Key events
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Alexis was rightly and totally blown away by Olivia Rodrigo, calling her set the best big one of the festival. Here’s his five-star rave:
That is everything for tonight, and indeed this year – thanks so much for following all of our nonsense here. Devastated to report that it’s a fallow year next year, so we’ll see you in 2027?
The Prodigy reviewed
Gwilym Mumford
This is the Prodigy’s fourth appearance at Glastonbury, but as Maxim says in a brief respite from the pummelling blast beats of Voodoo People, it should be their fifth. On the eve of their 2019 booking Keith Flint was found dead at his home in Essex. “Six years ago we lost our brother. This is his night,” Maxim declares.
Flint looms large at this year’s festival – head over to Joe Rush’s Carhenge and you’ll see his menacing grin adorning the bonnet of an upturned muscle car. But in tonight’s set he is positioned as a very visible absence: a silhouette, instantly recognisable by the two devilish points above the temples, is pinned to the giant screens by green lasers. On a reimagined Firestarter his vocals are winnowed down to a single repeated “I’m a firestarter”, Flint haunting the track rather than dominating it as he once did. And on Breathe his vocals in the chorus are omitted, with the crowd stepping in instead.
Flint’s absence is counterbalanced by a whole lot more Maxim, here playing the role of MC, compere and chief cajoler, shepherding crowds through the different eras of the band’s 35 year career, from the saucer-eyed hardcore techno of Jilted Generation to the rocky EDM of Invaders Must Die.
A word for the Other stage. It has received a glow up this year, with giant hi-def screens added, as well as a new lighting rig. It now is probably the best place to watch music at Glastonbury: every performance I’ve seen here has felt immersive and massive. That’s particularly true for the Prodigy and their retina-singing light show, with meandering lasers and walls of glitching graphics.
The spectacle seems to filter down to the audiences too, who have seemed up for it – bordering on unhinged – all weekend. There’s a sprit of the bacchanal tonight. Weed fug and pyro smoke hovers above the crowd of, as Maxim calls them “Prodigy warriors”: loud, unruly, boozy (and the rest). As the crowd skanks and sways to the boinging central refrain from Out of Space, Maxim surveys the scene and declares: “I think Mr Flint would have have been proud of you.”
David Levene going full Andreas Gursky with this shot of the boomer hordes for Rod Stewart. Bravo!
Jorja Smith reviewed
Jason Okundaye
Woodsies
Jorja Smith is welcomed on with an orchestral flourish – rhythmic percussion and escalating strings as the visuals conjure a stage on fire. Last month, the singer began her first UK tour since 2018. Back then she was 21, and riding high off her debut album’s Brit awards gong, Mercury nomination and Grammy nomination for best new artist. But she has switched down the gears towards a slower pace of life, moving from London back to her birthplace Walsall in 2023. Here, at one of the last sets of Glastonbury, she can flex how she’s developed and progressed away from the flashing lights.
Smith has won fans for a smoky, honeyed voice that has remained agile, elegant and restrained – though sometimes that restraint is to a fault. On the opening number, Try Me, she is drowned out by her band and, with a vocal style that is often legato, it can be hard to hear what she’s saying. There is a fine line, after all, between vocal elegance and repression.
Yet this issue quickly melts away, particularly when the familiar hits come out – Blue Lights and Addicted are such phenomenal tracks, sexy and subtle and bringing out gorgeous moments of vocal layering with her backing singer which provide more lyrical clarity and a fitting sense of ensemble. Her male backing singer comes out for a duet on Feelings – Smith is so adoring of him and they sound fantastic together, but it also feels like a humble and mature embrace of how introducing different, distinct vocal tones can accentuate a performance.
Initially, you do wonder if this set might become dull, and how she can maintain the audience for an hour and 15 minutes of slower, mellow tones that might not be the vibe for a Sunday late-night billing. Yet Smith is adaptable. Go Go Go reaches for Afropop, while Popcaan collaboration Come Over embraces dancehall. This scope is complemented by her band who are truly fantastic – her bassist can provide mellow moments of cool R&B, but equally they can ascend into rollicking crescendos and grundy indie rock type segments.
This set really reaches its peak during the more fun, funky and decidedly unrelaxed segments. She brings out AJ Tracey for both a cover of his hit Ladbroke Grove and their recent collaboration, Crush. I have to say, Tracey performs much better here than he had just two hours ago on the same stage. Perhaps this is because there is no backing track to rely on, and there is a wonderful, almost sibling-like fondness between the two artists.
But it’s when the basslines and syncopated rhythms of UK garage emerge that you really see Smith as a national darling, one equally capable of jumping on new sounds while resurrecting past genres with finesse; of course, funky electronic garage track Little Things, which reintroduced Smith to the world in 2023, plays that part. But there is also The Way I Love You and Preditah collaboration On My Mind, which feel more befitting of the dark Woodsies stage and the late-night billing. You could imagine it going off at Glastonbury’s various nightlife venues; hopefully I’ll hear some of this set, the pitch faders mixing up the arrangement at Block9 later.
The Maccabees reviewed
Safi Bugel
At one point, the Maccabees had a generation of people in a chokehold. The London indie band were so prolific they can’t even remember exactly how many times they’ve played at Glastonbury before. But after 14 years and four albums, they announced their hiatus in 2016, with a farewell tour the following year.
Back in October, they teased their comeback; tonight’s show is one of their first public performances in eight years. It’s a high-energy, emotion-heavy experience on both sides of the barrier as they shuttle back through time via all of their best hits. At one point, the band acknowledge that they – and likely most of tonight’s audience – are now a decade older, so they ask them to jump along, but only if they want to. Of course, they do. The boisterous excitement from the crowd of thirtysomethings doesn’t waver, through the urgent, full-bodied end of their discography (Latchmere, X-Ray, Marks to Prove It, etc) to the more quaint moments, like the sweetheart ditty Toothpaste Kisses, which is met with a rapturous singalong.
As with any reunion, it’s a shamelessly indulgent trip down memory lane – to the band’s heyday, yes, but also to a significant time in British indie music more generally. Special guest Florence Welch joins them on stage for Love You Better and a rowdy performance of Dog Days Are Over. After closing with the punchy fan favourite Pelican, the band hug one another on stage. When they say that this show means the world to them, you can tell they mean it.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
To court us a little more, Olivia’s cracked out her Union Jack pants for – paradoxically – All-American Bitch. She’s also done the Flaming Lips thing of chucking out loads of massive white balls into the audience. Then it’s into the second-best Olivia song: Good 4 U. This song features such a good actorly performance: the proper bunny boiler pressing her face against the double glazing to tell her ex about how she’s really totally fine about their breakup. It’s cartoonishly heightened and silly – but also there’s real venom, and this is a definitely a story with two sides: what’s this guy done?
Then it’s Get Him Back! and a ton of fireworks crackling over a wonderfully overwrought guitar solo. “This is a dream come true,” she tells this jubilant crowd. “Goodnight!”
But it’s not goodnight from us just yet – stick around for a load more reviews, pics and more.
Our photographer Alicia Canter has been down in the pit for Olivia Rodrigo and come back with some killer shots.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Ooh, it’s my fave Olivia song, Deja Vu. It sits right in the heart of the Venn diagram of her songwriting – bit of bruised heartbreak, bit of guitar bite, bit of dream-pop – and it’s about such a specific horrifying situation: seeing your ex playing through the same cute things you did together, this time with a new partner. Which has the effect of retroactively cancelling them out for you and making you think: wait, who had they already done them with before me? And it’s a dilemma that you might not have come across pre social media, but now romances are played out in public, these new weird horrors seep into culture. It’s an example of how Rodrigo, not even out of her teens when she recorded this, is so perceptive about affairs of the heart.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Jorja Smith is raving up a storm and doing some oo-a oo-a’s, while Overmono have hit a relatively lower tempo zone, running through some tech-y reggaeton. And the Prodigy are keeping everything 100. “We are the noise makers,” Maxim promises. “Anyone brings as much noise as this? I’ll retire … We’re waking up the whole of England!” They build up Smack My Bitch Up from its constituent parts, adding gigantic cock-rock riffs on the way to that gleefully obnoxious vocal hook – demurely covered over for the BBC but with the crowd emphatically filling in. More pics from our Jonny here:
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Like Noah Kahan before her, Olivia is doing some shameless courting of us Brits. “I love England so fucking much,” she says. “It’s bands like the Cure that first got me acquainted with England … I have so many things I love about England, I love pop culture, I love how nobody judges you for having a pint at noon, it’s the best. I love English sweets, all the sweets from M&S, Colin the Caterpillar specifically.” Invoking Colin genuinely makes English people giddy. Pray continue. “True story: I have had three sticky toffee puddings since coming to Glastonbury. And as luck would have it, I love English boys.” It’s all teeing up So American, made from the inside jokes she had with an English lover.
The Cure’s Robert Smith joins Olivia Rodrigo
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
The special guests are coming out. With the Maccabees up on the Park – which I’m basically ignoring because life is too short – it’s Florence Welch. AJ Tracey has come back out to join Jorja Smith. And with Olivia Rodrigo, it’s Robert Smith from the Cure.
“He is perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England, he is a Glastonbury legend and a personal hero of mine,” she says. They launch into a sweet-natured and extra-melancholy duet of Friday I’m in Love, trading lines back and forth. Then they join together in a wonderful pairing for the climactic chorus, their voices so totally different and yet chiming together. “The dads chaperoning 13 year old daughters properly doing their nut near us hahahaha”, Alexis Petridis texts to me.
Robert sticks around for another one: Just Like Heaven, in which he takes the lead on verse one, with Olivia taking verse two – she’s more doleful and wary than the more romantic and caution-throwing Robert. The way they bring out new and different shades to these songs is one of the greatest treats of this year’s festival.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Olivia Rodrigo is just 22 years old, by the way – which puts her way up the league table of youngest headliners. Billie Eilish was just 20 when she did her own set in 2022, though as Ash reminded us during their set this weekend, actually it was them who were the very youngest when they were drafted in to replace Steve Winwood in 1997.