Friday at Glastonbury 2024: the highs, the lows, and the political statements
As the first day of main stage music kicks off at Glastonbury Festival 2024, it was a battle of the biggest and the best, with the audience voting with their feet as to who had the most star power. Our money is on everyone but Dua Lipa.
Glastonbury has always been about more than the headliners. With thousands of acts on and countless stages to explore, it’s rare that everyone on site would ever be drawn in by one person. But this year especially, the headline slots feel weak. The hope, of course, was that the festival’s typical wellspring of goodwill would have us writing ‘why the headliners don’t matter at Glastonbury’, but stood in a field waiting out a fifth costume change, that wasn’t quite the case.
As Dua Lipa took to the Pyramid Stage for her grand poll position, her massive crowd fed back the same kind of limp energy that she delivered. With few people keeping their focus on her and everyone seeming itchy to be elsewhere, it became apparent that she doesn’t have the kind of broad reach or the hooking star power to put on a show worthy of dedicated excitement at this stage of her career, rendering the grand event fine but demonstrably moot.
Nevertheless, the acts before her more than made up for it. Across the site, there were artists picking up earlier slots that could teach Dua Lipa a thing or two about true star power or how to bring an energy that is genuinely fun and worthy of these hallowed fields through artful sincerity rather than unerring polish. Hell, all Jarvis Cocker and Alexis Taylor had to do was spin a joke version of the Human League’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’ that leaves out all the lyrics bar “you were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar” to have a huge crowd eating out of their hand.
Confidence Man win over new fans
Out of all of the acts of the day, it feels certain that Confidence Man gathered up the most new fans during their slot at The Other Stage. Like a puppy that volunteers at Barnardos, they’re impossible not to love. The disco four-piece, fronted by Janet Planet and Sugar Bones, are all singing and dancing, not dropping their energy for even a second as they rip through their high-octane brand of pop.
The weather seemed to want to boost their platform, too, as the sun came out just in time for their finale track, ‘Holiday’, as if it was merely another paid prop in their world where everything is swell. Their vibe could not be typified with any more clarity than the fact that they promoted their set with a video of themselves arriving at Worthy Farm via helicopter, hanging out of the chopper’s doors mid-flight, in the nuddy.
PJ Harvey cuts through the noise
PJ Harvey has never been the easiest artist to grapple with. Her mix of high-art and knowable pop places her in an odd terrain where you have to meet her halfway. However, that is where most people found themselves as she took to the Pyramid Stage—she might not have shaken souls to their core, but it was clear that she suddenly made sense to many.
After an afternoon of high-energy pop and indie, it could have felt like Harvey was bringing the vibe down. Instead, her voice cut through the speakers so incredibly crisp and beautiful that the effect was hypnotic. Paired with her ethereal performance style that’s all long outstretched limbs and outreached hands, it was like being entranced by a shaman with riffs. That then made it even better when she’d dip into one of her more rock or punk-leaning classic tracks. It was as if only she could break the spell, giving the crowd a moment to get the energy out before she demanded it back again, fully focused on her.
LCD Soundsystem provide the ultimate Glastonbury moment
“I wonder if Alexa Chung is here,” I said to my friend yesterday. When preparing Glastonbury outfits, there’s really only one person to look to for inspiration. So, when I turned to my right as LCD Soundsystem started playing and saw her, in the flesh, right next to me, it felt very much like the sort of odd, unfurling kismet that you can only feel at Glastonbury.
There is literally no better way to engage with the indie sleaze energy of New York’s finest playing tracks like ‘Dance Yourself Clean’ or ‘I Can Change’ than with indie’s biggest it-girl vibing to it beside you. Beyond any vapid fangirling, it was simply just proof that Glastonbury brings everyone together. Out of all of the acts of the day, LCD had, without a doubt, the most dedicated audience. With over 2000 acts to see, it can often be the case that the majority of a crowd has simply found themselves at a certain stage at a certain time and merely listened half-heartedly, but with James Murphy and his cronies, most were loyally transfixed.
So, by the time ‘All My Friends’ kicked off, it was not only a musical climax but an emotional one too. In short, it was life-affirming.
Dua Lipa fails to live up
The other day, Emily Eavis claimed Dua Lipa was “born” to headline Glastonbury. But from the crowd, the gifts she was endowed with at birth didn’t necessarily seem to be headlining Worthy Farm. There was a time when she first emerged that Lipa was an indie girl with genuine edge, differentiating her from the rest of the pop crowd. But there’s a direct correlation between her star rising and her originality draining.
The result is a pop star with hits but not a great deal of discernible personality or even a clear aesthetic or energy. Her music, even when presented on the biggest stage with dancers marking every single word, feels like the stock pop song at this stage. A headliner should be someone special, someone with pure talent and sheer charisma, someone able to draw in the biggest crowd of the day and keep them in place, awed by something special.
Instead, Dua Lipa regularly lost Glastonbury’s attention as people mass migrated away to other acts, talked through her set or clearly just didn’t care that much, and then cared even less when she left everyone in the dark repeatedly while she changed into five different outfits. A good outfit doesn’t a pop star make; watching Dua Lipa felt like watching an impression of a star, one more focused on looking the part rather than having the chops to warrant the platform. Of course, such critique seems harsh when one of her undoubted jams suddenly grabbed your lapels, but as the cold descended on the shadow of the main stage, so too did an aura of itchy feet.
Charli XCX shows her how it’s done
On the contrary, Charli XCX’s crowd didn’t even have to see her to know that she is a star wrestling the zeitgeist in a new direction. As her new album Brat makes her a bigger name than ever, the queue for her Levels set was miles long and thousands deep. And it wasn’t even for a Charli performance.
Instead, she brought her party girl club night to the late-night slot, complete with Robyn, Romy, Shygirl, The 1975’s George Daniel and more in tow. She spent most of the time shrouded in lime green mist as she focussed on delivering a flawless set of danceable bangers. But with every call out to the crowd or every spin of her own new tracks like ‘Guess’ or ‘Club Classics’, Charli had more wild amounts of star power even in her shadow.
Between Charli’s bustling club and Fontaines D.C.’s rammed The Park Stage slot, it should serve as a notice to Eavis to stop picking the easy options and go back to taking a risk.
Idles offer mammoth attitude and plenty of politics
With their rough-as-sandpaper punk, Idles delivered the perfect antidote to the polished pop on show elsewhere. Evidently enthused to have been given such a prominent slot, the socially conscious screamers captured the energy of a firecracker let off in an elevator. Easily one of the most full-throttle and affecting sets of Glastonbury Festival so far.
The bad bastard Farage was slammed, an immigrant boat sailed over the crowd, the monarchy were backhanded, the tories were obligatorily torn apart, Palestine was proudly supported, but above all, there was punk. At the heart of all this activism was fierce atavism—a bludgeoning sense that this is a vital virtue that needs to be exercised; the 6Music haka, so to speak.
Fontaines D.C.’s new tracks flourish
If you were looking for a stage patter and a gentle atmosphere, Fontaines frontman Grian Chatten is not the man you would go to. The extent of his crowd banter was the odd “y’alright?” between tracks – but perhaps it is better that way. This is the no-nonsense, honest reputation that Fontaines have amassed over the years: cut the fat, play the tunes, put on a show, and get the job done. That is pretty much exactly what they delivered.
Fontaines’ set was an indisputable highlight of Friday at Glastonbury, as everybody in the packed-out Park crowd can attest. As the band continue to develop musically, with an eagerly anticipated new album on the horizon, they show no signs of stepping away from the limelight any time soon. In fact, with their two new set closing singles going down as well, if not better than any other tracks, their trajectory to the Pyramid Stage is firmly set.
