us shortly.
The solidarity with Ukraine – such a heartening part of this festival – continues today, chiefly with DakhaBrakha, who wowed the Pyramid stage with some of the weekend’s best outfits.
And here’s Macca from last night showing his support.
Sorry to be insufferably annoying if you wish you were there, but literally everyone looks like this today: smiling, sunkissed, and smitten with each other. It feels like this Glastonbury has gone faster than ever. I was expecting a kind of feral, mad-eyed energy from people, given they have been waiting for this since they first got tickets in 2019, but the main mood has been a softer mix of relief and bonhomie.
“She’s got so many hits she’s forced on occasion to condense them into medleys” – here’s Alexis Petridis’ review of Diana Ross.
Amyl and the Sniffers reviewed
Laura Snapes
John Peel stage, 5pm
Anyone who says Glastonbury is getting overly gentrified needs to see Amyl and the Sniffers, one of the few bands around today who give off a genuine sense of danger. Frontwoman Amy Taylor’s voice is like a fist through concrete and she has a sublimely ratty, feral stage presence that suggests she lives on nothing but speed and dry cornflakes and knows her way around a headbutt. The modern successor to Iggy Pop, she has a flicky peroxide mullet and wears a tiny gold two-piece that makes her look like Barbarella by way of Abba, and seems, to put it politely, absolutely mashed. Her between-song chat is for the most part magnificently unintelligible: “Anyone seen Bridget Jones’ Diary 3?” she asks at one point, for indiscernible reasons. “She gets knocked up!” She calls 2022 “a sweaty little freak” and also yells “2022! Fuck every cunt!”
I’d love to tell you what songs they played but for the most part they all sound like someone rampaging on a piledriver – brute, chugging, primitive, glorious aggression played by a bunch of true hard nutters, some of whom are quite clearly chewing their faces off. From their latest album, 2021’s Comfort to Me, comes Security, which sees Taylor attempt some impromptu ballet in her black knee-high boots; she slaps her own bum during Maggot, a gloriously revolting love song, and looks furious and possessed during Knifey, which ends with her flexing her muscles and roaring in true “come and ‘ave a go if you think you’re hard enough” fashion. Guided By Angels expands the moshpit to take up most of the crowd, and then they play what appears to be a bespoke, boozy sea shanty about Glastonbury.
It’s hilarious, deranged, and totally exhilarating. I leave feeling as though I could kick down a wall – as well as heartened by the sight of a six-year-old girl on her dad’s shoulders who was punching her hands in the air the whole way through, observing this superb display of impropriety with wonder.
Kacey Musgraves, presumably alluding to the Roe v Wade decision, has told the Other stage: “I’m honestly thinking about never going back to America. Anyone know any positions for sheep farming going? As that sounds really great right now.”
