Glastonbury

Kendrick Lamar opened his Glastonbury headline set with a powerful, theatrical performance unlike anything else the festival has seen so far.

"We're so happy to be here, in the place love was invented." She even threw in a karaoke version of Fleetwood Mac's scathing break-up anthem Dreams for good measure. "We're in this together. He always stands up for black people, for impoverished people, people who are unfairly treated - and that means a lot to people. "I like where the energy is at right now Glastonbury," he declared. "Anyone know any positions for sheep farming going, as that sounds really great right now."

"F*** the Supreme Court," the Kiwi artist told the cheering crowd.

That horror is your birthright. Your bodies were destined to be controlled and objectified since before you were born. "Welcome to sadness.

Billie Eilish, Self Esteem, Paul McCartney, Olivia Rodrigo, Noel Gallagher, AJ Tracey, Sam Fender and Wet Leg were all electrifying.

But if you stick around, after that there’s going to be a lot of very happy people in bucket hats.” True to his word, he starts rolling out Oasis singalongs – Half the World Away, Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back in Anger – in due course. The big screens capture the puppyish elation on Springsteen’s face as he and McCartney trade lines on Glory Days and I Wanna Be Your Man; a seventysomething rock legend momentarily turned back into the obsessive Beatles fan he was in his teens, he looks as if he can scarcely believe his luck. The crowd joins in a chant of “climate justice” at the end. On Saturday afternoon, Self Esteem’s appearance on the John Peel stage has a similar effect to Wet Leg and Sam Fender – within minutes of her arrival on stage, you can’t get near the tent, let alone into it, without an unfeasible amount of determination. As the sun begins to set, Burna Boy’s appearance on the Other stage pulls out all the stops, with fireworks, flamethrowers and a confetti cannon during the closer Ye. Larded with Afrobeats horns and a choir, he sounds fantastic. Occasionally, some of the between-song chat – heavy on stuff about loving yourself and empowerment – feels more suited to a teen-pop audience than a Glastonbury crowd, but the audience go with it: if she asks them to crouch down then jump, they happily oblige. Over on the Pyramid stage, Wolf Alice – visibly frazzled by a journey to Glastonbury so chaotic it looked at one stage as if they wouldn’t make it – get a similarly ecstatic, and deserved, reception. Her big hits – Bury a Friend, You Should See Me in a Crown, Bad Guy – pack an immense bass-heavy punch and the title track of her most recent album, Happier Than Ever, provides a stunning finale, slowly building into a ferociously angry, pyrotechnic-abetted coda. It’s a sweet and oddly moving scene, and it seems to say something about the first Glastonbury since 2019. It is, however, frequently hard to hear Wet Leg over the sound of the audience singing, or in the case of the fabulously deadpan Ur Mum, screaming along. A few years back, it’s hard not to think her presence would have caused controversy – some berk would have got up a keep-Glasto-rock petition about it – but in 2022 it seems to pass without comment. The crowd don’t just part to let it through: when they realise who’s inside it, they line the sides of the road, not cheering or shouting, but respectfully applauding as it passes.

New Zealand singer Lorde has used the stage at Glastonbury to slam the US Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. "Welcome to sadness.

Your bodies were destined to be controlled and objectified since before you were born. That horror is your birthright,” the 25-year-old singer said. "Welcome to sadness. Lorde also told her fans it was “good to be back" as she kicked off her set on the Pyramid Stage on the fifth and final day of the festival. The Solar Power singer was the latest celebrity to speak out as she took to the stage at the Glastonbury festival on Monday. New Zealand singer Lorde has used the stage at Glastonbury to slam the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v.

Lorde - the moniker for Auckland-born Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor - performed on the Pyramid stage during the fifth and final day of the iconic festival, ...

Glastonbury returns for 2022 with Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, Paul McCartney and other stellar headliners.

Yet there is also a bruised sense of clearing away the past, Kendrick drawing on the recent ‘Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers’, an album about purging trauma and overcoming pain. Luckily Sam Fender looks more bright-eyed as he finally gets his Glasto moment on the Pyramid Stage, having cancelled in 2019 due to ill-health and in 2020 due to that whole pandemic thing. Jack White, meanwhile, makes a surprise appearance on the Park Stage, studding White Stripes favourites (‘Ball And Biscuit’ gets a mild jam band makeover) with cuts from his storied career. Wolf Alice singer Ellie Rowsell also describes Glastonbury 2022 as “surreal”; the band pulled through a well-documented transatlantic travel saga to arrive onsite. Such solidarity is, as you’d expect, a theme at this year’s Glastonbury. Ukranian Eurovision winners Kaluush Orchestra play to rows of their country’s flag on the Truth Stage, having told NME beforehand: “It’s amazing that we can perform our music here at Glastonbury”. The festival is all about unity, and sometimes you find it in unexpected places.

Festival fashion, funny flags and celebrity spotting - Glastonbury may be mainly about the music but there are plenty of other things to keep you ...

New Zealand singer Lorde said: "Wanna hear a secret girls? What an introduction to the real world and a great first festival to kick off the habit of a lifetime. This year the "This Is A Work Event" motto flag, referencing the party gate scandal that has proved quite the irritation for Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government in the first half of this year. And speaking during her Pyramid Stage set, Billie Eilish told her fans: "We need to do a better job of protecting the planet we live on." While there were a host of stars on the stages scattered around the 800-acre site, spotting the celebrities who are there as punters rather than performers is always a bit of fun, and this year didn't disappoint. It was a festival of extremes, with Billie Eilish becoming the youngest solo headline act, while Sir Paul McCartney took the title of the oldest solo headline performer, taking to the Pyramid Stage on Friday and Saturday night respectively.

The music and the partying is only part of the fun at Glastonbury. The eagle eyed and nosy among us can easily spend an entire weekend celeb spotting ...

Little Simz and Ghetts watching Burna Boy, Kae Tempest walking back from South East Corner in the early hours. Another saw Niall Horan, another thinks he saw Harry Styles and his girlfriend Olivia Wilde before Billie Eilish’s Friday night set. Which also ultimately failed.)

Confidently filling the traditional Sunday 'legends' slot at the festival, the fabulously attired Motown and disco star treated the vast crowd to hit after ...

“Well,” she clarifies, “I feel 48 years old.” She’s also clearly not a woman to miss a sales opportunity. “If I can move my body like this when I’m 48 years old … ” she says, her voice trailing off as she demonstrates a dancefloor shimmy. Upside Down, however, provides the required Sunday legend slot explosion of joy complete with obligatory footage of the security at the front of the stage dancing, while Ain’t No Mountain High Enough does what I’m Still Waiting couldn’t and provokes a widespread outbreak of delighted bellowing along.

The festival enters its third and most sunshiny day with Ross in the traditional afternoon 'legends' slot, and sets from Lorde, Elbow and many more still to ...

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.” 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. “I saw a man with a plant pot for a head coming out of the loo. 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. 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. 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! 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. Her set is also a masterclass in stagecraft, switching between acoustic guitar and singing to the audience, arms-outstretched, charming as well as acerbic. At Primavera festival in Barcelona she reportedly spent a lot of her set dissing her ex-husband, the subject of her latest album Star-Crossed – and given the opening skit, its deeply dramatic flamenco-western title track with a burning heart behind her, you’d be forgiven for expecting that hell hath no fury like a country singer scorned. Taking to the stage wearing a chic silk shirt and matching shorts, both by the hyped luxury resortwear brand Casablanca, she is a sweet, compelling presence, casual in attitude but totally in control of her crowd. “I see your cowboy hats, I know you know what yee-haw means,” she smiles, looking out at a crowd spotted with pink fluffy western numbers and breaking into her disco-fied song High Horse – her giddy-up Get Lucky. Country music has never been much one to boogie to – line-dancing, sure, but not gleeful shape-throwing – but Musgraves is a fearlessly genre-blending star. Although her band often overwhelms her vocals – powerful bass muffling any of the nuances in her words, the stadium-primed drum kit a constant distracting presence – Koffee’s voice is still a remarkable instrument, at turns husky, sweet, emphatic and lackadaisical.

Sporting a bejewelled crown of thorns and with a profound sense of theatre, Lamar proves he is one of the most gifted rappers we have.

A trio of tracks from Good Kid MAAD City – Money Trees; The Art of Peer Pressure; Swimming Pools (Drank), the last with two dancers writhing woozily around Lamar – is followed by the big hitters from To Pimp a Butterfly: King Kunta sounds ferocious, the chorus of Alright as potent as ever. Lamar’s set is tightly choreographed, involving two troupes of dancers, one all-male, the other all-female, their movements shifting from sinuous to militaristic. This time it involves not the former One Direction star but Eminem, who has apparently been spotted swimming at the exclusive Babington House hotel not far from the Worthy Farm site: evidence, it’s adduced, that he’s set to make a guest appearance during Kendrick Lamar’s performance.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper, 35, ensured his debut at the festival would be memorable with an array of hit songs from his back catalogue accompanied by ...

The clean-up operation of Glastonbury Festival will now begin following a dramatic closing headline set by Kendrick Lamar. For the last five days, ...

As part of the encore, through special technology which could isolate John Lennon’s vocals from old recordings, Sir Paul was able to duet The Beatles’ track I’ve Got A Feeling alongside his former bandmate on the Pyramid Stage. As he took to the Pyramid Stage, the former Beatle became the festival’s oldest solo headliner, a week after he celebrated his 80th birthday. The soul singer treated the crowd to a selection of classics including I’m Coming Out, Baby Love, You Can’t Hurry Love, Stop! In The Name Of Love and at the conclusion of Chain Reaction pink confetti was launched from the stage.