Glastonbury 2024: Watch Grian Chatten join Kneecap to perform collaboration for first time
During their second set of Glastonbury Festival at the Peace Stage in Shangri-La, Kneecap performed ‘Better Way To Live’ with Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten for the first time.
The collaboration was released last year as the lead single from their new album, Fine Art, which recently landed at two on the Irish Album Chart. ‘Better Way To Live’ has been a staple in Kneecap’s live set, including their earlier performance on June 29th on the Woodsies Stage, however, the chance to perform it with Chatten has previously evaded them.
With Fontaines D.C. set to release their new album, Romance, on August 23rd and an equally busy schedule, Chatten and Kneecap being in the same place at the same time to perform has proved difficult.
Thankfully, they finally joined forces at Glastonbury, delighting those who were revelling in the after hours sets that the Peace Stage had to offer. Despite not playing ‘Better Way To Live’ before, Chatten gave an assured performance full of swagger, and looked in his element with the hip-hop trio.
‘Better Way To Live’ has an addictive nature, with Chatten providing the perfect foil for Kneecap’s tenacity. In a recent exclusive interview with Far Out, the band explained how it also showed there was more to the trio than they previously expressed. “I feel like that really solidified us to those on the fence who thought, ‘Oh, they’re just being spoken about because they rap in Irish’,” Mo Chara said.
They also stated that getting the track over the line was challenging because Chatten didn’t own a mobile phone. Ultimately, they had to send a driver to pick him up in Brighton as public transport wasn’t working, but eventually, the frontman arrived at the studio to nail the hook that Móglaí Bap penned for him.
Far Out’s conversation with Kneecap took place a few weeks before Glastonbury, and talk of a possible collaboration with Chatten occurred, which at that point, was yet to be discussed. Kneecap played down the chances of Chatten performing with them at Worthy Farm “unless they send another driver” like they did to get him to record his vocals as he’s “impossible to contact”. Thankfully, whatever magic trick Kneecap used to lure the Fontaines D.C. singer to perform was successful.
In a four-star review of Fontaines D.C.’s headline performance on The Park Stage at Glastonbury Festival, Far Out wrote: “Although he is clearly a man of few words, Chatten is among the finest frontmen of modern times. Standing at the front of the Park stage, he commanded the audience like a captain commands his ship – with dignity, authority, and a certain sense of unpredictability, even if a few technical issues evidently plagued him at points.
Watch Grian Chatten and Kneecap perform ‘Better Way To Live’ below.
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