‘The worst lineup ever” raged social-media users when this year’s twin-site festival was announced in February, while a recent tweet unfavourably comparing the event with that of 2000 (Oasis, Pulp, Primal Scream, et al) went viral.
However, the former rock festival had to adapt to changing tastes. Huge, anthemic indie rock bands – the Vaccines and the Courteeners – still fill the field, but there are far fewer of them. This year’s event is the most culturally diverse yet, with rock, metal, rap, grime, dance and pop represented across seven stages. Some things don’t change, though, and the traditional post-GCSE results blowout attracts a largely teenage audience seizing the opportunity to paint their faces with glitter and try things they wouldn’t dare at home. When rapper Post Malone urges “Get drunk! Do drugs!” you can almost hear the distant wails of irate parents.
If the vibe is still mostly good-natured fun, acts as diverse as rabble rousers Shame and exuberant brass-sectioned popsters Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly make political statements, and post-hardcore band Petrol Girls’ singer Ren Aldridge’s startling screams of “Touch me and I’ll fucking kill you” bring #MeToo fury to the Pit tent.
After criticism over the lack of female artists, women are finally featuring more prominently. Norwich’s Let’s Eat Grandma mix sublime, airy electro pop with charmingly bonkers dance moves. Stylishly-suited Ellie Rowsell leads Wolf Alice’s terrific mix of ethereality, hard riffola and a dash of funk with poise and confidence, while Dua Lipa’s choreographed pop gets the Sunday main stage crowd singing in the rain. Dance music is strong this year, and the beat-pumping Bicep pack the tent so tightly that latecomers might as well tunnel their way in.
Although mediocrity spans all stages, there are some surprises. Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda’s set becomes an emotional tribute to that band’s late singer, Chester Bennington, and the weekend’s unlikely smash is the reinvention of the Wombats from indie has-beens into a slick, synthesiser-augmented, funny pop machine. For Let’s Dance to Joy Division, they play in front of a reworking of that band’s iconic Unknown Pleasures artwork – with little wombats – and dancing costumed bears. Panic! At the Disco singer Brendon Urie was knocked unconscious by a bottle on stage at Reading in 2006, but he returns in triumph after remodelling his fading emo princes into a modern Queen, complete with classical musicians, an unfeasible falsetto and a perfect Bohemian Rhapsody.
Other headliners seem picked to appease a slightly older rock crowd. Stadium dustbowl rockers Kings of Leon headlined here in 2009, and that era’s Sex on Fire (still) generates the weekend’s biggest singalong. Veteran pop-punks Fall Out Boy also party like it’s the noughties with a career-spanning setlist, although they didn’t have flame-throwing bass guitars back then. Rap has a mixed weekend. Post Malone’s catchy tunes go down much better in the afternoon sunshine than Travis Scott’s heavily Auto-Tuned discourses, and the audience steadfastly resist Pharrell Williams’ urges to “make some noise!” for his hip-hop band, NERD.
Kendrick Lamar has won a Pulitzer prize, but has never faced the unique challenge of a soggy field in Yorkshire. Closing the festival in Sunday’s monsoon, his late-starting set (with a live band) is a blitzkrieg of rapid-fire wordplay, humorous kung fu movies, references to police brutality and music that hurtles dizzyingly from jazz to rock to funk in milliseconds. Disappointingly, though, he doesn’t say much to the crowd and the weekend’s biggest audience is thinner by the end, although this is perhaps less to do with the Compton superstar’s performance than the promise of a nice warm bath.
