Pulp and Haim perform secret sets

Femi Koleoso, the drummer and frontman, recently shared his guide to best London with the The Times.

• Read in full: The Ezra Collective frontman’s guide to the best of London

He and his brother, TJ, also spoke about their family background and musical influences.

• Read in full: Ezra Collective: ‘Are we competitive? Nah, it’s chill’

There were a suspicious number of young women and men on their phones in the crowd watching Gary Numan perform his brand of hard gothic electronic rock on the Park stage.

Perhaps it had something to do with the much-rumoured secret set by Haim, the three soft rock sisters from Los Angeles, which follows at 7.30pm.

As Numan finished his powerful performance, and the average age of the crowd dropped by about 30 years, one overheard conversation went: “I didn’t expect that from an Eighties pop star. I thought he would be more Rick Astley vibes.”

It was never much of a secret, but now it’s official.

Pulp are the band billed as Patchwork with a slot on the Pyramid stage.

They opened with Sorted for E’s and Wizz and Disco 2000, which they first played at Glastonbury 30 years ago.

Gary Lineker told an audience at Glastonbury that those “at the very top of the BBC” have “an agenda”.

Speaking to Andy Cato, the Groove Armada DJ and nature-friendly farming advocate, the former Match of the Day presenter said of the national broadcaster: “I think they have lost their way a little bit. There are thousands of brilliant people at the BBC but at the moment I don’t think that’s reflected right at the very top.”

He later added: “I feel for Tim Davie, the director-general, because I believe there are people above him that have an agenda.”

Lineker left the BBC after a series of run-ins with his bosses about political tweets and sharing his views on the war in Gaza, when he had been told he must remain impartial.

Asked why he became more political in recent years, he said: “I did have a very big platform and thought, what’s the point if you don’t use it, if you don’t push beliefs that you believe to be right.”

Lineker said he will not ramp up his political output on social media now he has left the BBC.

He said: “I don’t really use Twitter any more because it’s become a hateful place, which is a shame really because I used to enjoy it, but I will keep posting on Instagram, so more of the same.”

Lineker finished his talk by saying he “wanted to see Kneecap” but his talk clashed with their performance, before adding: “Free Palestine.”

Pulp are in the middle of a summer tour, which would not be complete without an appearance on the Pyramid stage.

The Times was there to review the first gig in Glasgow.

• Read in full: Pulp first night review — Jarvis Cocker, magnificent as ever

On a weekend of badly kept secrets, this is the worst one. It is all but confirmed that the mysterious act “Patchwork” to perform at the Pyramid stage at 6.15pm will be Pulp.

In recent days members of Pulp have tried to squash rumours that they will be performing at the festival on the 30th anniversary of their first appearance.

But fans have prepared just in case. Annie Warren, 31, and Peter Bradley, 33, have been sporting their Pulp merchandise since this morning.

Bradley said: “I was four when they last played at Glastonbury and I saw them at Leeds Festival when I was a teenager and we just saw them last week.”

That was part of the tour for their latest album, More, their first studio album in 24 years.

Warren said: “The show was incredible, one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, so we’re hoping for Pulp. We’re going to look really stupid if it’s not.”

Half an hour before the set was scheduled to start a large crowd had already formed by the stage and far up the hill. There will be a lot of disappointed fans if the secret act turns out not to be Pulp after all.

Kneecap used their set to comment on a number of recent political developments including the government’s plan to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

Mo Chara, himself facing a terrorism charge, said: “We would like to give a f***ing shoutout to Palestine Action who might soon become a proscribed organisation. I know first hand what happens if you’re willing to speak out for Palestine and especially in this industry.”

He added: “Palestine Action isn’t arming the genocide in Israel, that’s Keir Starmer and the British government who should be proscribed.”

The trio led the crowd in chants of “Free Palestine” and “F*** Keir Starmer” at several points throughout the set.

Móglaí Bap ended the gig by saying: “We want to thank Glastonbury again for standing by Kneecap, for standing by Palestine.”

Pulp have still not officially been confirmed as “Patchwork”, the previously unknown band playing the Pyramid stage at 6.15pm.

However, after Jarvis Cocker performed performed a DJ set yesterday and with no sign of the other rumoured secret act, Chappell Roan, it looks as if X accounts like @secretglasto are on the money, as The Times reported last week.

• Read in full: Who are Patchwork? Glastonbury’s secret stars ‘revealed’

The story behind Jade Thirlwall is a twisty one: discovered on The X Factor, did her years in mega-band Little Mix, broke free of her manufactured pop constraints, went solo — and then put out an entirely unexpected single, Angel of My Dreams, which blended Kate Bush and Lady Gaga.

After giving by far the best performance at this year’s Brit Awards, she has now played Glastonbury at Woodsies — a stage surely never trodden by anyone from the The X Factor before. And she was, it is fair to say, absolutely thrilled to be here.

There was no hint of pop star aloofness as the South Shields singer, in “Glasto” T-shirt and sparkly combats, was introduced by the actor Ncuti Gatwa, before going full pelt into It Girl — a sparkling, satirical song about the ups and downs of fame.

This is a titchy tent for a star birthed in arenas, and its immediacy clearly moved her. “This has been one of the best days of me life,” she said tearfully. The set was all hits, her solo singles mixed with Little Mix crowd-pleasers and, surprisingly, a genuinely moving cover of Madonna’s Frozen.

The packed tent sung every word of Angel of My Dreams, which follows a Jade template of slow start and big finish (some of these tunes could do with a touch more light and shade). But it is her voice that is the selling point here: the instrument that got her noticed all those years ago, and that now suggests a far more interesting future.

★★★★☆

Kneecap opened their set with a video montage using news clips about the arrest of one of their members and the controversy surrounding their performance at Glastonbury.

To cheers and a sea of Palestinian flags, Mo Chara, wearing a keffiyeh, said: “Glastonbury, I’m a free man.”

The rapper, real name Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, was released on bail after a court appearance in London earlier this month.

After several songs, the frontman Móglaí Bap said: “On August 20 Mo Chara is back in court for a trumped-up terrorism charge. Trust me it’s not the first time that there has been a miscarriage of justice against an Irish person by the British justice system.”

He added: “So if anyone is available on August 20 to support Mo Chara, let’s start a riot.” He later added: “Just to clarify, I don’t want anybody to start a riot.”

Móglaí Bap also thanked the Eavis family for their support in recent weeks before getting the crowd to shout: “F*** Keir Starmer”.

Starmer had said it was not “appropriate” for Kneecap to play and Kemi Badenoch and others called on the BBC not to broadcast the set.

To the disappointment of some young women at the front, Timothée Chalamet did not honour the rumour that he would turn up at Glastonbury’s tribute to the great songwriter of the late 20th century (Will Hodgkinson writes).

Even with that omission, this was a delightful chance to appreciate some beloved Dylan songs by people who not only performed them extremely well, but clearly had a great love for the material.

“I remember seeing Dylan’s concert in 1965,” said the English folk legend Ralph McTell, “but I don’t remember coming home. It was the greatest thing I had ever seen.”

McTell’s rendition of Mr Tambourine Man was sung along to by the entire crowd, as was the band leader Sid Griffin and singer Paul Carrack’s I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, one of Dylan’s loosest, most romantic songs.

There were some great choices here too: You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere, made famous by the Byrds, had a lazy feel suited to the afternoon heat.

A singer called Katya reimagined One More Cup of Coffee in tribute to her Armenian heritage, and finally came a beautiful I Shall Be Released, Dylan’s modern hymn. Gorgeous.

★★★★☆

Even before allegations of supporting Hezbollah and urging fans to kill an MP, Kneecap were known as Britain’s most controversial band.

They were accused of inflaming sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland and hiring Gerry Adams to star in a drug-fuelled movie. Then they sued the government for withholding arts funding,

The Times interviewed them last year.

• Read in full: Kneecap: meet the UK’s most controversial band

JJ Ó Dochartaigh, a member of the Belfast rap trio Kneecap, has appeared in a picture online wearing a T-shirt supporting Palestine Action, the protest group due to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation after vandalism at an RAF base and other sites.

An Instagram post shortly before their Glastonbury set was captioned: “One hour to go.”

Another member of Kneecap has been charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah during a concert last year.

Forty-five minutes before Kneecap were scheduled to take to the West Holts stage, Glastonbury Festival closed access to the site.

Large crowds had already gathered, many of them holding Palestine flags or wearing keffiyeh, traditional Palestinian scarves.

Bob Vylan, the English punk duo, were on before Kneecap and led the crowd in chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “Death, death to the IDF”.

Bobby Vylan, one of the two performers, said: “We’re not pacifist punks sometimes you got to get your message across with violence … that is the only language some people speak, unfortunately.”

He called his band the “most violent” in Britain.

Kneecap will take to the stage at 4pm.

It seems like its been a long time coming, but when Brandi Carlisle was finally given the chance to play her first Glastonbury festival, more than 20 years into a multi-Grammy award winning career, she grabbed it with both hands (Will Humphries writes).

Already a God-tier country-adjacent act in the US, she blasted the barn doors off her opening song Broken Horses. After that any reservations in the growing crowd had bolted.

She swept through blazing-hot country rock — which matched the puddle-inducing heat of the midday sun — tender ballads about motherhood and heartbreak anthems to “dark lesbian drama”.

Flanked by twins Phil and Tim Hanseroth, two mildly camp cowboys who have backed her entire two-decade career, the Seattle-born singer gave a nod to Glastonbury’s storied past and her love for the festival by delivering a blistering version of Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees, continuing the Nineties takeover of the weekend started on Friday by the likes of Alanis Morisette, Supergrass and Shed Seven.

“My wife told me how special this would be,” Carlisle said of her British spouse, as she looked out in wonder at the swelling Pyramid Stage crowd halfway through her set. “Look how many there are of you now, holy shit!”

After rendering the crowd silent with You Without Me, her delicate ballad about her eldest daughter, played solo on acoustic guitar, she said: “Only in Glastonbury could I get away with that. This is the best festival in the world!”

★★★★★

Revellers who made the trek uphill to the intimate Crow’s Nest near the Glastonbury sign to see Dominic West got a special treat.

The English actor, known for his roles in The Wire and The Crown, performed a series of poems and songs alongside his daughter, Martha, and son, Senan.

With dishevelled hair, West introduced the act: “We’re just going to have some gentle, hangover poetry. This is a hangover sonnet.”

Half way through reciting William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, he stumbled and forgot the next lines. “The mushroom tincture is getting to me,” he said apologetically, and decided to move on to his next three poems.

Martha read three original poems, including one about the Round Table from Guinevere’s perspective that included several verses of raunchy sex. Senan performed three songs with a friend on the electric guitar.

West closed off the somewhat chaotic but relaxed performance by saying: “Thanks for bearing with us, the von Trapp family.”

A New York outfit with a rumbustious line in live electronica and a name straight out of a French Connection ad campaign, Fcukers went for it from the off (writes Ed Potton).

Shannon Wise is an understated but beguiling frontwoman, all chiming vocals and deadpan cool, while her musical partner Jackson Walker held it all together on bass and keyboards and a drummer and scratching DJ added beef and urgency.

It’s no surprise that Fcukers have worked with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem — they have the same laconic swagger,

Moving smoothly between deep house, indie electro, art-rock and pogoing techno. They all wore sunglasses despite playing in a tent and did their best to look like they weren’t trying very hard, but you could tell they are tightly marshalled by Walker.

Bon Bon was a riot of thundering bass, I Don’t Wanna crackled with insouciance and Homie Don’t Shake brilliantly sampled Devil’s Haircut by Beck.

Wise’s lyrics were mantra-like rather than poetic, but the animated post-lunch crowd didn’t seem that interested in contemplating rhyming couplets.

★★★★☆

A number of politicians have called for them to be banned from Glastonbury but the Irish rap trio Kneecap is performing at West Holts as planned. However, the BBC said that the performance will not be livestreamed but is likely to be made available on-demand. The band will be on West Holts Stage at 4pm.

The band said on Instagram: “The propaganda wing of the regime has just contacted us … they WILL put our set from Glastonbury today on the iPlayer later this evening for your viewing pleasures.”

It comes as one of the band’s members Liam Og O hAnnaidh, 27, was charged with allegedly displaying a flag in support of proscribed terrorist organisation Hezbollah while saying “up Hamas, up Hezbollah” at a gig in November.

Last week the rapper, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court. He was released on unconditional bail until the next hearing on August 20.

Last week Sir Keir Starmer said it would not be “appropriate” for Kneecap to perform and Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, said the BBC “should not be showing” the set.

DJ Annie Mac has been to nearly 20 Glastonbury festivals and calls it an annual “pilgrimage” as important as Christmas, so it’s no wonder she has accumulated some survival tips (writes Emily Prescott).

“You have to invest in a really good pair of wax earplugs,” she said. “Eye masks, magnesium, all of that. But the older I’ve got, the more into camping I’ve become. It’s only a few days, so even if you come home smelly and sleep-deprived, it’s alright.”

The 46-year-old, who left BBC Radio 1 in 2021 and published her debut novel Mother, Mother the same year, said that her relationship with the festival has evolved with parenthood.

“It’s the only time of the year where I can be safely uncontactable,” she explained. Though she has considered bringing her children, aged 12 and eight, “I’d need my husband’s full support. He’s sober and not quite ready for a fully sober Glastonbury.” Mac — whose full name is Annie Macmanus — will DJ at the Glade this evening and at Arcadia from 1am tomorrow.

Mac praised the festival’s “fallow years” and said: “They do that for the land but they also do it for themselves. It’s quite radical in this day and age for someone to go, yes, I could be making money I’m not going to put my family, my mental health or my land before that. We all need a fallow year, or week of the month.”

The north London band Sorry took to the stage without any fanfare for their early afternoon Saturday set, but struggled to build up much atmosphere (writes Roisin Kelly).

Beginning with Jive and into the eerie baseline of their newest song, Jetplane, vocalist Asha Lorenz sang: “Arrest me/I’m a hot freak/I’m bombastique/ I’m making modern music/In Spain/I’m on the jet plane.”

A more relaxed vibe was welcome after last night’s high energy headliners but the band struggled to excite their audience, with bizarre interludes between sets, including a recording of Watcha Say by Jason Derulo, leaving fans looking confused.

The guitarist Louis O’Bryen has previously said they “never wanted to be a straight down the middle guitar band”, but the result on stage is a mash up of genres and live ad-libs that makes their identity seem confused. At times, it feels more like watching a friend’s band performing in a pub than a Glastonbury set.

They did manage to end on a high though, with fans singing out the lyrics to Starstruck, their most popular and energetic track.

★★☆☆☆

The musician recently shared her favourite song lyrics with The Times — “I’m frightened by the Devil and I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid” by Joni Mitchell.

Brandi Carlile said: “I’ve been fortunate enough to sit beside Joni as she relearnt her own lyrics. Something about seeing them in written form makes them even more brilliant.

“She once said, ‘If you see me in my music, I haven’t done my job, but if you see yourself, my job is done.’ Joni has a knack for speaking the unspeakable and for making us all feel seen and uniquely understood.”

• Read in full: The musician on the song that changed her life

Brandi Carlile might be the star of the show on the Pyramid Stage (performing now), but not in the eyes of Wendy Quilter. She has made a huge banner to support her nephew, Dave Mackay, the country rock star’s keyboard player.

Quilter was already signed up to volunteer for Oxfam at the festival when she found out that her nephew, from Leicester, would be appearing with Carlile.

“He’s been playing for Brandi for two or three years, all over the world,” she said. “We’ve sent him a photo of our banners so he knows we’re here. This will be a conversation about the Christmas dinner table, won’t it!”

Neil Young may be a famously mercurial figure who is prone to subject audiences to an hour’s worth of sustained guitar noise should the mood take him, but at the same time he’s nothing if not competitive.

That’s why I predict he’ll be blasting out the classics at the Pyramid Stage on Saturday night, if only to show young pretenders like the 1975 and Olivia Rodrigo how it’s done.

Besides, he’s got a hot new band called the Chrome Hearts to put through their paces, featuring Willie Nelson’s son Micah on guitar and Spooner Oldham, legendary session ace from Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama who played with everyone from Aretha Franklin to Bob Dylan, on Farfisa Organ.

Here is a dream setlist for what will be, should he play ball, the highlight of Glastonbury 2025.

Three years ago you would have been forgiven for not knowing who Brandi Carlile was. The 44-year-old from Seattle had achieved success with her country and Americana music — seven Grammy nominations and six wins by 2022 attest to that — but had never quite broken through to the global mainstream. Then Carlile pulled off an extraordinary feat, one that garnered both praise and gratitude among music lovers: she got Joni Mitchell to perform again at Newport Folk Festival.

How did she do it? In an article for The Times, she explained that she organised monthly “Joni Jams” at Mitchell’s house with other musicians, encouraging the 81-year-old to see she still had more to offer musically. This year she helped another great get back on the stage: Elton John, who recorded a new, widely lauded album, Who Believes in Angels?, with her. Read our review of it here.

“She’s the most remarkable singer,” John said of Carlile in an interview with The Times. Meanwhile, Carlile said in her recent Culture Fix that John would be the only guest at her fantasy dinner party. Will John make an appearance at Carlile’s Pyramid slot at 1.30pm? Unlikely, but it’s Glastonbury, so anything is possible …

The humble bucket hat might once have been a Glastonbury staple but this year, as temperatures hit 26C, large straw sun hats that are usually seen poolside in St Tropez have become the accessory of choice.

Even Rosie Webb, 49, who owns a business designing and selling bucket hats in Bristol, opted for one to go with her pink sundress today.

She said: “I love bucket hats but all of mine have bold prints. Today it’s extra hot and a bucket hat would clash with my sundress.”

Neil Young’s headline set at Glastonbury Festival will be shown live on the BBC after all, the broadcaster confirmed.

It comes after the BBC said on Friday that Young’s performance with his band the Chrome Hearts would not be shown “at the artist’s request”.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We are delighted to confirm that Neil Young’s headline set from Glastonbury on Saturday will be broadcast live to audiences across the UK on the BBC.”

Earlier this year Young announced his headline set at Glastonbury only to cancel after learning the BBC was involved. He said the broadcaster “wanted us to do a lot of things in a way we were not interested in”. The Canadian singer later took back his remarks. Young, 79, last played Glastonbury in 2009

His set will be shown on the BBC iPlayer Pyramid Stage stream from 10pm, as well as broadcast on BBC Two and BBC Radio 2.

People do drugs at music festivals. Shocker! But while most drug taking across the Glastonbury site has historically been furtive and leaves no trace, a rising tide of discarded gas canisters increasingly litters Worthy Farm by the end of each night.

In one recent year, more than two tonnes of “laughing gas” nitrous oxide canisters — a Class C drug since 2023 — were picked up by hand from the King’s Meadow alone, home to Stone Circle.

Police patrol the festival on foot, horseback and bicycle, to keep the roughly 210,000 citizens of this temporary city safe during the festival week. They maintain a very light presence, allowing people to enjoy the festival largely how they wish to, but drug users typically try to hide their small packets of pills and powders as they consume them hunched over in crowds.

However, nitrous oxide users — who inhale the gas to feel lightheaded — are uniquely conspicuous by the loud “whooshing” sound the canisters make when being used to fill the brightly coloured balloons, which many of the younger festival goers can be seen sucking from repeatedly in the bars and crowds around the site.

Liz Eliot, founder of the Green Fields area at Glastonbury Festival, has made repeated pleas for people not to use the “damaging drug which pollutes our beautiful field with noise, litter and N2O gas, a greenhouse gas which is 298 times more polluting than carbon dioxide”. An army of volunteer litter pickers clean the site every morning, leaving the fields looking pristine for the start of another day.

Some viewers experienced issues as their BBC iPlayer livestream feeds crashed yesterday, but an unexpected bonus for some was their discovery of the signed coverage for the hearing impaired.

One temporarily irritated viewer tweeted: “So, BBC iPlayer shut down midway through Supergrass doing Alright … went back on and the Pyramid stage stream was gone, but the signed version was still going. And it’s ace!”

Another person watching the signed coverage of Supergrass, who opened the Pyramid stage on Friday, suggested that the “signing guy [is] putting in more effort than the boys”.

Ryan Taylor said on X that the British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter for The 1975 headline set “hit a new high” and was “worth the TV licence alone!”

“This one’s called Go F*** Yourself,” (Ed Potton writes).

Looking for one last thing to do while walking home from the Park stage at 2am on Saturday morning, we stumbled on the show of the weekend. Fat Dog, the south London band who mix ska, techno, rock and klezmer, were in full flow and it was an incredible sight.

This was their fourth show at Glastonbury in 24 hours and they had the air of battle-hardened desperados, grooved in, fired up and on the money. Supplemented with touring reinforcements including a fiddler, the band spilled across the stage and the singer Joe Love often delivered his vocals from the crowd. It’s a legacy of emerging from lockdown, when being close to fans felt special, and it gave him and his bandmates a powerful connection with their audience.

The intensity barely let up, the tempos high and the dancing wild. King of the Slugs was a blast of white noise, the aforementioned Go F*** Yourself as uncompromising as its title suggests, yet the mood was never anything but warm and celebratory. It was hilarious to watch new punters arrive.

Either they knew what to expect, and charged to the front, or they were caught by surprise, processed what they were seeing… and charged to the front. It felt like a unique experience, but this was the fourth time they’d done it that day. What a band.

★★★★★

It’s possibly the worst kept secret in the music industry. The Britpop pioneers Pulp will be playing the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury festival today at 6.15pm, in a slot occupied by a previously unheard of band named “Patchwork”.

That is according to the anonymous team behind SecretGlasto, the social media account which spills the beans on the secret sets being played at Worthy Farm.

Normally they tweet out their tips to festivalgoers an hour before the performance, to allow fans of the secret acts a chance to “drop everything” and get across the site to see them in a small tent or at one of the main stages.

• Read in full: Glastonbury’s secret stars ‘revealed’

Didn’t manage to get tickets, or just hate camping? We’ve got you covered — read our guide to enjoying the festival’s highlights from the comfort of your own home, including when every act is playing.

As always, the BBC has exclusive rights to broadcast the festival as the corporation decamps from offices in London and Manchester and heads to Worthy Farm to offer viewers and listeners more than 90 hours of televised coverage and many more on radio and across BBC Sounds.

• Read more: our full guide to watching Glastonbury live on TV

A select and mysterious group of artists and volunteers spent two weeks feverishly painting the 17,000 oil drum bins which are scattered across the festival site.

Sarah Lawrence, 65, an administrator from Plymouth who has volunteered with Oxfam at the festival since 2016, said it took her almost a decade to get admitted into the secretive group, known as Binnies, this year.

“There are about 100 of us and some are faster than others, I was one of the slower ones,” she said.

Glastonbury lovers donated up to £850 each this year to Care International, the humanitarian organisation, to have a bin painted by hand as a tribute to a loved one. “I was asked to paint a bin in memory of someone who never quite got to Glastonbury,” Lawrence said. “They say you can take your time over certain bins and then you are told we have to finish this field of bins this afternoon and everyone goes crazy — those are the bins which just have a few squiggles.”

The first painted bin appeared in the 1980s to hold flowers on the Pyramid stage. Michael Eavis loved the idea and asked for more. Since then they have been exhibited in America’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and entered the festival’s archive in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Neil Young, Doechii and Charli XCX are all appearing at the same time tonight — who would you pick? We asked Jonathan Dean, Will Hodgkinson and Roisin Kelly to cast their vote for the headliner they’ll watch in Saturday night’s big clash.

“Neil Young may be a grumpy old git with a voice like a rusty tin can being kicked down the road, but he embodies the spirit of Glastonbury better than anyone,” writes Will.

“Doechii is the thinking punter’s choice when it comes to a show you can’t predict,” says Jonathan.

“Every music festival needs that one, middle-of-the-weekend, late-night act that is guaranteed to see you limping back to your tent with sore feet and a heavy feeling that you might have overdone it — and nobody does that better than Charli XCX,” argues Roisin.

Which would you pick? Let us know in the comments below

• Read more: Glastonbury 2025 clashes

We’re almost halfway through Britain’s annual weekend of rocking in the free world, and that means it is time for Neil Young. (Will Hodgkinson writes). A famously mercurial figure, Young has stayed relevant by going wherever the mood takes him, never simply doing greatest hits sets. Still, he won’t want his big Glastonbury moment to be a damp squib. That’s why I’m guessing Old Man, Heart of Gold and more mellow gold will make it in the Pyramid headline set, alongside whatever else he damn well pleases.

• Read Will’s interview with Neil Young

Elsewhere in the day, the mystery guests Patchwork look set to be preaching from the Pulp-it (with dad jokes like that, no wonder I’m choosing Neil Young over Charli XCX), Kneecap will supply Glastonbury’s big pro-Palestine/anti-Kier Starmer moment, and the peaceful, ambient guitar sounds of Ichiko Aoba will be just the tonic to ease into what is, let’s face it, as much an endurance test as a music festival. And will Timothée Chalamet pop up at the Dylan tribute over at the acoustic stage at 3pm? Almost definitely not. But false rumours are all part of the Glastonbury fun.

With that, the first day of Glastonbury comes to a close. Check back tomorrow at 11am when we’ll be taking you through the best of Saturday’s performances, including Neil Young, Charli XCX and… maybe even Pulp?

The first headliner of the weekend was a strange choice (Will Hodgkinson writes). The 1975 certainly made a big splash about ten years ago, combining rock, pop and everything in between as a reflection of the new genre-free era of music, but more recently they have been working on an album yet to be released and singer Matty Healy has become known for being immortalised by his ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift in her song The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.

Still, they were determined to make an impact, from the blinding lights of the multi screen setup to Healy arriving on stage with a pint of Guinness (a real glass one — where did he get that from? Did he bring it with him?) and a cigarette before leaping about in imagined rock star fashion. It was all very flash, but with their uptight white funk sound, and Healy coming across like a drunken George Michael, it was frankly hard to take seriously.

• Read our full review

It’s been a busy week for the meditative rapper (Ed Power writes). He was on CBeebies on Monday reading the bedtime story and just about outdid that accomplishment by headlining Glastonbury’s Other Stage on Friday.

His CBeebies performance had a charming lullabying quality. Much the same could be said of his stunning Glastonbury slot. It drew heavily on his guitar-infused new album Hopefully! — a celebration of parenthood that, as recreated at Glastonbury, was the perfect goodnight story. But there was a spice to go with the syrup, when he declared “f*** Nigel Farage” before swerving into a moving anecdote about singing for his son.

While in many ways an unassuming record, Hopefully! does find Carner doing something no rapper should ever attempt: sing. That gamble has paid off. Starting with the conversational rush of In My Mind and All I Need, the Mercury-nominated south Londoner proved as adept a vocalist as a rhymer.

In a genre that is all about bigging yourself up, his humble stage persona was striking. Not that humility has stopped him from building a fanbase broad enough to include both David Beckham and the late writer and poet Benjamin Zephaniah.

It was unclear if Beckham was there, but if he was he would have enjoyed a set that featured cascading pianos and soulful guest turns by the producer and rapper Sampha and the singer Jorja Smith. He finished with the brilliantly vulnerable Ottolenghi (named after chef Yotam Ottolenghi). Calming and balmy, this was just what fans will have wanted at the end of a long day.

★★★★★

Lewis Capaldi made an emotional comeback with a surprise Pyramid Stage set. The Scottish singer had not performed for two years after taking a break to focus on his mental health.

Lorde also made a ‘secret’ appearance at the Woodsies, albeit one that had been heavily anticipated online.

Wet Leg brought muscular sounds to their Other Stage set. The indie favourites have a new album, Moisturizer, out next month.

Alanis Morrisette conjured grungy 1990s vibes during her nostalgic set on the main stage.

Self Esteem‘s singalong pop tunes and spectacular choreography wowed the Park Stage. Jonathan Dean gave it five stars.

Catch up on all of our reviews below

Six years ago, I met Rebecca Lucy Taylor — aka Self Esteem — by a stage on the fringes of Glastonbury, where you find artists who dream of playing somewhere bigger (Jonathan Dean writes). “This is all I know, and I’m good at it,” she said back in 2019. “And, while I’m never going to roll in cash, I’m thrilled to play Glastonbury.”

She did tiny tents then, but two albums and a role in Cabaret later and she’s a star — holding a big, devoted crowd with her power and poise. The stage is filled with her Handmaid’s Tale-style dancers; choreography for a theoretically far bigger artist — 12 singer-dancers and a wind machine, unknown in these fringe parts.

Her music is a mantra to many and it is tough to think of a fan base as in step with their idol. When Self Esteem sings about barriers that society puts up to women, her fans believe she is the first pop star to do so quite so honestly, wittily and, well, melodically. This is not a sermon, it’s a party.

And as the singalongs — I Do This All The Time, of course, and Fucking Wizardry — keep coming, she confirms herself as the brilliant artist she was at the start: not changing, just now filling the spaces she was always meant to.
★★★★★

I met Matty Healy of the 1975 about two and a half years ago, in the snug room of his house in north London, an Architectural Digest type of place, full of large windows and light (Jonathan Dean writes).

It was just ahead of what is still their most recent album — Being Funny in a Foreign Language, a wonderfully succinct (which the band are often anything but) collection of vibrant pop songs that you can assume will fill most of the set tonight, starting at 10.15pm on the Pyramid Stage.

Healy knows he is a star — when he talked to me about big artists, he said, “Taylor [Swift], me, Kendrick [Lamar], Frank [Ocean], Lana [Del Rey] … any of the culturally important artists of the past ten years” — but this is his first Glastonbury headline slot. After Healy’s romance with Swift, the band got a whole new level of attention and they have more than enough hits to glide past the gossip. The Sound, Love It If We Made It, Oh Caroline, Somebody Else — this should be a set with the potential to stun the stans and captivate the casuals.

• Read Jonathan’s full interview with Matty Healy

The Rotherham-raised singer, born Rebecca Lucy Taylor, is currently delighting the Park Stage with her off-kilter pop.

In April she sat down with Lisa Verrico to talk about her sexually explicit songs, becoming an actress and why people love to see confident women fail.

Taylor has frequently spoken about the sea of privileged musicians that seems to surround her and the unfair advantage that having wealthy parents gives artists trying to break through. Her mother has warned Taylor not to pretend that she grew up poor, but money remains a constant worry for the singer.

“The reason I get depressed and stressed about the music industry is safety — and that means money,” she says. “All I want is to no longer rely on anyone. To know that the rug cannot be pulled out from under me, the way it has been so many times.”

• Read Lisa’s full interview here

Matty Healy, the frontman of the 1975, has made a career out of enraging people, be they the leaders of Malaysia and Dubai or the female pop stars he has ridiculed in interviews over the years (Will Humphries writes).

Perhaps the most formidable foe the controversial singer has angered is the army of Taylor Swift fans, or Swifties, who haven’t forgiven him for his doomed dalliance with the megastar.

Rhian Bailey and Deanna Kenward, two die-hard Swifties at the Pyramid Stage, are willing to give Healy a shot at redemption.

“I feel pretty excited we get to see the smallest man who ever lived up close on the biggest stage,” Bailey said, in reference to the Swift song about her feelings towards Healy.

“I love the music, but the man? He can redeem himself tonight,” Kenward added. “But I’ll still stand by my girl, Taylor.”

It seems that the band are pulling out all the stops tonight to win over any wavering supporters, having reportedly spent four times their actual fee on production for their headline performance.

• Read the story behind each song on Taylor Swift’s latest album — including several about Matty Healy

Last year the Glastonbury TV veteran told Julia Llewellyn Smith how her appetite for the festival, and new music, remains as strong as ever.

Over 43 years she’s witnessed huge changes. “The first time there was just the Pyramid stage and a cider bus. Van Morrison performed, it rained the whole weekend, we got no sleep and about 4am on Sunday the tent started to slide down the hill because it was so muddy. We packed up, got ourselves to the station and cooked a fried breakfast on the platform, waiting for the first train.”

At 59, Whiley is the unofficial high priestess of the festival. “One day I’ll count how many Glastonburys I’ve been to,” she says.

• Read the full interview here

Carner, headlining the Other Stage tonight at 10.30pm, is the kind of man who gives hip-hop a bad name. The rapper from south London is impeccably polite, wrote songs named after celebrity chefs and arrived at an interview with a slice of cake for our writer Ed Potton. You definitely don’t get that with Dizzee Rascal.

The 24-year-old’s languid lyricism, emotional acuity and all-round loveliness have won him some famous fans. David Beckham asked him to perform at the launch of his grooming range, and the writer and poet Benjamin Zephaniah wrote one of his press releases.

His stage name is derived from a spoonerism of his surname and nods to his dyslexia and ADHD diagnoses. He has released four critically-acclaimed albums so far with the most recent, Hopefully!, marking his most sonically adventurous move yet.

• Read Ed’s full interview from 2019

An innovative presence on the border between pop, R&B and electronica for several years, PinkPantheress remains an enigma despite winning the BBC Sound of 2022 poll (Ed Potton writes).

Real name Victoria Parker, the singer-songwriter-producer has a low-key media profile and some of her early live shows failed to do justice to the dreamlike atmospherics and shadowy lyrics of her recorded work.

Now, though, she has found her panther stride. Introduced in a video by Louis Theroux — another curveball — Parker sang with shimmering confidence over punchy beats and rolling drum’n’bass. Moving with demure funkiness and clearly enjoying herself, she connected easily with an audience skewed towards Gen Z, who roared along to the “Me, me, me” refrain in Just For Me. It’s tempting to make a joke here about that generation’s egocentricity but I’ll resist.

Songs from the recent mixtape, Fancy That, were futuristic and retro at the same time. Illegal borrowed the synth chords from a remix of Underworld’s Dark and Long, while Girl Like Me was a quasi-cover of another clubland oldie, Romeo by Basement Jaxx, released in 2001, the year Parker was born.

Her decision to vanish for a “quick intermission” while her band played tearing dance music was a bit puzzling in a short show like this. Yet that kind of “because I can” behaviour is what makes Parker so much more interesting than most pop stars.
★★★★☆

Formed in 1957, the band are playing Glastonbury for the first time, right now at the Acoustic Stage — after which they plan to quit. Last month they spoke to Ed Potton about partying with the Beatles and missed opportunities.

It will be a challenge to attract punters to their show who “aren’t really from our era”, Allen says. “You’ve got to get people in who are outside watching something else. With any luck the interest will be there to catch us on what is going to be our last performance ever. If we get the crowd I don’t think we have any problem because we’ve always gone down well with audiences.”

• Read the full interview here

Wasn’t it ironic that Alanis Morissette’s dark and grungy teatime set should begin in blazing sunshine (Ed Power writes)? But Morissette soon sent the pleasant weather packing and clouds gathered at the Pyramid Stage, literally and figuratively, as she rolled back the years with an enjoyably cathartic turn caked in 1990s angst. Two days ahead of Rod Stewart’s legends slot, this was nostalgia of a different sort — powered by Morissette’s’ full-throated Gen X fury.

Morissette has released nine records since her 1995 breakout Jagged Little Pill hastened the end of Britpop and sent female rage to the top of the charts, most recently releasing a meditation album with an accompanying app.

But her Glastonbury set was all about living in the moment — that moment being the mid-to-late 1990s — and as the performance went on, the vintage vibes intensified. By the end, you expected a fair chunk of the crowd to have swapped their festival gear for Kurt Cobain-style plaid shirts (though, to be fair, they would have immediately passed out in the heat).

She started with Hand In My Pocket, her voice retaining the same vitriolic vroom that made the tune stand out 30 years ago. The Canadian singer then broke into her cult hit Ironic, accompanied by fans holding spoons aloft as she sang “it’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife”.

There wasn’t much banter with the crowd, though she introduced final track Thank U by proclaiming Glastonbury a “bucket-list moment”. After an intense hour, the sun came out and the queen of old school emotional trauma departed with a smile.
★★★★☆

Sometimes as a hot sunny afternoon becomes a balmy evening at a music festival, all you want is a good, solid, reliable indie-rock band. Enter, Blossoms, whose long, shaggy haircuts, tight tank tops and flared jeans set the tone as much as their universally popular opening tracks, Your Girlfriend and I Can’t Stand It (Roisin Kelly writes).

With four number one albums, it was crowd-pleaser after crowd-pleaser for the Oasis-inspired Stockport quintet as they move through Perfect Me, then (Oh No) I think I’m in Love and Honey Sweet.

Energy dipped slightly in the middle of the set, which could have been helped by a little more fan interaction (the first thirty minutes saw only a few “hello Glastonbury” and “are you having a Good Friday?” shouts).

That is until, much to the crowds excitement, CMAT joins the band on stage and performs a funky take on I Like Your Look.

The atmosphere as Blossoms played their penultimate track, Charlemagne, their most famous song released almost a decade ago, is proof that, amongst the big pop star headliners with their huge productions, there’s nothing wrong with being a bit predictable. Sometimes, it’s the ultimate crowd pleaser.
★★★☆☆

Pyramid Stage

Biffy Clyro – 8.15pm
The 1975 – 10.15pm

Other Stage

Busta Rhymes – 8.30pm
Loyle Carner – 10.30pm

West Holts Stage

BADBADNOTGOOD – 8.30pm
Maribou State – 10.15pm

Woodsies

Floating Points – 9pm
Four Tet – 10.30pm

The Park Stage

Self Esteem – 9.15pm
Anohni and the Johnsons – 11pm

• Explore the rest of the line-up in our TV guide

The singer-songwriter, who is also the girlfriend of actor Paul Mescal and the daughter of Star Wars director JJ Abrams, has just finished playing to a large audience on the Other Stage.

She started recording music when she was a shy 16-year-old — and last year she scored a No 1 album and a hit song, Us, with the biggest artist in the world Taylor Swift. Zing Tsjeng sat down with her last year to talk about fame and her famous friends.

If you haven’t heard of Abrams, it’s likely you’re not her target demographic. For a subsection of emotionally febrile and very online young women, she is the high priestess of sensitive bedroom pop — a 21st-century Cat Power for a generation of girls raised on the internet.

“I never wanted to be a performer,” Abrams told Style magazine. “I just wanted to write.”

• Read the full interview here

It’s been a day full of surprises. After “not-so-secret” gigs by Lorde and Lewis Capaldi there was a genuine surprise appearance during Franz Ferdinand’s performance.

Three quarters through the set, lead singer Alex Kapranos said: “My favourite thing about Glastonbury are the rumours.”

He added that one of the rumours he had heard was that a fellow “Glaswegian” with Italian heritage was at Glastonbury tonight. Kapranos then continued: “He is here with us tonight: The original Peter Capaldi”.

To a roaring crowd Capaldi waked on stage dressed in a black suit and red shirt to perform an energetic rendition of Take Me Home.

The artist Master Peace also joined Franz Ferdinand to sing Hooked.

With TLC and Destiny’s Child, En Vogue formed the holy trinity of girl groups that ruled R&B in the years around the turn of the millennium (Ed Potton writes). They have a clutch of songs that any child of the Nineties is pathologically impelled to sing along to, from Hold On to Free Your Mind, and they sprinkled them through this crowd-pleasing set.

First up was a slick and powerful rendition of My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It), whose climactic vocal breakdown proved that original members Terry Ellis, Cindy Herron, Maxine Jones are still serious singers in their sixties. They and their more recent addition Rhona Bennett, another vocal powerhouse, gave us formation dancing and fan fluttering and a fearsome Whatta Man — whatta song.

Once you get past those mega-hits the recognition factor falls off a cliff, which explains why they segued into a medley of covers, from the Beatles’ Yesterday to the Pointer Sisters’ I’m So Excited. It may have felt like world-class karaoke but it sustained the energy very effectively.

The imperious dance moves on stage were matched by equally enthusiastic if less skilled booty shaking from the crowd and the group stopped the music to take a selfie of the fans. “This is really really big for us,” they said sweetly.

There was time for one last original classic, Don’t Let Go (Love), whose Oscar-worthy drama had the hordes throwing themselves about in ecstasy. En Vogue have clearly still got it.
★★★★☆

The Pulp frontman has popped up at the Greenpeace field, playing crowd-pleasing disco tunes including Kiss by Prince and Love Is in the Air by John Paul Young.

The crowd in attendance is tiny, making it a genuine surprise after secret sets by Lorde and Lewis Capaldi were spoiled by the internet.

A mysterious act called Patchwork, due to play on the Pyramid Stage at 6.15pm tomorrow, has got tongues wagging online, with many speculating that Pulp will appear.

“We wanted to,” said keyboard player Candida Doyle in an interview with the BBC. “Just because it’s the 30th anniversary and that kind of thing, and they weren’t interested.”

The Canadian singer is perfoming her biggest hits on the Pyramid Stage right now. She spoke to Scarlett Russell recently about her fashion sense and favourite looks from the 1990s to today.

“When I moved to LA from Canada in the early 1990s I lived in sweatpants. I was too frugal to spend money on nice clothes,” she said. “I was writing Jagged Little Pill and Guy Oseary, at Madonna’s record label Maverick, asked me for a meeting.”

“I only had sweatpants to wear, but played him Perfect, Hand in My Pocket and You Oughta Know and then he signed me. Madonna was always coming in, weighing in, and one day she said, “Girl, I’m going to get you your first blouse.”

• Read the full story here

The Glasgow indie rockers have just finished a storming set of their biggest hits on the Other Stage. They sat down with Will Hodgkinson earlier this year to discuss their rapid rise to fame in the Noughties, reconciliation and writing about existential fears in their latest album.

Right from the off, Franz Ferdinand’s sharply written pop songs with an underground edge made an impact. “In the early 2000s Britpop was over and it was all post-rock — long, meandering jams with no melody whatsoever,” Kapranos says. “And we liked the Everly Brothers. So, touched with a bit of Scottish contrariness, we aimed to do something completely different from everything that was happening.”

• Read Will’s full interview with Franz Ferdinand

The last time Lola Young played Glastonbury, she was a relatively unknown, slightly shy 22-year-old. This afternoon though, opening with Good Books on the Woodsies stage, she was cool and confident in front of a packed-out crowd (Roisin Kelly writes).

Dressed pointedly Gen-Z in a bralette, chunky rings, and hoop earrings with boldly lined lips and exaggerated clumpy lashes, Young, who grew up in Croydon and trained at the BRIT school, held a captivated audience as she breezed through tracks like One Thing.

“I’m so grateful to be here, this is so special, this is so important to me. I take my job very seriously,” she said. What the moment meant to her was clear: when she sang the slow, emotive, You Noticed, Young and the audience began shedding tears.

She was immediately back to attitude and teenage angst with Conceited, before bringing on a “guest” (a blow up doll of herself) for her newest track, I’m Only Fking Myself and building to the moment everyone is waiting for.

Within the first few bars of Messy, the shouty, indie pop track which went viral on TikTok before hitting number one in January, the crowd is jumping, shouting and dancing as Young takes in a huge moment of her breakthrough year.
★★★★☆

The Scottish singer’s not so secret return to Glastonbury was always going to be emotional given the vulnerability he displayed during his 2023 appearance at the festival (Ed Power writes). And so it proved as Capaldi, making just his first major appearance since that last Glastonbury spot, delivered a punchy and moving set, willed on by an audience in his corner from the outset.

“I’m not going to say too much up here or I might start to cry,” he said, explaining he had come back to finish where he had left off from two years ago.

He was in fine, husky voice as he restarted his career at the festival where, in 2023, he had struggled with a flare-up Tourette’s syndrome while experiencing vocal issues (and shortly before he announced a break from music to focus on his mental health).

The crowd had carried him along on that occasion and was in equally supportive voice here, as, playing a trim 35 minutes, he unpacked weepies such as Before You Go and hard-hitting new single Survive (“how long til it feels / that the wound is finally going to heal”).

“The last few years they’ve been difficult at times,” he said by way of introducing the latter. “This has been my goal to get back here.”

Glastonbury is typically about pop stars taking a twirl in the festival’s global spotlight. This was different: a songwriter who has worn his struggles on his sleeve finding healing in the love of his fanbase.
★★★★☆

The Leeds band, who have just finished their set on the Park Stage, were rightful winners of one of the biggest prizes in UK music last year (Will Hodgkinson writes).

When I first heard the debut album by four former students of Leeds Conservatoire I wasn’t blown away. Wasn’t this just more post-punk, with its scratchy guitar melodies and spoken word monologues from the frontwoman Lily Fontaine? Then — and this is rare in our attention-deficit age — it grew on me.

Why did English Teacher win? Because they do something new and they do it well, in songs that feel reflective of contemporary British life.To do it in a way you don’t even at first notice — at least, I didn’t — is frankly remarkable.

• Read the full story here

Sun’s out guns out for Rhian Teasdale, the increasingly forthright frontwoman of Wet Leg, who opened their show by flexing both biceps (Ed Potton writes). What came next was equally muscular: beefed-up older songs such as Wet Dream and some from their forthcoming album, Moisturizer, including Davina McCall, which Teasdale dedicated to her partner, Eva, and a jerky, Elastica-like Catch These Fists.

The last time the Grammy-winning Isle of Wight band played Glastonbury they were ridiculously shunted to the Park Stage but this time they were playing one more in line with their profile. They made the size count.

When they broke through, Teasdale and her fellow guitarist Hester Chambers would share centre stage but now the former, with her pink hair, tiny shorts and fluorescent guitar, is the undisputed centre of attention. Both women seemed happy with that.

“You think I’m pretty? Get lost for ever,” Teasdale drawled on Mangetout, before they threw themselves into a faster, punkier take on their biggest song, Chaise Longue. Teasdale ended the show ranting into an old-fashioned telephone and made it look like the coolest thing in the world. Ladies and gentleman, we have a star.
★★★★☆

The 28-year-old Scottish singer has just appeared on the Pyramid Stage, two years after an emotional performance when festival-goers lent their vocal support as he struggled to finish his set. He took a touring break in 2023 to deal with the impact of his Tourette’s.

In a soul-baring interview with Lisa Verrico, the superstar-next-door revealed why his fragile mental health almost forced him to quit.

Surprisingly, the fame part of success doesn’t faze him. “Being famous is easy,” he says, laughing. “You’re out and about and people say hello. What’s hard about that?

“The pressure of the job is the problem. The mammoth tours of enormous venues. The expectations upon me. That’s surely anxiety-inducing for anybody, never mind a huge hypochondriac like myself.”

• Read the full interview here

It took the 24-year-old singer’s hit song Messy 10 months to reach No 1 in the UK — where it remained for the whole of February (Will Hodgkinson writes).

Messy was a prime example of a new model for finding pop success, months or even years after a song is released. The penultimate single from Young’s 2024 album, This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway, it wasn’t a huge hit until enough moments happened for it to reach critical mass.

Celebrities including Kylie Jenner and Will Ferrell picked up on the song and started using it on their TikTok videos, and soon it exploded into a smash hit.

• Read more about how it happened

Doug Richards started the chart-topping band (playing the Other Stage now) with Rhian Teasdale but was pushed out after their bitter split. Now she belts out songs full of jibes at him, while he told Josh Glancy that he’s had no credit for the music.

Was Doug bothered by being evicted from the band? “I was really upset actually,” he said. “I had the sense of it maybe being quite successful. I also felt like I helped create it.”

Doug accepted his fate though. He never played with Wet Leg again.

• Read the full story here

Two festival-goers have tied the knot in front of the Glastonbury sign with a crowd of 500 strangers cheering them on.

Michael and Francesca Anastasio, 32 and 35, have attended the festival three times over their six-and-a-half year relationship. When they got tickets again this year, they decided there was no better place to get married.

Francesca, a veteran’s charity worker from Wymondham, Norfolk, said: “I’ve been coming to Glastonbury for eight years. When I met Mike I brought him and I was so excited. It became such a special place for us. There wouldn’t be anywhere better to get married than at Glastonbury. Everyone is so lovely and it’s got such a special energy.”

After their celebrant cancelled at the last minute, the couple found a replacement through a Glastonbury Facebook group.

The indie group, who became an overnight success with their hit Chaise Longue in 2021, have moved away from cool irony to a more straightforward approach. Susannah Butter interviewed them for the Sunday Times in 2022.

Their highly-anticipated new album Moisturizer is out next month. Our reviewer Holly Williams went to see them in Birmingham in May and found that the appetite for their hits has not dimmed.

“Rhian Teasdale — frontwoman and very much the focus-puller — strides on stage with arms raised, biceps flexed,” she wrote.”It’s apt, Wet Leg sound more muscular now: fuller, rockier, shreddier, while still offering up those irresistibly hooky, melodic licks.

“If the dominant note on their Grammy-winning debut was a cool irony, the new music has a more straightforward cymbal-smashing, guitar-chugging energy.”

• Read the full review here

Ann Cook had been taking lauded photographs at Glastonbury for more than 30 years, but at the age of 90 has decided this will be her last year working at the festival.

Cook was an established travel photographer when she was first asked to work at Worthy Farm in 1992 and says her secret to taking a revealing portrait is to tell her subjects to “look serious”.

She has photographed Amy Winehouse, James Brown and Radiohead at the festival as well as CMAT and Supergrass this year and Tom Jones’s set in 1992. “In those days there were big speaker stacks either side of the stage and I climbed up one and took pictures of the crowd” — including a woman holding a cucumber in suggestive honour of Jones.

“Getting around is harder these days,” says Cook, who arrived at our interview on a mobility scooter. But she hopes to continue working as an “armchair photographer.”

As lunchtime sunshine beat down on Glastonbury, country-pop superstar in waiting CMAT brought a hurricane to the Pyramid Stage. This was a statement performance from the Irish singer, whose star has ascended since her 2023 show at the festival’s Woodsies Stage (Ed Power writes).

It is set to soar higher yet when her third album, Euro-Country, arrives in August — and her set today kicked off the next chapter of her career in bravura style.

It had everything — line-dancing, an ironic lament for Jamie Oliver’s war on turkey twizzlers, a wave from her mam (boogying at the side of the stage) and a Free Palestine plea right at the end, perhaps a nod to her fellow Irish artists, Kneecap, who will appear on Saturday.

It was a lot, and with a less commanding performer it might have been a mess. But CMAT has a firm grasp of what sort of pop star she wants to be: think Dolly Parton with a sprinkling of Kylie Minogue, Grace Jones and legendary Irish crooner Joe Dolan. There were lots of hits — and songs that deserve to be hits, including opener Have Fun! and Take A Sexy Picture Of Me, which has spawned a TikTok craze labelled the “woke macarena”.

Concluding with Stay For Something, she jumped into the crowd, a proper stage dive rather than the cagey high-fives with fans you often get from megastars. The paradox being that Glastonbury 2025 might be the moment CMAT joined their ranks.
★★★★★

The future of protesting is fabulous, darling. In a world of increased police surveillance, activists are turning to face paints to stop AI facial recognition software picking them out of a crowd.

Activist artists in the Greenpeace area of Glastonbury festival held a workshop to teach the foundations of how to cause a glitch in facial recognition software — a tactic known as “face breaking” or “computer vision (CV) dazzle”.

• Read the full story

The London band, who make a fantastic genre-mashing racket, have just finished on the Woodsies stage. Our reviewer Lisa Verrico went to see them in Glasgow last year and gave them ★★★★★.

“Fat Dog’s sound variously recalled the Specials, Nine Inch Nails, Chemical Brothers and, on the spectacular All the Same, early Happy Mondays,” she wrote.

“The number of disappointed punters begging for spare tickets outside this small, sold-out venue suggested that Fat Dog could leapfrog to far bigger venues. Catch them while you can.”

• Read the full review here

The Irish rock group — whose lead singer Elijah Hewson is Bono’s son — spoke to Will Hodgkinson earlier this year about famous parents, their new album and why they struggled to break through.

“None of us have moved out of our childhood homes,” says the Dublin four-piece’s guitarist Josh Jenkinson. “We go on tour, the venues get bigger, and then we come home to Dublin. Our friends have got jobs and homes, but apart from the fact that some of us have partners, our lives are the same as they were when we were 16.”

“When you’re in a band,” Hewson says, poetically, “you press pause on life.”

Read Will’s full interview with Inhaler here

Glastonbury revellers are hiding from the sun under pub signs, trees and in the shade of fences as the crowds swelter in the blazing sunshine.

DJs and musical acts playing in bars under tents are finding far larger crowds than they would usually expect at the start of the day.

Festival organisers have put out advice on the official app on how to stay “safe in the heat” and stay hydrated at one of the 800 or so drinking water taps around the site.

Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, aka CMAT, is performing now on the Pyramid stage. She spoke to Blanca Schofield last year about grappling with trolls, almost acting with Paul Mescal and the very daring outfit she wore to the Brits 2024.

Her devoted teen writings about the British indie rock band Bombay Bicycle Club led to them noticing her music on the streaming service SoundCloud, with the guitarist Jamie MacColl becoming her manager for a while when she was 18.

“I was a weird teenager on the internet in Dunboyne, Co Meath, who had blogs about them,” CMAT (real name Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson) says. “Those lads stuck their neck up for me so hard. I don’t understand how I would have ever ended up working in music were it not for them.”

Read Blanca’s full interview with CMAT

Laura Osborne climbed out of her tent at 5am to run a marathon alone around the approximately 900-acre festival site.

Osborne, 28, an IT worker from Reading, Berkshire, was training for the Race to the Stones 100km (62 mile) ultramarathon on July 12, despite the odd looks from ravers wandering back to their beds in the morning light.

“So many people have stopped me, being like, ‘are you okay?’,” she told me at 5.30am, as I also trained for a running event.

“I just spoke to two people that were like, ‘oh we just woke up in this random hut and we don’t know how we got here so we’re just trying to find our way back to the tent’.”

Osborne is fundraising for Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in memory of Orla Tapper, a close friend’s two year old daughter who died from a rare form of brain tumour.

You can donate to her cause at justgiving.com

A huge crowd braved the midday sun for Supergrass, proving the appetite for 1990s Britpop of not great seriousness remains undimmed (Will Hodgkinson writes). And Supergrass were always the most charming (and youngest) of the Britpop pack. Coming on to Blockbuster by the Sweet, they blasted into The Strange Ones, from their 1994 debut I Should Coco, reminding us that Britpop was really 1960s and 1970s rock in new (now old) forms.

Being only teenagers when they broke through, Supergrass were also the most carefree of the big Nineties bands. Caught by the Fuzz is about singer Gaz Coombes being arrested for a bit of weed aged sixteen, and it still caught the thrill and fear of teen transgression. And never has being young been more joyfully represented than on Alright, Supergrass’s ode to keeping their teeth nice and clean, smoking a fag, putting it out, and other simple activities.

Supergrass’s set was unashamedly nostalgic: they pretty much played all of that first album, essentially replicating their Glastonbury debut set from 30 years ago. And why not? This was vigorous, straightforward rock and roll, enriched by electric piano and the occasional tabla, and full of life.
★★★★☆

Conveniently concise for the time-poor or the sun-frazzled, this micro-gig by the Norwegian singer-songwriter featured just one song (Ed Potton writes). It was a doozy, though: Through the Eyes of a Child, better known as the haunting track that featured at the end of Netflix’s Adolescence and which Aurora wrote when she was 13, like the title character in that miniseries.

Sat at a keyboard, she delivered it with a purity, power and Celtic lilt — Bjork meets Enya — that contrasted with her apology to whoever sat on her piano stool next: “I’m sweaty in places I’d rather not talk about.”

The 27-year-old singer has just come on stage at Woodsies. He won the Brit Rising Star award this year and spoke to Blanca Schofield about appearing on Barack Obama’s influential summer playlist and his Bedford roots.

This year he’s supporting Ed Sheeran on a global tour. “It’s insane, considering Ed was one of the biggest people I looked up to when I was starting out,” Smith says.

Smith says he is seeing changes in the conversation around genres and cites the English singer-songwriter Labrinth as an artist who “changed my peers’ perspectives on what ‘black music’ could be”. He thinks limited access to musical instruments is a factor when it comes to the range of music young people can make.

• Read more: Meet the Brit Rising Star winner set to go global

A literary start to Friday, with Letters Live at the Greenpeace stage, featuring letters of note read out by actors of renown and Benedict Cumberbatch holding it all together.

“Letters from across history, offering glimpses of lives once lived,” said Cumberbatch, before stating that Glastonbury was a place where we “could imagine a way for life to be better.” And see how little it has changed.

James Norton read a letter from 2008 sent to the Metro newspaper complaining about the treatment of Lance Armstrong for cycling on drugs, “because when I was last on drugs I couldn’t even find my bicycle.” Ambika Mod read a letter describing Nike as “malodorous perverts” for using a Beatles song, Simon Pegg read Robert Burns’ apology to the host of a party for being in a “fever of intoxication,” and Cumberbatch read out a letter from Rik Mayall to Bob Geldof, complaining about his treatment at Band Aid.

Stars from Bella Ramsay to Andrew Scott — who wrote a moving letter between two solders who fell in love during World War II, with only one surviving — to The Times’ own Caitlin Moran kept coming, because who doesn’t want a ticket to Glastonbury? A reminder, then, that the music is only a tiny part of Glastonbury. The rest of it is about life in its many forms.

What better way for Lorde to kickstart her new, fourth album — Virgin, out today — than with the first major set at Glastonbury? The morning show was meant to be a surprise, but the internet ruined surprises years ago so, predictably, the Woodsies tent is packed for the New Zealander who might be the most influential pop star of her generation (Jonathan Dean writes).

The tent was full to bursting an hour ahead of the show, the whole area closed off before it began — this is how you build anticipation. If there is a disappointment, it is that it would have sounded better in a week, with the first 40 minutes dedicated entirely to the new album, meaning the crowd only know the singles — the punchy What Was That tears through the crowd, the deceptively euphoric Man Of The Year ending with Lorde lying on the stage.

The jittery Shapeshifter and full-of-joy Favourite Daughter are future favourites, but what really elevates the gig are of course the hits, which are served at the end. Ribs, from her debut album, is the shot, with her sensational Green Light is the chaser, the finale; still the best and weirdest pop song of the century that packs a clubby coda which has already laid claim to be the weekend’s biggest party.
★★★★☆

Separated from the noise and hubbub, the singer Myles Smith sits in a yellow armchair holding plushy pillows and reads a bedtime story.

The star, whose hits include Stargazing and Nice To Meet You, recorded an episode for CBeebies Bedtime Stories before his set at Woodsies, starting imminently.

He told The Times: “It was just such an awesome opportunity to be able to connect with the younger generation. It’s such an important part of the daily routine so to be able to be part of that is just amazing.

“I think it’s so integral, bedtimes are a sacred space and a humble space and obviously the songs that I’ve been making have been big for kids of this generation so it’s super nice to be involved.”

Smith, who read Are Your Stars Like My Stars? by Leslie Helakoski, said having younger cousins and nephews has given him good practice for the recording today.

It’s the second time the singer is performing at Glastonbury and after his set he’s looking forward to exploring. He said: “I always try to go to something I don’t normally listen to and see if I can find some new music.”

Myles Smith performs on the Woodsies stage at 12.45pm today.

The secret appears to be out that Lewis Capaldi will play the Pyramid Stage at 4.45pm today, after posters appeared around the site last night with his face, promoting a “celebrity lookalike contest” at the main stage.

It is likely the Scottish pop star, who is known for his sense of humour, is behind the posters, which says there is “absolutely zero cash prize” for the winner.

Those who texted the number on the poster received a link to Lewis Capaldi’s official website, confirming his management were behind the stunt.

It would be a popular comeback gig for the singer-songwriter, who struggled to make it through his Pyramid Stage set in 2023 as he battled with Tourette’s syndrome on stage, rendering him unable to sing and leading to a mass singalong from the crowd.

That was the last time he performed publicly before taking a two-year break to focus on his health. He performed on stage for the first time in nearly two years at an Edinburgh charity gig in May this year to raise funds for suicide prevention.

Capaldi released a new single, Survive, this morning.

The 4.45pm slot on the Pyramid Stage is currently TBA (to be announced) and only lasts 35 minutes, which is shorter than a normal main stage set in the afternoon.

Our columnist has attended every festival on Worthy Farm since 1992, and she’s learnt a lot about its magic

“The opening of the gates alone is the kind of thing people would consider a cultural highlight of their month. It’s an amuse-bouche-sized piece of the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony — but in a field in Somerset.

The fact that it’s thrown into the mix alongside Neil Young, Charli XCX, the 1975, Rod Stewart, the Prodigy, CMAT, a café in the hull of a crashed plane, fireworks, arrow-making classes, 24-hour bars, New York gay discos, libraries, a recreation of the refugee experience in the dystopian Terminal 1 and lesbian glam squads is a reminder: there is simply nothing else like Glastonbury on earth.”

• Read the full story

Hannah Rogers

The crowds are as starry as the headliners at Glasto — last year I spotted Callum Turner enjoying his fiancée Dua Lipa’s headline set, while my friend bumped into Paul Mescal coming out of the long drop circa 3am in the party haven Bloc9. Expect the millennial heartthrob to be back on the farm for 2025 — his beau, Gracie Abrams, will take to the Other Stage on Friday evening.

Who else? It would be easier to ask who won’t be there? Kate Moss — the supermodel who defined Glastonbury style never misses Glasto. Charli XCX will be in the crowd supporting her fiancée, George Daniel, drummer for the 1975, during his set on the Pyramid Stage on Friday night, and vice versa when she gets her turn on the Other Stage on Saturday.

Florence Welch is rumoured to still be in a relationship with the Maccabees’ Felix White, so will probably make an appearance when they play on Sunday too. Also: she loves a flower crown.

Chris Martin will be knocking about somewhere. He always is.

Huge crowds have gathered for the so-called secret set by Lorde at the Woodsies tent at 11.30am today. The singer appeared to confirm her set via Instagram this morning.

The tented stage was filled to capacity by 10.30am and the overspilling crowds were reassured by a big screen telling them they will be able to watch the performance and hear it on the speaker system.

On the already sweltering Somerset morning, hundreds were seeking shelter under a large canopy as they eagerly awaited the performance.

Lorde’s fourth album, Virgin, is released today. Read Will Hodgkinson’s review here.

All eyes will be looking up at the sky at Glastonbury on Friday wondering if the heavens will open with deluges of rain and turn the festival site into a glorious mudbath, as it has done so often before. But fear not, it looks like the weather on Friday will behave itself and stay dry, although staying gloomy with sunshine all day, along with some blustery winds that may play havoc with tents and anything else that’s not nailed down outside.

But later on Friday those winds ease off and by the weekend Glastonbury goes out on a high — calm, sunny and feeling pleasantly warm, albeit humid at night.

That said, the weather over Glastonbury remains on something of a knife edge and could easily change. Hot humid weather is baking Portugal, Spain and France and if any of that heat drifts up into England things will turn warmer, although not as hot as last weekend’s heatwave.

• Read more: High humidity will make this second heatwave more stifling

Michael and Emily Eavis opened the festival together at 8am as a brass band played The Final Countdown. Emily told The Times that it was “very emotional” to have her father at the gate opening for the first time in several years.

Eavis stood alongside her father, who will celebrate his 90th birthday later this year, as he smiled and waved from his wheelchair. “It’s been such a build-up and to be able to open it with my dad, it’s so special,” she said. “It’s the best moment to open the festival.”

Ed Potton at Glastonbury

Here we go again. Are you ready? The Times team certainly are, having survived the A303, pitched our tents — or parked our camper vans in the case of the chief critic, Will Hodgkinson — and filled ourselves with coffee and breakfast hoagies. After some early skirmishes last night, Glastonbury cranks into full life at 11.30am, when Jonathan Dean will be reporting from a secret gig by a global star who shall remain nameless for fear of causing an early roadblock.

Other highlights today include Wet Leg at the Other Stage (3.45pm), Self Esteem at the Park (9.15pm) and, for children of the Nineties, En Vogue at West Holts (5.30pm) and Alanis Morissette at the Pyramid (6.15pm). Headlining the Pyramid at 10.15pm are The 1975, who are as divisive as it gets but rarely dull — the last time I saw them Matty Healy swigged wine straight from the bottle and dived offstage through the screen of a television.

With our reviewers and reporters covering action across the site all weekend, check here for regular updates from the greatest music festival in the world.