Last week I could be found in the middle of a field in Somerset in a tipi (glamping all the way!) for Glastonbury Festival. I’ve been going to Glastonbury on and off since I was at school and to be honest I can’t imagine any festival in the world comes close to it. I mean where else can you see David Attenborough making a speech on saving the planet by reducing your usage of plastics, catch the likes of Liam Gallagher, Stormzy and Kylie on the same line-up and do a million and one things that isn’t seeing music performed, this year they even introduced Glastonbury On Sea!
I think I’ll probably do a few Glastonbury posts in the near future as I really want to write up my thoughts on glamping at the festival vs bringing your own tent on site, but for this week I want to talk about some of my favourite performers I saw at the festival.
Miley Cyrus
The minute the line-up was released Miley Cyrus was the name I was most excited about. I consider myself to be a massive fan of Miley and even went to see her on tour when she was still in her Hannah Montana days so she was always going to be in my favourite performers list. For me, I was intrigued to see her for the first time since her Disney days and boy has she progressed as a performer. Admittedly, Miley Cyrus is known nowadays as being quite controversial but you can’t deny that she’s a performer and vocally she is fantastic and has definitely massively improved since the last time I saw her. Her set list was littered with covers that the Glastonbury crowds knew, new songs from her latest album as well as her biggest hits, all whilst chucking in a few special guest appearances for good measure. Miley Cyrus well and truly got the crowds attention and I heard countless people declaring her as being their favourite performance from the weekend.
Lewis Capaldi
To be truthful I must’ve been one of the only people on the planet that hadn’t heard Lewis Capaldi’s music prior to Glastonbury. I have seen his face all around social media from videos he’s posted online and I have laughed at them but not once did I bother to check out his music. However, a friend constantly talked about how much she loves him prior to the festival so whilst I was there I figured that I had to go and see what the fuss was about. I went in to his set completely blind as to what his music / performance would be like and I absolutely wasn’t disappointed with what I saw. His music is exactly my cup of tea and I genuinely can’t believe I never bothered to listen before. I feel like he’s one of those people whose name has been hyped up so much that at fear of joining in with the latest popular trend you just never check it out but I enjoyed his set so much that his album was instantly downloaded the second his set had finished. Lewis Capaldi has an unreal voice, a personality that works so well on stage and I certainly have walked away from the festival as a fan and have told everyone how much I enjoyed his performance.
George Ezra
I have seen George Ezra a couple of times previously. I’ve always thought he was ok to watch at a festival but I’ve never really had an opinion on him more than he’s ok. Then last year I did a charity walk and one of the girls I did it with kept singing his songs including Shotgun as we were climbing up mountains, since then I just associate George Ezra with doing that walk and it brings back (somewhat!) happy memories. I’m not sure if that is the reason why I really enjoyed his performance or if he’s just really upped his game but George Ezra was one of my favourites from this years festival. Before seeing him at Glastonbury I’d only heard his most recent album either played on the radio or being sung half way up a mountain and I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded. I actually would go and see George Ezra if he performed locally now as even with a sprained ankle he put on one hell of a show.
Liam Gallagher
I think that if you play any of the Oasis hits anywhere in the UK people will always stop and sing along, so when you put Oasis frontman in the field singing a lot of Oasis songs its safe to say that it’s always going to go down well. I think Oasis is just one of those bands where people at least love the hits and know every single lyric. I’ve seen Oasis live before they split but this was the first time I’ve seen Liam Gallagher perform as a solo artist so I was abit sceptical as to whether to could deliver a performance to rival that of Oasis. However, he most certainly did and although much of the crowd was definitely there for the Oasis songs, when he weaved his own songs in they didn’t sound out of place in the slightest. I think many people, including myself, will be checking out his solo material now we’re back at home.
The Killers
I have to be honest, when The Killers were announced as one of the headliners of this years Glastonbury I was ever so slightly disappointed. I’ve seen The Killers live on a number of occasions now and I think if you’ve ever been a fan of The Killers or have even attended festivals you’ve probably seen them perform at some point over the years. I used to really like The Killers music but I’ve not been so keen on the more recent albums, however I thought that the performance was fantastic. I’d been quite vocally going around telling people how they just aren’t as good as more but the new songs actually came across really well live and seeing the performance made me realise just how much I did use to love the earlier albums.
I think my list of top 5 is probably quite predictable as they’re all big names. In most years at Glastonbury I’d usually tire myself out running from stage to stage seeing the last known names but this year is was just too sweatingly hot to even consider moving far from the Pyramid stage, so I ended up seeing most of the big artists who performed on that stage that weekend. Despite this, I wasn’t disappointed with who I saw and the above five artists were my stand out performers of the weekend.
Did you go to the festival or even just watched on television? I would love to know which performances you enjoyed, if I didn’t see that one I’ll definitely have a watch!
melissay 