Key events
Pinkpantheress reviewed
Shaad D’Souza
The album of the summer is, without a doubt, PinkPantheress’s Fancy That – a 20-odd-minute blitzkrieg of a mixtape that’s loud, funny and somehow manages to squeeze six separate Basement Jaxx samples into its extremely brief runtime. Fancy That Pink’s best body of work to date, and when she performs all of it for the first time at Woodsies, they’re often the songs that the huge crowd reacts best to. When she launches into Illegal, the tape’s cheeky, fleet-footed opener, the crowd absolutely screams the words back – a remarkable thing for a two-month-old mixtape.
This mutual love is paired with a bizarre but great stage setup: Louis Theroux, mystifyingly a friend of Pink’s, has prerecorded a skit to introduce the show; Pink’s nine-piece band includes brass players, backing singers, a beatboxer, and a besuited DJ who’s dancing like he’s taken a bunch of pills. It is all strange, and it is all brilliant.
Earlier this afternoon Elle Hunt went to see Alanis Morissette take over the Pyramid stage, and her verdict has landed:
Taskmaster reviewed
Gwilym Mumford
These days Taskmaster is a comedy juggernaut, with immersive live experiences, international remakes, the lot. For comics, it’s a vital rung to tread on on the ladder of fame, and it has minted numerous rising standups. Still for all that, the basic premise has basically remained unchanged since its early faltering days on Dave: Alex Horne makes up some charmingly lo-fi games for comedians to compete in, and Greg Davies judges their performances, often savagely. Its shambolic nature is sort of the point.
All of which makes it perfect Glasto fare, and given the fact that Horne is a permanent fixture here, and that there’s a large stable of comedians to choose from as contestants, it’s surprising that a live version has never been tried here before. Taskmaster’s debut comes in a filled to the corners Cabaret tent, with plenty of people stuck outside, squinting through the fire exit for a look.
It begins with a fittingly shonky rendition of Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us now, followed by the briefest of Q&As. And then we’re into the game proper. The guests are returnees James Acaster (a genuinely global name these days), Kerry Godliman and Lou Sanders, joined by first-timers Richard Blackwood and, erm, Basil Brush. After an opening game where everyone has to bring something they want to take home from Glastonbury – Acaster and Blackwood get loud boos for “memories” and “a programme” respectively, Godliman crushes it with “tie-dye knickers” – the competition settles into a series of best-of games from previous episodes of the show, including all-time classics Sausage or Finger and Pop on a Onesie in the Tent. Oh and Basil Brush performed a surprisingly nimble rendition of Purple Rain.
It’s endearingly all over the map, bar one tonally jarring moment: a round where contestants have to find lookalikes in the audience, put a pillowcase over their head and bring them to be judged on their lookey-likeyness by Davies. Blackwood, not unreasonably, points out that there is a distinct absence of Black people in the audience and then picks a small white child for his lookalike instead. Davies doesn’t really have any choice but to give him the full five points. It’s handled cheerfully enough, but there are a few awkward pauses where the audience isn’t entirely sure whether to laugh – the sort of thing that would be slickly edited around were this a normal TV episode of Taskmaster. Perhaps there is a good reason a Glasto Taskmaster has happened before then.
Seeing as this episode won’t ever appear on your screen, and thus isn’t “canon”, we can tell you who won: it was Sanders, who aced the Sausage and Onesie rounds. She celebrates with a handstand while Basil Brush sings Purple Rain again – the sort of sentence you’d probably only associate with Taskmaster.
This Busta set is quite something. He’s dressed in an outfit that is Fubu meets Lord Bullingdon from Barry Lyndon, there are people with dragon heads dancing around him, and he just played We Are the Champions for no reason whatsover. And now he’s deftly segued into Break Ya Neck. His flow is still absurdly fast.
By all accounts it is rammed to the rafters of the Other stage, where Busta Rhymes is delivering a typically high-syllabled performance. He just did What’s It Gonna Be With Janet Jackson, projected enormously on the screen behind him, and now he’s ripping through Woo Haa!! Got You All in Check. Busta’s wobbly baritone sounds glorious.
Elle Hunt has just spotted the glitziest of A-listers: Glen Powell! He was leaving the hospitality area and immediately leapt into a private car with tinted windows. Come on Glen, get up to the Stone Circle with the rest of us great unhosed.
Bashy reviewed
Safi Bugel
The last time Bashy performed at Glastonbury was 15 years ago. Shortly after, he parked his career as an acclaimed MC to focus on his acting, where he found more mainstream fame through shows like Top Boy. But last year, he marked his musical comeback with his award-winning record Being Poor is Expensive – a deeply personal reckoning with his life in northwest London. His performance today feels like a fusion of all of his worlds: a collage-like tour through his own music and that which he grew up with, interwoven with compelling storytelling about his and his family’s life.
Over hip hop and grime instrumentals played by a DJ, Bashy addresses the social issues affecting Black British people and immigrants to a small but locked-in Lonely Hearts crowd. He raps about the plight of him and his friends – through systemic racism and council estate upbringings – with poise: when not pacing round the stage, he delivers his bars with eyes locked down, hand wrapped round the mic.
In the breaks between songs, he proves his strength as an orator (tomorrow he’s chairing a talk under the title of his album, featuring economist Gary Stevenson among others). He shouts out the Windrush Generation before introducing Made in Britain, which features a sample of his grandma’s vocals; he pays homage to the “grafters” who “fought so we could play hip hop and grime at Glastonbury”, and memorialises those whose lives have been cut short, before segueing into Lost In Dreams.
But despite the tough talking points, Bashy’s performance is also uplifting: at one point he affectionately runs us through the music he grew up with (You Don’t Love by Dawn Penn, Shy FX’s Original Nuttah, Crazy Love by MJ Cole). “Meaningful music brings us together, generationally,” he says, earnestly. He also gives his dues to pirate radio, which he cut his teeth on, before performing Black Boys, which he wrote when he was 21. “It’s amazing to perform this here, it’s been 15 years man!”
It’s a poignant return to Worthy Farm, evidently for Bashy as much as to his audience.
Gwilym Mumford
Gwilym, here taking over for the evening shift. Tons coming up, including reviews of The 1975’s Glastonbury headline set, Loyle Carner, Anohni, Self Esteem, Biffy Clyro and Busta Rhymes. Don’t touch that dial!
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
PinkPantheress is over in Woodsies, and it’s spinning me out to hear these bedroom-production songs played with backing singers, and on actual drums and on actual instruments – even a violin! But she is so engaging and the crowd are negotiating the tricksy melodic runs of Pain with aplomb. Shaad’s over there and will do a full writeup afterwards.
Gracie Abrams reviewed
Jason Okundaye
There is no rhetorical flourish I can really add to this conclusion from her Other stage set: Gracie Abrams is an evidently talented performer who is desperately in need of better music.
I will concede that I may be alone in that conclusion and so do not position that as authoritative. I am sure there is a 15-year-old fan ready to send me well-deserved online abuse via an anonymous account. Certainly the crowd here is in love with Abrams, younger female audience members in particular throw up their phones filming themselves singing her lyrics word for word. Plus, That’s So True (the biggest song of the set by a clear mile) spent eight weeks at UK No 1. And you can see that all of the elements of the kind of raw, emotionally vulnerable female pop star a la Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo (who is headlining on Sunday night) that has so captured young women and girls: relatable, diary-entry lyrics, storytelling, and, in Abrams case, a bedroom pop aesthetic. But at no point do you feel there is anything that reaches the angsty hook-laden highs of Rodrigo’s’ Good 4 U or undeniable catchiness of Swift’s We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. Something’s just not clicking.
None of this is to say that the music is bad, either, just that there feels like some distance between her appeal and her discography. She comes on in a burgundy bandana and dress which reminds me of the red priestess from Game of Thrones, and she looks great, carrying with her a guitar with a star-spangled strap. Her ethereal vocals are splendid, an opening performance of Risk is particularly strong and striking for the line: “I know the risk is drowning but I’m gonna take it”. Ah, the follies of love.
There are moments where it feels she may be drowned out by percussive sounds and other band elements but these are pared back so that her vocals come through strongly – and so Blowing Smoke, 21 and I Told You Things are all certifiable hits with the crowd.
She has an incredible chemistry with the audience, too. Having been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump and joining in with anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles this month, she tells us: “The world is so wild and upsetting right now but I think being together like this is the whole point, it’s the antidote.” Sure, it’s a bit of a Glastonbury cliche-platitude but it feels authentic. Equally she is good at the making the crowd feel at home with her – she is repeatedly thankful, waves excitedly, tells someone that she likes their hat, and when she introduces songs she speaks to familiar experiences, asking if anyone has ever dealt with a “narcissist” before sitting down on a piano to play Death Wish.
And again – the audience really connects with the music. Girls in the crowd are practically screaming at Free Now, and when she drops the guitar for the more uptempo Where Do We Go Now? the effect is enchanting.
The issue is that I’m not sure how much of this set I will really remember – I’m convinced that Abrams’ claim as one of the biggest pop stars of 2025 is justified, but what it rides off doesn’t feel as significant as comparable breakthroughs. Perhaps a remedy for that is on the horizon: she introduces a track which she is “working on in real time” and while I don’t catch the name, it’s an incredible synth-pop banger which feels more in the direction of what I would expect from an artist of this esteem. Close to You and That’s So True are almost there, but not quite.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Wunderhorse are galloping through their Park set, sounding rangy yet tight as they kicks the doors off their single Midas. I saw them in Woodsies two years ago, where they debuted this – it’s now got more depth and growl to it, plus their wraparound shades look is appealingly grunge-cyberpunk.
This remains one of my very favourite British rock songs this century. Like a great lost Lou Reed number.
Meanwhile moshpits are a-forming at Denzel Curry over at West Holts, with Curry admirably on point as he rattles through Twistin’ in a rapid triplet-time flow. And Basil Brush and James Acaster have joined the Taskmaster lineup. None of these words are in the Bible etc.
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Meanwhile there’s a Taskmaster live experience thing going on at the Cabaret tent. Gwilym says:
The crowd for Taskmaster is absolutely enormous, with people squinting through the Cabaret tent fire exits to get a glimpse of its hosts Alex Horne and Greg Davies. So far they’ve performed Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, Davies has given Horne a piggyback, there was a song about apples, and Horne has revealed the show’s worst-ever contestant (Tim Key). Every line is greeted with Beatles-on-The-Ed-Sullivan-Show whooping. Is TV the new rock’n’roll? No, but it’s pretty lively in here.
En Vogue reviewed
Safi Bugel
After over 30 years of touring, there’s no doubt En Vogue know what they’re doing. After a dramatic entrance one by one, the iconic R&B group waste absolutely no time in getting into the hits. First up is the slinky, attitude-heavy anthem You’re Never Gonna Get It, much to the delight of a crowd of mostly fortysomethings.
As expected, the four-piece don signature matching black outfits and perform synchronised diva choreo despite the 24C heat. Soon they snap open their matching “ooh bop!” hand fans, which they clack open and shut to the beat.
For the next half an hour or so, it’s a carousel of En Vogue’s best-known tracks, punctuated with the occasional “How we doing Glastonbury?”. The songs sound as sensual and catchy as ever, despite any dated sentiments (Free Your Mind’s “be colour-blind”).
They devote the second half to playing “some good old funky diva music”: think Cheryl Lynn’s Got to Be Real, Grace Jones’s Bad Girls, Aretha Franklin’s Respect. A cop- out, maybe, but one that the crowd is overjoyed about; they belt along with enthusiasm. By the time they reach I’m So Excited by the Pointer Sisters, it starts to feel a bit weary, though admittedly not to those around me.
While they may sit firmly in legacy act territory, as performers En Vogue have absolutely still got it: their precision harmonies still top-notch, their dance moves sharp. They close with their 1990 hit Hold On, a good reminder of their strength as musicians in their own right too.
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