The 2024 Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts has drawn to a close, leaving everyone at Worthy Farm with a curious mixture of deflation and elation. We witnessed epic sets from Dua Lipa and The Streets, danced with Peggy Gou, moshed with Kasabian, and even saw Ros Atkins play a drum and bass remix of the BBC News theme. With so much happening, it’s impossible to catch everything. Here are 15 magical and memorable moments from a weekend of mayhem that you can’t miss.
Friday was a day of unexpected reunions. On the Pyramid Stage, Fatboy Slim joined his former Housemartins bandmate Paul Heaton for a run-through of their 80s indie hit “Happy Hour.” Inside the Woodsies tent, The xx ended a six-year hiatus with a brief performance of “You’ve Got The Love” during Jamie xx’s headline set. But the most impressive reunion was particle physicist Prof Brian Cox rejoining D:Ream to play “Things Can Only Get Better” to a packed-out crowd at the Glade Stage. “I haven’t done this song since 1997,” he said. After the show, singer Peter Cunnah told the Prof, “You’ve passed the audition.”
Glastonbury was uncommonly hot this year, and Camila Cabello’s spicy performance raised the temperature even higher. She cooled down the traditional way, with four dancers in dog masks melting Soleros on her naked flesh.
Glastonbury has a policy of not showing football matches if they clash with major artists’ sets. So when the Euros scheduled England’s skirmish with Slovakia for 5 pm on Sunday, fans were left distraught. Then, one enterprising soul set up a flatscreen TV in one of the camping fields. Word spread, and before long, there was a crowd of hundreds, who greeted Jude Bellingham’s goal with an impromptu chorus of “Hey Jude.” It later transpired that the mastermind behind this coup was none other than One Direction star Louis Tomlinson. The singer had driven to Argos in the morning to buy the TV, a generator, and a dongle to stream the game. Amazingly, it all worked.
If you don’t bring a flag to Glastonbury, are you even really there? “It’s the easiest way to find people – but also spread a little message about whatever you’re trying to talk about,” said Ciaran McDiamond, standing under Ireland’s green, white, and gold on Friday. This year, a lot of people chose to show support for Gaza, alongside a smaller scattering of Israeli flags. But the silly ones were the best: Dua Loompah, Legalise marinara, or Flagatha Christie. And then there was the banner indicating the location of “Rishi’s leaving drinks,” a sly reference to Thursday’s general election. For most of the weekend, the winner seemed to be the flag that declared: “Ban flags.” And then someone strapped a Hetty vacuum cleaner to a broom handle. Well played, sir.
For a while, it seemed Paul McCartney had ruined the idea of having special guests at Glastonbury. When he brought out Dave Grohl and Bruce Springsteen in 2022, it was almost as if everyone else decided there was no way to top it. Last year, Elton John dashed fans’ hopes by bringing out a raft of new (but largely unknown) talent instead of Britney Spears and Dua Lipa. But Coldplay wasn’t about to admit defeat. On Saturday night, they packed the stage with stars like Little Simz, Femi Kuti, Victoria Canal, and Laura Mvula. Then, at the end of their set, they brought out Michael J Fox – star of Back To The Future – to play guitar on “Humankind” and “Fix You.” “Back to the Future is the main reason we became a band,” said Chris Martin, as the crowd went wild.
Dua Lipa is a woman who knows what she wants. When she was a girl, she told the crowd on Friday night, she wrote down the proclamation: “I will headline Glastonbury.” “I was really specific,” she added after a shy laugh. “I said I wanted to headline the Pyramid Stage on a Friday night because then I knew I could party for the next two days.” Now, at the age of 28, she’s pulled it off. Her set was a flawless pop spectacle, full of breathless dancing and pounding club grooves. She threw in fireworks, confetti cannons, and five costume changes, but what really made it special was knowing how much it meant to her. “I know maybe some of you don’t believe in manifestation, but one thing that’s undeniable is magic,” she said. “This is as close as it gets.”
Keeping your phone juiced up is always an issue at Glastonbury. The operating system spends so much time searching for a signal that the battery drains like a bath on a hillside. But Simon here, who was spotted by the @Glastolive team, had found an ingenious hack: A solar-powered battery hat. Get the patent application in now.
Former headliner Michael Ebenezer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr – aka Stormzy – was one of the many celebrities who turned up to see Coldplay’s set on Saturday night. But unlike Tom Cruise, Gillian Anderson, and Dave Grohl, who watched from the safety of a heavily-policed viewing platform, the rapper threw himself into the middle of the field – dancing and singing with the other 100,000 fans. Naturally, he was mobbed by people asking for selfies. But he had a clever policy for keeping requests to a minimum: He’d only pose with kids.
Little Simz is the best rap artist in the UK right now. Maybe ever. She took to the Pyramid Stage alone, dressed in a custom Ed Hardy outfit (a biker jacket emblazoned with her name, paired with a black kilt) and had the audience rapt for over an hour, with hits like “Venom,” “Gorilla,” and “Woman.” Her bars came thick and fast. Her poise was impeccable. Her steely gaze was the essence of cool. “I need you to understand that you’re witnessing greatness,” she declared. “I say that not with arrogance, but with confidence. It took me a while to get to the Pyramid, but I’m finally here!” A future headliner. No doubt.
“Murder is my best friend,” says Sophie Ellis Bextor, revealing the hidden darkness behind her shiny pop persona. Oh alright, spoilsport. She’s talking about the success of her resurgent disco classic “Murder On The Dancefloor,” which she performed as a special guest during Peggy Gou’s show at the Park Stage on Saturday. Speaking the following day, she says she’s “so proud” to have been included in the show – which she believes was Glastonbury’s first-ever headline set by a female DJ. “I looked it up, and I couldn’t find anything to contradict it,” she says. “So I thought, I’ll just say it and then it becomes fact.” Appearing at a Q&A at the Scissors bar, she confesses that she’s still not bored of her biggest hit, despite performing it for 23 years. “It’s a very unusual thing to have a song like that come back and have a moment,” she says. “Some people are like, ‘You’ve only got one song,’ and I’m like, ‘Yes! Fine! That’s totally cool’.”
During The Streets’ epic set on Saturday, Mike Skinner suddenly saw the future. “Let’s think about mental health and how we’re going to feel like crap on Tuesday,” he told the crowd. Most of us tried to block the thought out. The journey home, in itself, is like reverse karma for the fun of the weekend. So instead, we paid heed to Skinner’s more blinkered advice, from the song “Take Me As I Am.” “That’s future me – I’m glad I’m not that guy!”
When will Glastonbury learn – you don’t put Sugababes in a corner. In 2022, police had to shut down the Avalon Field after the band’s set drew thousands of fans, clamoring to see the original trio of Mutya, Keisha, and Siobhan reunited. This year, they were upgraded to the 35,000-capacity West Holts Stage. But it still wasn’t enough. Organizers had to restrict access again, imposing a one-in, one-out policy (much like the Sugababes line-up in the 2000s). A lot of people were left asking if the band should be promoted to the legend slot next year. “Quite soon – it’ll happen,” joked Mutya. “We’ve worked our way up and every time we’ve proved to ourselves that we have that great support.” “After today I think, ‘Why not?'” said her bandmate Siobhan Donaghy. “Dream big.”
“I can’t believe it’s taken me 22 years to actually be here,” declared Avril Lavigne, as she made her Glastonbury debut on Sunday evening. “Well,” she added with a smile, “it’s about time.” The pop-punk queen is having a moment. An inspiration to acts like Olivia Rodrigo and Willow, her streaming numbers are rocketing up the chart. And why not? With hits like “Complicated,” “Sk8r Boi,” and “Girlfriend” in her back pocket, she’s responsible for some of the early 2000s most enjoyable hits. She told the BBC that the reason her lyrics resonate so much is because they’re relatable – “It’s always been important for me to write and be real,” she said. “I’m writing about stuff that I went through in high school, like having a crush on a guy for the first time, experiencing love and what that feels like.” Predictably, her set was as rammed as the Sugababes, with an estimated 70,000 fans packed together like sardines in a crushed tin can, in a trash compactor in the center of a collapsing black hole. Again, you have to wonder why these big pop acts aren’t sent to the Pyramid Stage in the first place. It’s clear by now that audiences love a big nostalgic singalong. Give them what they want! (PS: Bring on the Spice Girls while you’re at it).
Rising indie star Rachel Chinouriri kicked the Other Stage into gear on Sunday with an open-hearted set of future festival anthems, from the peppy “Never Need Me” to the thunderous chords of “The Hills.” Wearing a distinctive Union Jack crop top and Spice Girls-style platform boots, she also threw in a cover of Estelle’s “American Boy” – singing Kanye West’s rap section and changing the lyrics to “Glastonbury boy.” She dedicated the song to all the black women who’d shown her Glastonbury was an achievable goal: Joan Armatrading, Skin from Skunk Anansie, Keisha from Sugababes, Shingai Shoniwa of the Noisettes, and Estelle herself. The message resonated heavily in a year where the festival deliberately stepped outside its comfort zone, with a high-profile presence for Afrobeats stars like Tems and Ayra Starr, Peggy Gou’s historic headline set, and a brand new stage devoted to South Asian artists.
Avid crafter Sandra Witcombe stitched a Chris Martin doll “as a bit of fun,” after five of her nude knits became a hit in the window display of The Hive Café in Shepton Mallet, Somerset. She brought him along to Worthy Farm in the hope she could give him to the real (and hopefully clothed) version over the course of the weekend. History does not record whether she was successful. But if she was, we hope Chris serenaded her with an impromptu version of “Stitch You,” or “A Sky Full Of Yarn.”
Source: Mark Savage, Annabel Rackham
