Glastonbury 2024: Watch SZA pay tribute to Prince during headline set
As she headlined Glastonbury Festival for the first time on June 30th, SZA took to the Pyramid Stage with the aim of proving her doubters wrong. While the crowd was sparse on the Pyramid Stage, one touching moment came when she played a snippet of Prince’s ‘Kiss’ before bursting into her Doja Cat collaboration, ‘Kiss Me More’.
SZA isn’t the only artist at Glastonbury to have delivered a nod and a wink to the late American musician, who passed away in 2016. Earlier in the day on the Pyramid Stage, Janelle Monáe channeled her inner Prince during an electric rendition of ‘Make Me Feel’, which was inspired by his distinctive guitar licks, that are also prominent on ‘Kiss’.
While the other two headliners of Glastonbury Festival in 2024, Coldplay and Dua Lipa, both worked their way up the bill at the festival, SZA’s appearance at Glastonbury marks her debut at the Somerset bash. Despite being one of the most streamed artists on the planet, SZA isn’t as well-known in Britain as her fellow headliners, and the number of people in the crowd reflected this fact.
Glastonbury has been full of magical moments. On Friday night, Dua Lipa rose to the occasion during her headline set, and notably welcomed Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker to the stage for a thrilling rendition of ‘The Less I Know The Better’.
Meanwhile, Coldplay attracted the biggest crowd of the weekend for their headline set on June 29th with over 100,000 in attendance. They began their career-spanning set by taking things back to the start with ‘Yellow’ and finished up with latest single, ‘feelslikeimfallinginlove’.
They also welcomed a series of special guests to the stage. Singer-songwriter Victoria Canal joined the band to play piano on ‘Paradise’, Laura Mvula performed ‘Violet Hill’ with the group, and Little Simz assisted on an unreleased track that is set to appear on their forthcoming album, Moon Music.
However, no guest was more special than actor Michael J. Fox, who played guitar for the band. With a Red Stratocaster in arms, the wheelchair-bound actor joined the band on stage as they performed the ‘Humankind’ and ‘Fix You’.
Frontman Chris Martin and the rest of the band were triumphant, as Fox, who has battled Parkinson’s disease since 1991, brought a tearjerking moment to the end stages of their performance, which was received by a passionate applause by the enormous audience. They then played the melancholic ‘Fix You’, and after Martin said, “Thank you to our hero forever,” to Fox.
Watch SZA pay tribute to Prince below.
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