Glastonbury live: Dua Lipa, Marina Abramović and more to perform as main stages open on Friday – live | Glastonbury 2024
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Key events
Sarah Phillips
This is Lucinda and Lizzy from Bristol who live on the same street and bumped into each other in the crowd for Marina Abramovic. Lucinda: “I thought it was wonderful. I found out about it 30 seconds before she started. I adored her. That has made my Glastonbury. I thought it was really powerful. Seven minutes went really quickly.”
Over on West Holts, Damon Albarn has made an appearance in the middle of Bombay Bicycle Club’s set. Albarn made an appeal for Glasto-goers to vote: “I don’t blame you for feeling ambivalent about that but it’s still important.” He added that “maybe it’s time we stop putting octogenarians in charge of the world”, a reference to last night’s US presidential debate.
Gwilym Mumford
Gwilym here, taking you through Glasto’s pre-headline shift. Right now on the Pyramid Marina Abramović is trying to get tens of thousands of festival punters to shut their eyes and be quiet for seven whole minutes. It’s a big ask given the, ahem, well-lubricated nature of some Glastonbury punters, but by the sounds of it she’s been successful. The Guardian’s Sarah Phillips, who is in the field, says that, bar a rogue screamer, the crowd all kept quiet and that the effect is “incredibly powerful and moving”.
“It is completely still and silent and I weirdly want to cry,” adds the Guardian’s Jenny Stevens.
There’s a thing I call “Glastonbury maths”, explaining why it’s not always the most hyped or critically acclaimed bands that draw the biggest crowds. Basically, if you’re trying to corral a group of 15 people in your campsite, and half of them kind of like/have heard of Avril Lavigne or TLC, you’re going to be fighting for your life in the stands.
All of which is to say – there’s such a groundswell of enthusiasm to see Sugababes at the West Holts stage that access is being restricted. Don’t fret, though – our own Jason Okundaye has managed to squeeze in so as to do his review, though phone signal is struggling …
Elle Hunt
I am now handing over the reins of the blog to my esteemed colleague Gwilym Mumford, who will be your jockey through this next stage of the day’s events – Heilung, LCD Soundsystem, Danny Brown, Dexys and, next up on the Pyramid stage, PJ Harvey. I’ll be back from 3pm to 6pm tomorrow.
Paul Heaton reviewed!
Gwilym Mumford
Pyramid stage, 4.15pm
Paul Heaton’s set backdrop reads Welcome to Heatongrad, a nod to his track with Jacqui Abbott that opens with: “Fuck the king and fuck the queen, with an AK47”. It’s a pointed reminder that there has always been a waspish quality to Heaton’s soft rock with the Housemartins, the Beautiful South and most recently with Abbott. Four decades into his career Heaton may be approaching national treasure status, but he’s a prickly, sardonic sort of national treasure. In front of a Pyramid stage audience whose average age has surely tripled since the previous act, the K-poppers Seventeen, Heaton delivers a greatest hits set with tongue lodged in cheek.
Smash hits are introduced with side eye. “There’s swear words in this one and because of my good relationship with television I can’t swear – but you can,” he says to the audience before Don’t Marry Her (naturally, everyone obliges). Thirty-eight years after the Housemartins first played this stage, Norman Cook is brought on to rekindle his bass-playing days in that band for a lively Happy Hour, a touching moment undercut by Heaton warning that Cook will probably be a little rusty. And later Heaton chides: “For all the people who only came down the hill when they heard Norman Cook was here, fuck on back. We don’t need them do we.”
Between the zingers and the bangers – I’ll Sail this Ship Alone, Fun Fun Fun, an extended Song For Whoever – the whole thing is a riot. All that’s missing is Abbott, absent from Heaton’s tours due to health issues since 2022. Singer Rianne Downey has a spirited go at filling her shoes but Heaton acknowledges how big Abbott’s absence is before Rotterdam, a song synonymous with her, and that definitely isn’t the same without her.
Still for Heaton this is a triumphant homecoming. He closes with Caravan of Love, prompting one of the weekend’s first mass singalongs. A perfect mid-afternoon pick me up.
The reported crowd crush for Sugababes is worsening, by all accounts, sounding much the same case as with TLC two years ago. Bands are being given time slots and stages that clearly underestimate their pulling power.
Noname reviewed!
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
West Holts, 3.30pm
Playing to an ever-swelling crowd gearing up for Sugababes after her, Noname will have converted thousands of people to her hyper-literate, hyper-skilled wordplay, which really is the ideal for conscious hip-hop: politically biting but not drearily worthy. She is backed by an on-point band who deliver shuffling, frequently polyrhythmic beds for her raps.
This is MCing on the hardest difficulty setting: she’s not just quick, but vying with a beat that could easily dart away from her. It’s not mere mic cleverness: her castigation of the “war machine” chimes with a festival that champions nuclear disarmament, and her announcement “I’m a socialist; I don’t fuck with billionaires” gets a big cheer. The hooks are a delight – a “yippee kai yay” chorus has the audience chirruping along – and there is such joy in language: “Ticky ticky boom boom in a lagoon-goon…” runs the rapturously sexual Boomboom.
Confidence Man, reviewed!
Laura Snapes
Other Stage, 3.45pm
In the same way that I imagine Glastonbury has an emergency button that says “deploy Coldplay”, I also suspect they also have one that says “activate Confidence Man”.
The Australian duo have absolutely perfected the art of festival-pleasing, with songs that perfectly clash the Minogue (both of them – and frankly more Dannii) Eurotrash-disco nexus with the more accessible parts of PC Music trash and self-awareness. (My friend very accurately refers to them as “goth Aqua” even before they play Cool Party, with its delightful lyric “I’m a cool party girl in a cool party world”, which also suits this most Brat summer.)
They also have the iconography to back it up: in frontman Reggie Goodchild, they have a classic “what does he actually do?” synthpop foil, their choreo is like stylised versions of your silliest bedroom moves (I particularly like one I’d describe as “scampering pony crab”). As I reported earlier, several members of the audience are wearing homespun versions of Janet Planet’s pointy boobs and the drummer/DJ’s veiled, brimmed, beekeeper-style hat (one guy has veiled his baseball cap, and gets a lot of mileage out of his spell on the big screens).
It’s hard to tell why they haven’t become actual, bona fide breakout pop stars: although parts of their set sound much like a YouTube house megamix, Luvin’ U Is Easy is a seductive, chugging would-be classic that makes you imagine how great a Balearic Kylie era would have been. And it’s hard to pull off genuinely funny without tipping over into being a comedy band, from the fake blood on Goodchild’s chest to Planet’s pouring water on her hair and windmilling it dry. But who cares about the big leagues when there are moments like the sun breaking through the crowds as Planet sings “I only want a good time, sunshine”: pure Glastonbury kismet.
The Mary Wallopers reviewed!
Safi Bugel
Park Stage, 3.15pm
The Mary Wallopers are keen to take folk music back to its roots – where the genre is subversive, rowdy and unapologetically political, rather than twee. Here, to a full Park stage, they do exactly that, conjuring absolutely raucous crowds with their jaunty Irish ballads, and punctuating songs with messages about wealth inequality and Palestine.
Despite playing to thousands of people, the set captures the energy of a small local pub: there’s silly storytelling about fleas, fishing and drinking as pints are swilled and feet are stamped. Towards the back, a few mini ceilidhs break out to the storm of quick, jangly strings and punchy drums. Much of the Mary Wallopers’ material is short and snappy, and some songs date back hundreds of years, but even with the traditional Scottish and Irish vernacular, tracks like the chirpy Cod Liver Oil & The Orange Juice inspire boozy but verbatim singalongs from the crowd. It’s definitely the most engaged – and joyous! – crowd I’ve seen across the festival so far.
Quick wit and sheer entertainment value aside, the Mary Wallopers’ musicianship is strong. The percussion is razor-sharp, the penny whistle solos are lovely and, between them, they have some serious pipes. Brilliant all round!
Seventeen reviewed!
Alexis Petridis
Pyramid stage, 2.45pm
The crowd for the first appearance by a K-pop band in Glastonbury’s isn’t vast, but it’s vociferous. When the almost unreasonably pretty members of the almost comically over-staffed Seventeen take the stage, you’re struck by a sound you seldom hear at the festival: the kind of screaming you get at pop gigs. Its source is pressed against the barrier at the front of the stage: girls waving South Korean flags and sporting Seventeen T-shirts. One of them has a banner claiming the band are “making history” – which, in a way, they are.
Aside from the sheer number of members – during the set the band split into smaller groups that they insist on referring to as “units” – Seventeen’s point of difference in the K-pop firmament appears to be a certain guitar-heavy undertow to their sound. Their songs range about from rap-infused R&B to pop so toothsome it can be soundtracked by film on the stage=side screens of cartoon unicorns, confetti and smiley emoji, but a surprising amount of it seems to be rooted in distorted guitars: the influence of pop-punk hangs over a track called 2 Minus 1, another song sounds like a very clean-cut take on nu-metal (if such a thing can be imagined). All of it is accompanied by the kind of precision-tooled unison choreography standard in the K-pop world: even a nay-sayer be hard-pushed to argue that they’re not working incredibly hard up there.
And there definitely are naysayers present. There is a moment when the screens stop showing the girls at the front of the audience and briefly focus on a middle-aged man wearing an expression for which the adjective “nonplussed’ was made, but more of the audience are won over: happy to join in with synchronised arm waving at the band’s behest, or sing along to the most obvious hooks. The most obvious of all comes in the Uptown Funk-y Very Nice which concludes the set. Moreover, Seventeen hammer said hook into the ground like a recalcitrant tent peg: there are umpteen false endings, a moment when a girl who looks about eight years old and a lady who appears to be in her late 60s are picked out of the crowd and urged to help out with the call-and response chorus. Whether Seventeen’s appearance at Glastonbury proves a blip, or the first of many K-pop appearances remains to be seen: either way, they can chalk it up as a victory.
Laura Snapes has a fashion report from the field:
“You can tell people love Confidence Man because there are a number of themed costumes in the crowd: people with pointy plastic boobs (possibly repurposed colanders) and beekeeper-style brimmed and veiled hats, as the duo and their dummer/DJ wear on stage.”
A hot trend for 2024 – apiarist chic? You read it here first. Hard to pull off on the Tube, though.
Elle Hunt
Our roving reporter Laurence Phelan has documented this very fresh critical commentary, posted on a urinal ahead of Coldplay’s headlining set.
It’s obviously fashionable to hate upon the ‘play, the same way as it is Nickelback, but (in my opinion, as an unabashed fan) to do so is an own goal, only revealing your own narrow-mindedness and willingness to fall in line with popular opinion. They have bangers! Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends is nearly a perfect album! Many highly critically acclaimed artists have never written half as good a song as The Scientist or Amsterdam!!!
Anyway, this unkind urinal graffiti has really irked me and I can only hope that sweet Chris Martin seeks to relieve himself elsewhere. I am so looking forward to seeing Coldplay tomorrow that I have bribed my colleague Tim Jonze into taking on my assigned Gossip review so that I may see their entire set. Five stars, for sure!!! (Don’t worry, Alexis Petridis is reviewing, not me.)
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