When the Glastonbury 2024 lineup was first announced, there was an awful lot of commotion, with the trio of pop queen Dua Lipa, Glasto mainstays Coldplay and RnB songstress SZA ruffling more than a few feathers. Whether fans were viewing Worthy Farm’s history through rose-tinted spectacles or understandably looking to justify the £350-plus price tag for tickets, a heavy weight of expectation had been placed on all three 2024 headliners before the gates had even opened.
Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, David Bowie, this was not. But with seven BRIT Awards, three Grammys and two Number 1 albums to Dua Lipa’s name… christ, what’s a girl got to do around here to get a Pyramid Stage slot?
Indeed, this was a surefire pop procession to kickstart the mother of all festivals. Opening with Radical Optimism’s second single ‘Training Season’, which began with Primal Scream’s classic ‘Loaded’ to add a sense of grandiosity to the occasion, Dua’s performance was assured from the get-go — the shimmies to the left, the flicks of the heel to the right and her trademark gyrating hips all timed to perfection.
But such is the way with perfection that, like a Barbie doll who Dua is now associated with (sadly, there was no ‘Dance The Night’ here), it all comes across as a bit too pristine. This wasn’t quite the beguiling Friday night opener laid down by Billie Eilish a couple of years ago — a set which showed how pop can release people from the pretensions of more intense genres.
Instead, we had a predictable but pleasing dose of catchy choruses and hook-laden hits, gliding through ‘One Kiss’ to ‘Break My Heart’ via ‘Illusion’. Before breaking into her chart-smashing (and heavily lawsuit-ed) ‘Levitating’, Dua asked us if we were “ready to go to the moon”. Who could say no? Sadly, these commercialised crowd-pleasers weren’t the kind of art to transcend us in such a manner; you could shut your eyes only to reopen them and find you’d remained firmly planted at Capital’s Summertime Ball.
READ MORE: Dua Lipa wins temporary dismissal of ‘Levitating’ copyright case
Perhaps my pop snobbery is rearing its ugly head here (although I beg to differ, especially after Olivia Dean’s endearing set earlier in the day). But this is a Pyramid Stage headline set we’re talking about here. There must remain some sense of sanctity.
You absolutely could not fault the execution, with ‘These Walls’ and ‘Be The One’ showcasing her pitch-perfect vocals that twirled in the evening Glastonbury air. But the material she’s working with lacked the means to consume us entirely in their grip, to lose ourselves in this spiritual surrounding. It’s like a Michelin star chef with only Tesco’s ingredients at their disposal; it doesn’t matter how well one can cook, the final product will only taste as good as the standardised contents.
It was hard not to be charmed by the pop princess’ personality, though, as she giddily told us how she manifested this set (“I have written this moment down, I have wished for it, I’ve dreamt for it”), like a romantic who’d planned out their perfect wedding. But once again, even this gave the impression of a set too predictable for its own good.
There was one surprise on the night, when collaborator and musical polymath Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, rocked up in jeans and a T-shirt and delivered his more mercurial hit, ‘The Less I Know The Better’; a vocal mishap later from the pair at least showed that, finally, there was a human capable of mistakes in Dua, beneath every inch-perfect dance move. Dua inevitably had plenty more hits to deliver, not least her propulsive ‘Hallucinate’ and ‘Cold Heart’, the serene collaborative track with last year’s headliner Elton John.
The singer told us that her manifestations for this Glasto slot had even wished for it to be on the Friday night, so she could “spend the rest of the weekend partying”. This set was around two-hours of pop escapism, and memory of it may live fresh across the rest of the weekend’s shenanigans, but it won’t necessarily go down in the history books of this hallowed setting in the musical calendar.
Judged on its own, there were next-to-no faults, but it’s precisely this predictability — coupled with the fact that Glastonbury headline acts is the one justifiable slot where we can compare artists — that made it a mere momentary crowd-pleaser, rather than a show for the ages. Over to you, Coldplay.
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