[ad_1]
Key events
Chris Martin and Michael J Fox perform Fix You together, Fox sitting in a wheelchair and playing a peach colored guitar as the audience’s wrists flash gold. What a wonderful, heart-wrenching moment.
Orbital reviewed!
Gwilym Mumford
Park Stage, 9.15 p.m
Orbital’s seventh appearance at Glastonbury was always going to be a big one, marking the 30th anniversary of their first appearance at the festival, when they broke down the walls between dance and guitar music by playing the otherwise rock-focused Pyramid Stage. A proper DJ set was never going to cut the mustard on such a grand occasion. Fortunately, however, they had stellar help.
First up was Tilda Swinton, following Park’s appearance last year in the devastating live package reimagining Max Richter’s Blue Notebooks. As with this performance, it was spoken word, with Swinton cooing mantras over early track Deeper. It was just a throat-clearer for the main event, though, as Mel C joined Orbital to provide vocals for the Wannabe Spicy remix. Sporty, wearing the same flared glasses as the dance duo as well as an oversized tracksuit, engaged in her own solo exercise class, practically skipping across the stage.
Orbital were always going to finish with Chime, their breakthrough single and a landmark moment for UK dance when it was released in 1990. All that was left was for Swinton to end the show by telling the crowd that she would be “counting down from 5 to 1 and you will wake up”. The spell was broken, but the dream was good while it lasted.
At Disclosure on the Other stage, Sam Smith came out to perform their 2013 collaboration Latch, says Safi Bugel (and I feel incredibly old realizing that was 11 years ago); meanwhile at Park, Peggy Gou brought out Sophie Ellis-Bextor for a remix of Murder on the Dancefloor.
Here’s a big thank you to their team “and all the teams that made it all possible,” says Chris Martin, and to the crowd that gave him faith that “different people can come together.” He offers “five seconds of Glastonbury love” that the crowd can send to “Israel, you can send it to Palestine, you can send it to Ukraine, you can send it to a peaceful Russia,” and the fireworks go off.
He then praises the band and the crowd in an ad song, riffing on the images of audience members the camera lights up, such as “a bearded young man” – and then Michael Eaves, sitting under a blanket at the side of the stage, “a total 100% legend”. says Martin, before launching into his brand new song: “Sir Michael, we just want to say thank you, as people you’re the best of all kinds, you’re a musical charmer, you’re the greatest farmer in the world and you do all this in shorts”.
Next up is another “Legendary Michael” and that’s Michael J. Fox playing guitar to huge cheers (Fox recently released a documentary about has been living with Parkinson’s disease since the age of 29.) What started out as a bit crowd-pleasing and unpleasant becomes undeniably profound.
Oh, take me back to the beginning: there’s the “where it all began” moment, when the band gather around to play Sparks from their 2000 debut Parachutes. “Some of us are from here” says Chris Martin – apparently a forgotten West Country incest joke!!! – and Glastonbury, which they’ve now headlined a record five times, has always represented ‘how we want to go out into the world’.
I think that’s what they call “little”. During A Sky Full of Stars, Chris Martin stops the song to “have a quick date”, then addresses the audience: “My brothers, my sisters – actually, since we’re in the West Country, I have to say that my cousins’ – as a westerner I take exception to this incest joke – and then talks about us being put on each other’s shoulders so we can be kidnapped like Peter Andre (???) and after this encourages the audience to put their phones away as they restart the song. I would have enjoyed this very pure moment if it had not been for the deep offense against my countrymen.
OH NO THE FIREWORKS ARE GOING OFF AGAIN! ARGH!
Here’s their 2021 collaboration with K-pop superstars BTS, in absentia: as Chris says, “they’re in the military right now [albeit still managing an impressive amount of solo careers] so we’ll sing all the way to Korea” – meanwhile images of the band are projected on the outside of the pyramid. “You’re My Universe” is a pretty simple – some might say boring – sentiment, but I can totally imagine being swept up in the euphoria of the pitch, coupled with a few refreshments, standing next to the one you love, suddenly sounding like the most the profound revelation of the earth.
“Everybody’s an Alien Somewhere,” reads Chris Martin’s T-shirt, seemingly at a refugee showcase; meanwhile, the very literal, very goofy wacky alien-come-robot masks and jellyfish hanging from the rafters on their Chainsmokers collaboration Something Just Like This is pretty daft punk and seapunk. It’s easy to vilify Coldplay for selling out the cheap EDM venues with this crazy 2017 track, but… I can’t say I wouldn’t have cried, impromptu, if I’d been in the audience (massive pop moments have an inexplicable tendency to do burst into tears).
Here’s a gorgeous review of Little Simz’s majestic sounding pyramid stage by Safi Bugel.
Our sports desk’s Stuart Godwin is in the crowd and was keenly aware of the generational differences in the audience for Coldplay: “Now I happened to hear two different people in separate parts of the Pyramid audience saying Paradise” – released in 2011 – “was the first song , which they have ever downloaded. Just embalm me now, FFS.”
[ad_2]
