Glastonbury Festival 2024 review — a K-pop first, no-limits London rap and feelgoodism from Coldplay

Glastonbury’s Saturday-night headliners are usually the gateway into a wild night of escapades in the festival’s madly diverting 900-acre site. But after Coldplay’s record-breaking fifth time headlining the Pyramid stage, I needed a lie-down in a darkened tent. This was a retina-dazzling, synapse-frying, sensory overload of a show. I found it unbearable.

Mind you, everyone else crammed into the vast Pyramid space, which holds more than 100,000 people of the 210,000 people present at the festival, seemed to love the performance. From the moment the British band launched into their opening number “Yellow” — one of their earliest and best anthems — to their finale with blandly comforting new single “feelslikeimfallinginlove”, the place was a ferment of flares, hands in air, girls perched on lads’ shoulders, flags, fireworks, confetti, flashing electronic bracelets and lasers. 

This was a spectacle designed to be seen from outer space: Chris Martin and his bandmates were out to make a Big Glastonbury Statement. They were joined by a large, random assortment of guests: a string orchestra, Femi Kuti’s Afrobeat big band, a choir led by the singer-songwriter Laura Mvula, rapper Little Simz, the actor Michael J Fox (now sadly affected by Parkinson’s disease) — an inspiration to the band, so Martin explained, for his guitar-playing turn in Back to the Future.

The element binding all this together was positivity of the most relentless and overbearing variety. Martin, choosing his words carefully, held the festival up as a paragon of inclusivity in a world “that can be perceived as divided”. This was a night, he added, for Israelis and also Palestinians, Ukrainians and also “peaceful Russians”. Chants of eh-oh and ah-ay were crowbarred into songs to illustrate the theme of togetherness. The agelessly athletic Martin, 47, twinkled and beamed and sang yearning high notes as the fireworks, confetti etc erupted around him — a prophet of supercharged feelgoodism for the wellness age.

I much preferred the previous night’s headliner, Dua Lipa. She put on a 90-minute big-pop show, smoothly powered and well resourced, but not straining for a grand statement. Songs from her underwhelming new album Radical Optimism (a Coldplavian title) were sharpened up. Hits from its predecessors sparkled. There was a lot of choreography with backing dancers: cue synchronised hair flick and hard stare at the camera. A runway leading into the audience was a Glastonbury innovation — and needed too. The Pyramid stage’s former proscenium-limited set-up has become an anachronism in the present era of arena pop with multiple performing areas.

At one point, Lipa told viewers to get off their sofas and dance. The reference was to her other audience, the one watching on television. Last year, when Elton John’s headlining set was watched by more than 7mn people, Glastonbury extended its broadcasting deal with the BBC. This year there will be more than 125 hours of TV and radio coverage, the most ever.

The scrutiny of unseen millions can be double-edged. Some viewers accused Lipa of miming, which she denied. (From my vantage point, she seemed to be singing live, and doing so well too.) But the BBC link, with its public funding, also compels Glastonbury to open itself up. Unlike last year’s all-male line-up of headliners, the 2024 equivalent managed to pull off the tricky balance between broadening appeal and serving up typical Glasto fare. (Following Dua and Coldplay, the final headliner, to be reviewed tomorrow, is SZA, the Gen-Z favourite whose typical habitat is TikTok, not rock festivals.)

“Making history, Glastonbury” was the slogan on a sign held on the Pyramid stage on Friday. In terms of “I was there moments”, this one wasn’t quite up there with Jimi Hendrix doing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock. I will not beckon my future great-grandchildren to gather round as I mumble about witnessing it. But nonetheless history was indeed being made. Glastonbury was hosting its first K-pop act.

The pioneers were Seventeen, a sprawling boyband with 13 members, mostly dressed in ripped dark denim and vests. The sign with the slogan was held by one of them. Although the group were second only to Taylor Swift in album sales last year, their slot was scheduled for mid-afternoon, a low-status billing. Conscious of their role as history-makers, Seventeen rose above the demotion. Limber dance routines and hooky songs were delivered with the kind of seriousness that makes frivolous chart-pop all the more enjoyable. “Very Nice” inspired something of a singalong, the festival’s seal of approval.

Glastonbury, of course, has its own rich history: the first one was held in September 1970, the day after Hendrix died. Its co-founder, Michael Eavis — Sir Michael now, following his knighthood this year — did his traditional turn singing Frank Sinatra standards at the Park stage on Thursday, before the official programme began. The 88-year-old ploughed through the songs looking frail in a wheelchair, but sang about doing it his way in a sturdy farmer’s voice. (For the rest of the year, much of the festival’s site is a dairy farm.)

In the early hours of the chilly night that followed, I joined a hardy crew of proggers and psychonauts for a performance by head-music veteran Steve Hillage of his 1979 ambient album Rainbow Dome Musick. Joined by French singer Miquette Giraudy, he appeared on a new outdoor stage with excellent surround sound. Although called out from time to time for paying comparatively low fees to performers, the festival does not stint on the quality of its sound systems.

“It’s Latin, so you have to move your hips,” said Peruvian electronic musician Sofia Kourtesis, introducing a song on the West Holts stage. A dry weekend, warm on Saturday, meant that feet were able to move as well: the dreaded Glastonbury mud was absent. On the same stage, a 79-year-old attendee of Woodstock, Indian singer Asha Puthli, made her Glasto debut with an evergreen set of vintage funk and soul. At the Avalon tent, a 75-year-old survivor of the Swinging Sixties, Lulu, closed her set with a cover of Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” before issuing a trouper’s plug for her autumn tour.

West Holts was overwhelmed by too many people wanting to see 2000s girl group Sugababes, who should have been scheduled for a larger space. Australian dance music duo Confidence Man drew a big crowd on the Other Stage for their ultra-aerobic party-starting routines: dazzling and witty to watch, but in danger of outshining the quality of the songcraft. Rock band The Last Dinner Party were popular draws on the same stage, playing tracks from their chart-topping debut album with an abandon missing from the mannered recorded versions.

Northern Irish rappers Kneecap packed out the Woodsies tent for an incongruous morning set of entertainingly belligerent tracks rapped in English and Irish. Meanwhile, Femi Kuti preceded his Coldplay guest spot with an appearance on the Pyramid stage. His oldschool Afrobeat was followed by modern Afrobeats from fellow Nigerian Ayra Starr, who was accompanied by a starry retinue of dancers but watched by a relatively sparse crowd.

One of my highlights was chanced upon during a nocturnal visit to Shangri-La, the festival’s dance-music zone. It was an early-hours set by Australian band Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, who belied the hot buttered mess of their terrible name with a knockout set of heavy psychedelic rock, including a song about seeing God in a tomato. But of course.

The other highlight was Little Simz, who played immediately before Coldplay on the Pyramid stage. The Londoner rapped with a mesmerising mixture of gravity and nimbleness, moving around beats while seeming to weigh each word for significance. Her sense of achievement at playing the largest audience of her career was transmitted without gush or complacency. “I don’t do limits,” she rapped in her rapturously received last track “Gorilla”. Here was a big Glastonbury statement of the best kind.

glastonburyfestivals.co.uk