That’s everything for Saturday – well, Sunday now. We’ll be back tomorrow for the final day of music, with reviews of the likes of Burna Boy, Avril Lavigne, the National, Shania Twain’s legends slot and SZA headlining the Pyramid stage. The liveblog will start up again at noon – see you then!
Here’s Alexis Petridis’s five-star rave of Coldplay’s set, a show in which no stop was left unpulled.
Before Alexis’s Coldplay review goes live, some photos from the day.
West Holts, 10.15pm
Overheard at Glastonbury “Jessie Ware? She’s Jessie everywhere!” Ouch – although it’s not a sentiment shared by the enthusiastic fans who flock to the West Holt stage for the popstar-cum-podcaster-cum-author’s set, opting for Ware over Disclosure and headliners Coldplay. These schedule clashes mean that the crowd for Ware isn’t enormous, but that’s no dampener on the spirits of a singer who has fully embraced a shift in her audience demographic following a departure from more soulful, R&B tracks to the funky, disco, house grooves of 2020 album What’s Your Pleasure, and 2023’s Mercury-prize nominated That! Feels Good!
Stepping out by welcoming the audience to “the Pearl”, Ware performs the title track of her last album wearing a sparkling, caped red jumpsuit that lends a luxurious showbiz vibe to proceedings. She announces herself as “mother of pearl” – in tribute to voguing culture – and this is her house. The show has an unapologetically sexy, hot-blooded vibe. Two flamboyant male dancers in tank tops accompany Ware while carrying trumpets, one of them placing the instrument to his crotch and thrusting as she sings: “Sugar and salt and then lick that lime / A lick, lick, lick, lick, then get in line.” The cheeky, innuendo-laden songs come back-to-back with Shake the Bottle, Ooh La La, and Pearls, and in seasoned diva mode Ware describes her philosophy as “pleasure is a right”.
There’s no doubt that Ware’s disco reinvention has earned her a strong queer following. Behind me a man is carrying a flag pole, which is lit up with all the colours of the rainbow. There’s space made for queer culture on stage too: dancers gyrate with each other, and there’s a dance break for voguing. Ware brings a high camp energy too, telling the crowd: “I believe the Pearl can do this, let me have a quick swig of a drink!”
For Ware, performing on the West Holts stage is a victory built on a long relationship with the festival. She digs into her own personal lore of sneaking off backstage to meet Beth Ditto, and being a backing singer for her best friend Jack Peñate. She expresses repeated gratitude for making her way up to top of the West Holts stage. It’s a sweet moment, then, when she brings out friend Romy for a “Glastonbury exclusive”, a debut of their brand new track Lift Me Up and the two look enamoured with one another (the song isn’t very good, but that feels by the by in this celebratory context). The crowd are enamoured with Ware too. She doesn’t forget the music she made her name on, telling us that before she became a disco diva she “used to be the fucking mid-tempo queen” and belting out ballad Say You Love Me.
Ware’s performances have the feeling of a residency: you can imagine her doing this night after night because she’s so comfortable. The audience hang on to her every word and instruction too – when she sings Beautiful People and tells the crowd to “stand up, turn, take a bow” the whole field moves in unison. She knows her references, too – playing C’hantal’s house classic The Realm before a costume change and rounding off the set with a cover of Cher’s Believe, followed by her own banger Free Yourself, and then exiting on Candi Stanton’s Young Hearts Run Free. It exudes feelgood warmth: Ware has clearly had the time of her life, and her well-earned ubiquity conjures a vision of a world it would be quite lovely to live in.
As Alexis writes his Coldplay review next to me, some visions from the past few hours, including Romy appearing with Jessie Ware during her West Holts headline set to perform their new song, Lift You Up, and Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg watching Coldplay. Really wonder what they talked about.
Elle Hunt marches into the cabin: “FIVE STARS! WHAT A SHOW! I BELIEVE IN HUMANITY!”
Ben Beaumomt-Thomas: “Reminder: this is a work environment! Keep your effusive Coldplay enthusiasms to yourself!”
Other, 10.30pm
When Disclosure last took on Glastonbury’s Other stage it was 2015, they had just put out two chart-topping records, which bridged the gap between the underground and the mainstream with a winning blend of pumping live electronics and big name vocal features. Though they’ve released much of the same ilk in the time since, the duo have struggled to uphold that initial impact.
Much to the delight of tonight’s sprawling crowd of sequin-adorned, bucket-hat wearing millennials, their return show is a high-energy tour through their glory days, from the groovy deep house banger F for You and matey-boy anthem When Fire Starts to Burn to the dreamy, bubbling White Noise, all of which is given an extra punch with live percussion, swirling synthesisers and a bit of boisterous hosting. Up on stage, Disclosure seem to be just as thrilled: “We’re absolutely fucking hyped to be back! Couldn’t be fucking happier.”
In true headliner fashion, they pack in a few surprises throughout the set: a rendition of Faithless’s big room classic Insomnia goes down a treat, as does a guest appearance from Sam Smith. It may all lean hard on the nostalgia factor, but sometimes in a big, cold field surrounded by all your mates that’s exactly what you want.
Woodsies, 10.30pm
“I’m Chris Martin,” announces a woman who looks decidedly not like Chris Martin, before launching into a quick burst of Yellow.
Maybe the Coldplay frontman has a radical new look – black leotard, heels and a bright orange hairdo – or perhaps this is just Gossip acknowledging the reality here. “I know y’all had a choice of acts to see tonight,” says singer Beth Ditto to what is still a fairly sizeable crowd. “I’m actually surprised you came here!”
Gossip are here to reward the dedicated hardcore with a set that fizzes with disco-punk energy from the moment they open with Listen Up, through the uplifting piano soul of Love Long Distance and the wiry riffs of Your Mangled Heart. The latter song ends with a special Glastonbury-appropriate coda: “There’s more of us than there is of them.”
Between each song Ditto embarks on endearingly long anecdotes, spinning her delightful southern belle accent around stories about the length of her tits (yes really), her snotty cold and how she met guitarist Nathan Howdeshell when she was an uncool 13-year-old.
It’s almost 20 years since Gossip made an unlikely crossover into the mainstream with their hit Standing in the Way of Control. Back then it was utterly radical for a self professed “fat, feminist lesbian” from the punk underground to be appearing on the Jonathan Ross show and gatecrashing the charts. But even two decades later, with their punkier edges sanded down a little and more emphasis placed on Ditto’s soulful pipes, the band still seem unlike anyone else (unless Coldplay’s drummer is also currently topless save for some tit tape?).
Their signature song brings the house down and an overwhelmed Ditto – who one song previously was in floods of tears – is in her element, additionally screaming the lyrics of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and raising her middle finger to oppressive governments. The crowd remain long after she’s gone, singing the refrain to Standing in the Way of Control. There’s nowhere else they’d sooner be.
And the conclusion is brand new single Feelslikeimfallinginlove, a classic slab of latter-day Coldplay (meets producer Max Martin) euphoria that’s rich with bonhomie and optimism, while the performance ends with a blast of fireworks and the words “believe in love” projected on the sides of the Pyramid stage. Depending on your levels of cynicism your mileage may have varied on Coldplay’s headline set – the generalities of their humanist sentiment might seem a little imprecise for this particularly acute moment in history – but their guests and now decades-old hits undeniably met the headliner brief.
From the field, Elle Hunt says: “I am in fact now fixed.” Get Coldplay on prescription, stat.
Source: theguardian.com
