Those logging on to iTunes on Friday afternoon to preorder the Olympics opening ceremony soundtrack album weren't offered much help: just eight tracks, no titles, no artists. In fact, the most germane piece of information appeared to be that listeners who'd bought it had also picked up the Cats and Billy Elliot soundtracks. Yikes. But we all had some idea, didn't we? We knew at least we'd get Sir Paul McCartney raising his thumbs aloft to some piece of late Beatles epicry, wouldn't we?
What no one quite expected, though, was that before the ceremony even began we would be treated to an act who would likely have been greeted with widespread "Huh?" by the watching millions. One wonders if Locog had screened the lyrics to folk-punk Frank Turner's song I Still Believe before letting him perform: "Come ye, come ye/To soulless corporate circus tops" must have sent a shudder up the spines of the watching sponsors, even if he was there at the personal invitation of Danny Boyle, the ceremony's director.
As the ceremony itself began, Evelyn Glennie bashed her drums, supported by a cast of grimy workers – 1,000 other drummers, in fact. Until Underworld's score kicked in on top, though, the sheer scale made it seem like a heavy metal drummer's solo gone slightly further than the lead singer would have allowed. Underworld, in fact, had a bit of a triumph: the builds and fades they learned in the world of dance music lent the sometimes overwhelming visual spectacle a sense of structure.
Mike Oldfield played Tubular Bells to accompany – bafflingly – the children and staff of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Given that the last time that music accompanied shots of children in beds, it was a satanically possessed girl with a revolving head in The Exorcist, the possibility was raised that the ceremony might enter new heights of WTF?, but it was not to be. Nevertheless, the procession of names was genuinely surprising, which is a triumph at these huge, inclusive events – no one had predicted the likes of Turner and Oldfield and the young soul singer Emeli Sandé, which made their presence a delight rather than a chore.
In fact, given the unpredictability of the live guests, Boyle's medley celebrating 40 years of British pop music was surprisingly conservative, more like a Mojo magazine playlist come to life than a true celebration of the glorious strangeness of British pop. But then the masterstroke: yanking proceedings right up to date with Dizzee Rascal performing Bonkers, which might well have been a commentary on what had come before.
