Sam Shepherd, AKA Floating Points, has a sizeable presence at Glastonbury 2025. Not only is he playing a packed-out Woodsies tent before regular b2b pal Four Tet takes to the stage but this year he has also brought his own Sunflower Soundsystem with him to the festival site. Housed in a white dome in the Silver Hayes area, the Sound System has fast become one of the weekend’s hot tickets, delivering unannounced sets and queues looping far into the surrounding field.

Away from the boutique confines of Sunflower, though, Shepherd’s live set on the Woodsies stage is a thumping display of dancefloor hedonism. Ensconced behind his boxy rig and flanked by two artists live projecting visual constellations, he opens the set with blooping modular synth melodies, calling back to his signature 2010s sound, before moving into live renditions of the hammering house and techno from 2024’s latest release Cascade.

Launching into the Donna Summer I Feel Love references of Birth4000, Shepherd keeps the energy up for a full hour, gradually increasing tempo and seemingly volume to produce a chugging selection of blown-out synth beats. The build-ups and breakdowns are masterful, eliciting roars of approval from the head-nodding crowd as he wrangles experimental scrapes and squeals of sound into cohesive beats, ultimately closing on the euphoric rave breaks of Tilt Shift. As the speaker stacks feel close to the verge of blasting, Shepherd cements his status as a producer capable of big room release as much as analogue introspection.

The magic of Glastonbury is that I could’ve gone my whole life not seeing Busta Rhymes perform without giving it a second thought, and now having seen him I don’t know how life could’ve been complete without it.

Rhymes is not alone for this performance; he reunites with former members of hip-hop collective Flipmode Squad, Spliff Star and DJ Scratch, Spliff entering the stage before him letting us know that “the dragon has now been summoned” (a visual of a dragon flying across London and mounting Buckingham Palace before breathing fire on to the city is displayed on screen). Coming on in a black T-shirt and wearing a big-ass chain, Rhymes launches into truly frenetic and explosive performances of What It Is, Ante Up and Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See. You cannot ignore the speed and complexity and breath control required for much of Rhymes’s discography. In terms of beats-per-minute, delivery of his speediest rap verses could frustrate even the most agile, stamina-resilient rappers. Yet, four decades into his career, he never pauses for breath or misses a beat.

The show is also absolutely hilarious, and the interaction with the crowd is gold standard. Spliff instructs them to wave their hands in the air so often that it starts to feel like a trial session for a hip-hop aerobics class. At one point Rhymes instructs the whole audience to put their hands up, saying “police, this is the one time we can tell you to put your fucking hands up in the air too!”. There’s an interlude skit about a quarter of the way through the show where a Black British woman is welcoming Rhymes to London: “we’d like to show you a glorious time while you’re here.”

When he comes out again for Touch It, he and Spliff are dressed like a cross between power rangers and racecar drivers. They get everyone in the crowd to go low, and Rhymes happily wags his tongue and gyrates his crotch to the lyric “she turned around and was tryin’ to put my dick in her mouth.” They make no apology about being up for their ladies too, it’s their preference for women to outnumber men in this setting, you see. In fact DJ Scratch announces a track for the “freaky women” (apparently there’s a lot of them out here in the UK, who knew?) and it’s the Pussycat Dolls’ Don’t Cha – completely random, but a real stroke of genius.

What makes this show most impressive though, is that it first reminds you of the dynamic, brashful, arrogant, swagger of real hip-hop entertainers – a vanishing quality among today’s younger stars – and for its unapologetic education in hip-hop history. Rhymes and Spliff constantly talk about taking you back to the past, to 2000, to 1992, to 1984; Spliff even acts out how breakbeats for tracks are made, “put the beat on the record, then he cut it” which instantly brings you into a vigorous performance of Here We Go Again.

So too do the Jamaican origins of hip-hop culture, with its sound systems and toasting, come through in the performance: Hip-Hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc was a Jamaican immigrant in the Bronx after all, and Rhymes’s remix of Make It Clap honours these roots.

And then there is the wonderful random moment of bravado, where they make the whole crowd sing We Are the Champions. I don’t know how to communicate just how funny this moment was, or how strangely moved I suddenly felt at witnessing a dying breed of truly great hip-hop entertainers. It gets ever more emotional at the close when Rhymes showers praise on Spliff, speaking of how he’s survived being shot 12 times, going to jail, experiencing heart failure and prostate cancer. He is certainly lucky to be here, but we are even more lucky for having seen the both of them.

Matty Healy and his boys emerge, Healy swaggering on with a pint of Guinness, naturally. They open with Happiness, preceded by a very long, very lusty sax solo. Each member has their name above them on a bright white graphic.

There must have been a real Sliding Doors moment for Biffy Clyro at some point. Hard-gigging, operating somewhere in the earnest zone between post-hardcore, post-rock and math-rock around the millennium, they so easily could have stayed a fiercely beloved cult act playing 500-cap venues and putting out albums with runic lettering and maybe some kind of priestess wearing a cow skull.

Instead, they decided to grasp the – very likely at that point shameful-feeling – pop nettle. Whoa-oh-oh choruses? Yes. Ballads that get picked up for X Factor winners? Sure. Lyrics like “I am a mountain” and “pray for the better days” that could easily be painted on to the kind of home furnishings you might buy at B&M Bargains? Certainly.

But there’s something ragged, Celtish and extremely braw about the way Biffy sell all of this corny business, and this Pyramid stage set is an absolutely triumphant reminder that they, in a way that is often forgotten, have a formidable greatest hits set when they need it.

After a tinny mix settles down around track three, there is so much to love here: Tiny Indoor Fireworks’ almost naively pretty chorus and clever high tempo licks; or how Bubbles pootles along a pretty ordinary garage rock riff then zooms into a Harrier Jump Jet chorus. Instant History has an almost laughably simple chorus line of “This is the sound that we make” – well, yes, it is. And yet they invest it with a sort of koan-like wisdom, paired with a melody that could power an EDM track. Living Is a Problem Because Everything Dies is a show of ultra-technical, highly drilled math rock mentalism, which suddenly handbrake turns into frontman Simon Neil doing a solo cover of the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows. And then back again.

They’re Imagine Dragons with actual imagination, the Mumford and Sons with a fucken’ guitar instead of a banjo. Many of Horror closes the set out, and its bridge of “I still believe it’s you and me till the end of time” looks so lacking on the page – but there’s such romance in the way Neil sings it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Avalon, near the south-east corner of the festival, is the drunken wedding disco of the Glasto stages, programmed full of nostalgic acts designed to hit the pleasure centres of festival-goers of a certain age. It’s a place where you can shout along to Chelsea Dagger or Terrorvision’s Tequila without shame or judgment. Sure, you might have embarrassing memories in the morning, but God it’s fun in the moment. And for the bands playing there, who might have slipped off the bills of Glastonbury’s main stages thanks to changing times and tastes, it’s a chance to be legends again for one night.

Ash don’t fall under that category though, right? Surely they’re still teenagers, forever smuggling hidden tracks of themselves throwing up into the track-listing of their debut album? Amazingly, it’s 30 years since Tim Wheeler “walked out of his final school exam and two days later was playing at Glastonbury”, as he remembers here. And it’s 28 years since the band stepped in at the last minute, after Steve Winwood cancelled, to headline the Sunday night on the Pyramid. (As they remind us here, Billie Eilish is, contrary to popular belief, only the third youngest headliner of all time, behind Wheeler and the true No 1, Ash bassist Mark Hamilton).

Wheeler, Hamilton and drummer Rick McMurray may be far older today on the Avalon, but the songs remain perpetually teenage, full of lost love and youthful obsessions (Mr Miyagi; the X-Men). Though maybe those obsessions are unchanged: Wheeler is wearing a Nirvana T-shirt straight from a 1994 branch of Virgin Megastore and Hamilton has a Transformers sticker on his bass. (There’s no shame or embarrassment at the Avalon, remember.)

Wisely, new songs are kept to a minimum: they stick almost exclusively to their imperial era, with the bulk of the tracks taken from albums 1977 and Free All Angels (plus the title track from Danny Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary, Ash’s loudest, most lovelorn and best song). Oh Yeah still has a chorus worth blowing out your voice box singing along to, Burn Baby Burn and Girl From Mars retain the power to inspire fortysomething men to crowd surf. It’s all topped off with a pop-punk cover of Harry Belafonte’s Jump in the Line, a suitably wedding disco-ish gesture. Come on, don’t pretend you’re not having the best time.

Franz Ferdinand are sounding as tight as the tight black jeans they persist on wearing in the year of our Lord 2025. As a fellow early middle-aged millennial, I know how hard it is to wear a wider legged trouser after being so deeply radicalised in the mid-00s indie scene, but I have learned to move on (a bit).

As a way of one-upping Lewis Capaldi’s secret set, Franz Ferdinand have brilliantly brought on … Peter Capaldi. He’s duetting on Take Me Out. Genius.

It is hard to think of a young British artist receiving a more undeservingly difficult ride from the public than Lola Young. The online mockery, particularly for daring to be erotic, is typically rooted in fatphobia; her career success has been dismissed as down to her aunt being Gruffalo books author Julia Donaldson, despite what limited influence that could actually have; and she had to issue a clarification about her “resting bitch face” for the sin of being caught looking unhappy at losing a Brit award to singer Jade. At Capital’s Summertime Ball earlier this month, her earpiece failed mid-song and she became emotional, drawing further mockery (though received sympathy and kind words from fellow Brit school alum Raye).

That is to say, I have developed a soft spot and admiration for the British-Chinese-Jamaican south Londoner, not as pity, but because despite the constant brickbats she remains so passionately in love with music. Here she comes on to the Woodsies stage in a black bralet and long plaid shorts, playing the grungy sad girl as she performs Good Books, singing “you make it hard to see beneath the rubble”. Her lyrics are so confronting of the lovers of her life; they make you think of failed romances, dickhead ex-boyfriends and the worst arguments you’ve ever had.

These themes are so perfectly complemented by her husky, gravelly voice, though it is dulcet when she thanks the crowd for being here to witness her “magical moment” at Glastonbury. And she’s not afraid to lean into her own sex appeal: she slides down a microphone with her tongue centimetres from it, she happily plays with moving down her shorts and whines her waist, singing “you fuck me nice, you pull my hair”.

On Wish You Were Dead she is soulful and funky, while she adopts a punky riot grrl mall-rock sound on Don’t Hate Me. What is so impressive about Young is the versatility in her voice – she uses a mixed accent, at times received pronunciation, at other times cockenyisms and then the kind of Multicultural London English especially found in south London, and it blends into one distinct rhythmic identity. Her spoken-word style, particularly in her performance of One Thing, is reminiscent of Kate Nash.

And she remains playful with her sexuality. She sings the titular song for her forthcoming album I’m Only F**king Myself, and invites on a guest: a blow-up doll of herself, which features on the album cover. Female artists have recently come under heavy scrutiny for playing with sex and domination: Chappell Roan for dressing as a blow-up when she a judge on Drag Race, Sabrina Carpenter for her Man’s Best Friend album cover. Young is more than happy to throw herself behind this particular aesthetic of feminist parody and subversion.

I like that so much about Young – how audacious and bold and brave and provocative she is. When she closes out on her viral track Messy, which has the crowd rhapsodising and belting in unison, she says to them: “Don’t ever feel like you’re not enough. You absolutely fucking are.” You are too, Lola. More than. And I hope you never forget that.

Wet Leg have built a whole brand off their sardonic accounts of millennial life. There are lyrics about shopping hungover, shagging, and only showing up to parties because they heard there were beers there, all delivered in near-mumbly, disaffected vocals.

Said vocals belong to frontwoman Rhian Teasdale, whose demeanour on stage this afternoon excellently captures that same bratty vibe. Sporting a little white two-piece with a rosette pinned to her short-shorts, she gives a real rock star performance to a sprawling crowd, while her newly expanded rhythm section (including her former co-lead Hester Chambers) crash through their back catalogue. As her voice slinks between deadpan and yodel-y, she crawls round the stage, pours cans of water over her head and repeatedly flexes her muscles. Though at the start it’s a little unconvincing, soon it feels as though she’s fully in control.

Showwomanship aside, the energy is steady throughout their set. Fan favourites like Your Mum and Mange Tout rile the audience up – and there’s a few nice, slow moments of relief – new track Davina McCall, which Teasdale devotes to her partner, is especially lovely. But overall it’s a bit samey: most of their tracks follow the same formula of big riff + punchy drums.

Of course, it’s their best-known hit, 2022’s Chaise Longue, which causes the biggest storm today, thanks to its ever-catchy hook and silly speak-sing vocals. So much so that there is a mass exodus after the track comes to a halt, which feels like a shame, because their closing track, the freshly released, siren-heavy CPR, promises the same anthemic potential.

By the time Leeds four-piece English Teacher grace the Park stage on Saturday afternoon, the audience looks a little worse for wear: it’s scorching hot, the few shaded areas are rammed, and those who are braving the sun to stand up for the set are furiously rubbing sun cream into their shoulders.

At first, the band’s gravely serious post-punk seems like a mismatch for this slightly lethargic crowd, but the set soon turns into something more diffuse and mellow, replacing standoffish angularity with a dry and mysterious dream-pop ambiance. It’s this bit of the set that feels best placed for a day like this – practically psychedelically dusty – especially given that, just down the hill, Wet Leg are performing post-punk barnstormers that sound stridently similar to those made by English Teacher and a handful of other bands on the bill. Even so, frontperson Lily Fontaine is a hugely appealing presence, capable of selling even the band’s less remarkable songs.

In the corner of Glastonbury’s dance area Silver Hayes, a stage called The Information is offering up a series of talks and roundtables touching on issues across the arts and sciences: everything from pollution in our rivers to the state of the hospitality industry. And, tomorrow, Gary Lineker.

This afternoon, a conversation titled We Shouldn’t Be Here hosted a star-studded panel discussing the challenges faced by Black creatives in the arts. The conversation was arranged by Black@Glasto, a group dedicated to uniting Black Glastonbury-goers that has opened a dedicated space at the festival this year.

Comedian Munya Chawawa, who put together the panel, was joined by actor Paapa Essiedu, menswear designer Foday Dumbuya, designer and artist Yinka Ilori as well as the talk’s compere, Black@Glasto founder Elsie Cullen. The panel discussed the prejudices they have faced in their careers. Ilori recounted a racist email sent by an unnamed MP claiming that a pavilion he had designed “would be better in a Nigerian shanty town”, while Chawawa remembered being sent home from a pre-comedy career job because Queen Elizabeth II was visiting the premises that day. Essiedu remembered the backlash to his being cast in the title role of an RSC production of Hamlet, with some critics claiming it was historically inaccurate. “No one has a problem when [David] Tennant’s not doing it in a Danish accent but when it’s me they have a problem,” he noted.

But the panel also discussed the ways that they had overcome such prejudices without compromising on their work. Chawawa said that he used comedy to raise awareness of issues in a “Trojan horse way” by making audiences laugh first. And Dumbuya expressed pride in designing Arsenal’s away kit in the pan-African colours of black, green and red, to celebrate the role African footballers had played in the club’s successes. It “educates a generation of Black and white kids about who we are and what we do”, he said.

We Shouldn’t Be Here also touched on the issue of whether Black festivalgoers are made welcome at Glastonbury, with Chawawa noting that when the Black@Glasto stage was announced, some responded by asking “where’s the ‘white at Glasto’ stage”. He joked: “I had to message mum to delete those.”

There’s a huge cheer filtering over from the Pyramid stage as Lewis Capaldi comes on stage. This is another secret set that really wasn’t so secret – the big ones never are at Glasto – but what a moment. Capaldi’s last big show was on this very stage in 2023, where he had a really difficult time, losing his voice and experiencing Tourette’s tics in front of thousands. The Pyramid stage rallied behind him to sing everything for him, and it was the kind of powerfully human moment that defines the festival. Now he’s back, and it’s quite the way to soft launch a return. He kicks off with Before You Go and he’s in great voice – and the crowd are in equally fine form too.

The Glastonbury schedulers get given a lot of grief, for booking the wrong artist on the wrong stage, or at the wrong time, or at the wrong phase of the full moon, etc – so it’s important to give them credit where it’s due: Paris Paloma, on the Avalon stage, at just after 3pm is very well judged. That mid-afternoon slot can be a tricky one to fill, particularly when the temperature is high and people are wanting to save their strength for the headliners to come. Paloma’s crowd fills the Avalon tent but comfortably so, without packing it, and her brand of upbeat, writerly rock gives a welcome injection of energy without demanding too much of us.

Paloma’s pleased too: “This stage is a fair bit bigger than the one I played last year.” She’s still only relatively early into her career, having gained attention with single Labour in 2023. Since her debut album Cacophony was released last year, Paloma has quickly progressed to bigger stages, headlining the O2 Shepherd’s Bush earlier this month. There Emma Thompson was outed as a fan, caught singing along to Labour in a video posted to TikTok.

Today when she takes the stage, with her guitar strapped across her long-sleeve, full-length, flowing white dress, against a backdrop of folkloric imagery, the uninitiated might expect to be eased in with some gentle guitar, but Paloma obviously sets out to subvert those expectations, opening her set with driving, even somewhat heavy guitar. It’s reminiscent of a folksier, less theatrical Florence + the Machine.

Similarly Paloma doesn’t pull her punches, introducing a song as being about the radical power of “loving yourself when there are so many people profiting from everything you hate about your body”. In the absence of genuine self-love, Paloma suggests, “spite is as good a reason” to try to foster it.

She is more explicitly political in a new, as-yet unreleased song, Good Boy, written in response to “frustrations about the current state of patriarchy in the world”, in the UK and the US. The title refers to men in power, kept chasing their tails and each others’ approval under a system that oppressed them as much as it does everyone else.

“I have a lot of thoughts about what a submissive and self-contradictory belief system patriarchy is; there is nothing more submissive I can think of than... being so painfully frightened of being seen as feminine or queer and living your life in fear,” says Paloma. She goes on to eviscerate the “false promises of patriarchy” and how young men “are being radicalised, whether it’s the incels who haunt my comment sections or the fucking loser billionaires who happen to be in power at the moment ... I’ve never seen submission embodied so well.”

It’s an eloquent speech, and a refreshing injection of the bigger world through the typically slow part of the day. The investment from the crowd is evident from the steady sprinkling of hands for the duration of Paloma’s song The Warmth, plus the rallying sing along closing her set with Labour.

But an early standout is Knitting Song, about the legacy of her grandmother and how she’s identified it not only in the rest of her family but also her female friendships. I’m reminded in her easygoing but considered and detailed storytelling of Olivia Dean’s afternoon Pyramid stage set last year – perhaps that’s Paloma’s next slot.

When you see Burning Spear enter the Pyramid stage to meet his “burning band”, you first notice that he is dripped out in his own merchandise – a ripped vest jacket with the pan-African colours of the Rastafari movement with his moniker on the back, and a cap with his logo. Then you hear him, and it’s like a religious incantation. The idol to worship is not him or his brand but the God he serves: “I an I, son of the most high, Jah Rastafari.” This is the start of Door Peep Shall Not Enter, in which the refrain “give thanks and praise” is dedicated to the “holy man of creation”.

The 80-year-old singer-songwriter, real name Winston Rodney, was a major force, alongside Bob Marley, in importing reggae music from the recording studios of Kingston to the British isles in the 1960s and 70s. His 1975 album Marcus Garvey still stands apart, showcasing a musical ideology indebted to the heroes of pan-africanism and Black nationalist movements.

Rodney and his band look like the coolest, grooviest group of old men you could imagine. The characteristically slower tempo of reggae is matched by his more subdued and composed aura, but then come the moments of magic, where he hovers over nyabinghi drums and taps them with rhapsodic vigour, as though summoning a spirit. Leaving his band to deliver the vibe, he breaks into skanking steps and moves like a ballroom dancer. Tempo switches also become more thrilling – the beats race as Rodney sings Not Stupid, confronting Babylon and its belief that we are “stupid” and might forget the days of slavery.

You might argue that, with its pan-African aesthetics and images on an electric guitar of the civil rights figure and sociologist Ida B Wells, that the set is lacking explicit, loud political statements, perhaps about war or poverty. But these concerns are so deeply woven into Rodney’s lyrics that the set remains a manifesto nonetheless: on Jamaica he sings “it’s best to stand up for something than standing for nothing” and “Marcus Garvey open the door of Jamaica and spread Jamaica all over”.

The incredibly mighty international influence of that small island is felt in this performance – though it is evidently elevated by its solid African influences. That includes the brass instruments: horns, saxophones and trombones evoking the Afrobeat pioneered by Fela Kuti, as well as strong elements of Afro-Cuban jazz. These rhythms seamlessly infuse with the reggae, as does the syncopation and polyrhythmic orchestration. It’s evidence of how such a historic genre, played by a legend and pioneer, has still evolved and upgraded, becoming more surprising, hypnotic and enthralling.

Park stage, 2pm
The nebulous and ever-quested-for “festival vibes” cohere quite spectacularly here, as the England-dwelling US retro soul singer fires a beam of pure crowdpleasure across the baking hot Park audience. His high croon sounds like something dug up by a boutique cratedigging label from the late 60s midwest, boyish and even androgynous in tone, and he puts it to use on a series of genial, gently funky songs.

The tempo switches, though, as he shifts to solo piano for a rapturous cover of The Look of Love, trading the slight timidity of Dusty Springfield on the original for a full-throated, almost desperate declaration of love. It’s stunning, and more than one audience member flings their arms wide, seemingly involuntarily, at the beauty of it all. Ngonda has been touring his album Come Around and Love Me for a couple of years now and you rather hope he gets back in the studio soon – but he could easily do another two years of acclaimed festival dates with a set as pan-generationally appealing as this.

West Holts, 1pm
Until very recently, the Argentine duo Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso were little known in the UK. Then came their Tiny Desk session in October, which brought them practically overnight fame. This afternoon’s performance at West Holts (one of a 53-date global tour) is testament to that impact: it’s packed out with fans who sing along to their funk-tinged, meme-referencing pop songs word-for-word, despite almost all of the lyrics being in Spanish.

Framed by two huge chad-filtered images of themselves, the pair swagger out in gigantic PVC trousers pinned up by superstenders. As in their famous Tiny Desk, they sing and perform understated yet silly choreo from their stools for the first half of the set, while their rhythm section (also in matching outfits) waltz through their silky-smooth, percussive instrumentals. They keep chatter to a minimum, but their quiet charisma and catchy songs are enough to keep things energetic: tracks like Baby Gangsta and Ri Forra are already received like classic hits.

About halfway through, the tone switches: the stools are taken aside and their sunshine-ready rhythms are swapped for Project X-ready EDM bangers. The pair take it in turns to perform their previous solo material: Mcfly for Ca7riel, Todo El Dia for Paco Amoroso (the latter leads to the most endearing mosh-pit I’ve ever seen). Throughout, they uphold their signature mock-bad boy personas, flexing their muscles and holding their crotches as they sing about Louis V, “chauffeurs and hoes”.

In many ways Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso’s music is perfect for the chronically online: they rap knowingly about hashtags and OnlyFans; their hook-heavy tracks rarely push beyond the three-minute mark. But despite the in-jokes and commitment to the bit, the music is strong; they deliver a tight, confident performance for the full hour, which frequently climaxes in their frenetic percussive breakdowns. And when the music drops and the audience join in for a full-blown acapella, you know they’re bona fide popstars.

Woodsies, 12.45pm
If ever there was a formula for breaking beyond the constraints of the term “TikTok artist”, Luton-based singer-songwriter Myles Smith has found it: his career is the result of a winning combination of timing, exposure and unmistakable talent. Blowing up online after posting acoustic renditions of songs by Hozier and the Neighbourhood, Smith has since drummed up over half a billion streams for his viral track Stargazing, picked up a Brits rising star award, a spot on Obama’s annual end-of-year playlist and an opening slot on Ed Sheeran’s tour. Smith, palpably excited, tells the crowd: “I’ve been on tour with the ginger prince but nothing beats Glastonbury man!”

Smith skips onstage carrying a guitar and immediately launches into Wait For You. There is a child-like zeal and cheer in his face, which makes his bold, soulful vocals feel all the more effortless. He has evidently built a strong discography and the crowd is familiar with it – Behind, Whisper and Solo all meet knowing hand claps and whoops. And if you’re unfamiliar, Smith wears his influences well enough that you have points of reference – Sheeran, of course, but also Green Day, Mumford & Sons, George Ezra and Tom Odell.

At moments though, despite Smith’s obvious soul, it feels as though real emotion is lost to the folksy feel-good vibes: there is no real difference in mood between a song about heartbreak and one about being at the side of a lover. That also means that tracks soon begin to feel impersonal, derivative and bland: River with its nondescript lyrics “you’ll never be alone, I’ll be by your side” feels like it could soundtrack the most romantic moment of an Ice Age film.

That is not to dismiss the strength of the performance or of Smith’s talent. The sunshine folksiness is the perfect aperitif. He is clearly humbled by the sheer size of the crowd, saying “last year I was playing to 80 people in a pub in Manchester, this year look how many of you turned up” (and it’s an intimidating beat having followed up Lorde’s secret-not-so-secret Woodsies opener). But I long for some moodiness, some real grungy, filthy production he can sink his teeth into so that his gorgeous voice is not simply spent on sentimental schmaltz. Sound a little pissed off or aggrieved, maybe. Smash your guitar.

Park stage, 12.45pm
John Glacier’s flow stands alone in the UK and indeed anywhere. Sometimes she’s steadily, carefully hyping herself up as if daring to believe her own skill; at others she raps in a conspiratorial murmur, like the magnetic Heaven’s Sent, delivered here at a daringly low volume which makes her all the more magnetic. Other times, as on wonderful UK garage ballad Ocean Steppin’, she sounds breezy and resigned to whatever fate has in store for her. Perhaps there’s a touch of Dean Blunt at times, or Neneh Cherry’s most introspective moments, but there really is no one wandering a path like her; pausing to reflect then giving a stoic shrug and pressing on.

There are some problems with her monitors – she almost ends the set a song early after cheerily flouncing away from some dodgy onstage sound - but it all sounds great out in the crowd. The bass feels a touch high at times and obscures some details, but equally, the overwhelming, ether-dominating vibration fits the music so well at others: “On the rocks, on the waves / Feeling like I’m never sure,” she raps on Nevasure, that bass sweeping her out to sea on a dark tide. She has a lovely intimacy with her DJ, so different your standard hip-hop hype man - during Ocean Steppin’ they pass a two litre bottle of water back and forth and Glacier vapes a little, a couple of friends having a content little moment. There’s a low-key charm to the whole set, but a deep, strange drama churning beneath it.

Pyramid stage, 12pm
Supergrass emerge in front of a backdrop of the album art for their debut album I Should Coco, depicting original trio Gaz Coombes, Mick Quinn and Danny Goffey as snarling, snotty, monobrowed youngsters. It wouldn’t be unfair to point out that there is an ocean of difference between said artwork and the salt and pepper templed gents (Coombes, Quinn and Goffey, plus long-term fourth member, Coombes’s keyboardist brother Rob) stood in front of it – though Coombes, looking spiffy in blazer and newsboy cap, is ageing about as classily as possible. What’s more, as they tear into an opening one two punch of I’d Like To Know and Caught By the Fuzz, it’s clear the snarl and the snot hasn’t left them.

Supergrass have been touring for the 30th anniversary of Coco, and their set today – also 30 full years on from their Glastonbury debut (“We came in on a chopper,” Goffey recalls, eyes wide in wonder) – is the bulk of that album played in chronological order. There are pros and cons to this: on the plus side it allows an airing of some belting, single-worthy album tracks like I’d Like to Know and Strange Ones. But the downside is that it slightly sidelines the more musically adventurous band that those mod revivalist urchins grew into.

It doesn’t help that the biggest singalongs – Mansize Rooster and of course Alright – all land in the album’s stacked first half and are dispensed with a little too early. As the more meandering back half tracks like Sofa (of my lethargy) and She’s So Loose (“about underage sex with older women, it’s a bit weird now”, says Coombes), the Pyramid crowd’s attention starts to wander.

The relief is palpable then when Coombes says “we’re gonna jump ahead a few years”, and launches into the caustic chuggy opening riff to Richard III. From there it’s a home stretch of bangers – Late in the Day; Mary, with its daft caterwauling “aii-aii-aii-aii” chorus; Moving; a loose, psych-tinged Sun Hits the Sky – and the crowd are firmly back onside. By set closer Pumping on Your Stereo the big overhead claps are out, everyone is singing along and the festival feels truly underway.

Other stage, 11.30am
The pairing of classical music and rave nostalgia seems to be in vogue at the moment. The Haçienda Classiçal, Back to Basics with the Orchestra of the Opera North and the hilariously named Cream Classical all reinterpret club classics with a full ensemble and guest vocalists. Representing the trend at Glastonbury 2025 are drum‘n’bass legends Fabio & Grooverider, who today open a packed-out Other stage, accompanied by the Outlook Orchestra.

“We’re gonna take you through time, we’re gonna give you a history of jungle and D’n’B!” bellows the guest MC, GQ, while Fabio & Grooverider take their place behind the decks in the centre of the orchestra. And indeed they do: the gun finger-poised, bucket hat-clad crowd are treated to an hour of old favourites, beefed up by live amen breaks, big horns and soaring strings.

The set is structured in parts, starting with early nineties 90s jungle to present-day D’n’B. We hear countless beloved tracks such as We Are IE, Sweet Love, Super Sharp Shooter and the real singalong-inducing Ready Or Not. Between a string of guest vocalists, Fabio & Grooverider occasionally pause to pace the stage, asking who was there the first time round and running through their history, which began at a wine bar in Streatham, south London. “To see this is amazing,” says Fabio.

Naturally, there’s a tendency for the set to feel a bit corny: the glowing love-heart graphic laid over timelapse clips of London, the pairing of brass and bass, the nostalgia saturation. But there’s no denying that this is a high-energy, heartwarming affair for everyone involved, from the old ravers to the kids on their shoulders.

Park stage, 11.30am
“Do you like camping?” one of Horsegirl asks their audience, to a chorus of assent. “Cool. We’re staying an hour away in a hotel.” There’s probably better stage banter to get everyone on side, but thankfully the Chicago indie trio’s actual music is far more endearing.

There’s a Stereolab-ish motorik chug that underpins a number of these tracks, at various tempos from indie-dancing to mopey wandering, including on cuts from utterly superb Cate le Bon-produced second album Phonetics On and On. The bass notes ring out clean and bright, adding crossbeams to the sturdy structure. But all this steadiness is offset by beautiful, tuneful wordless hooks, like the kind a child might idly sing to themselves while fingerpainting – affectingly naive but really tricky to write well. The repeated lyrics are strong too: “And I try / and I try”, they sing on In Twos, quite moving in how they doggedly trudge onwards. As Lorde no doubt takes things straight to 100 over at Woodsies, this set gently eases us up to speed.

Hello from Worthy Farm! It’s Glastonbury’s final outing before taking a fallow year in 2026 in order for the site to recuperate, and if Thursday night’s merriment is any indication, the crowd will absolutely be making this one count – here’s hoping we’re not all burnt out by Sunday evening. Today is starting off with a bang: Lorde, who released her fourth album Virgin today, just confirmed via social media that she’s the “TBA” artist opening the Woodsies stage today – and, naturally, that tent is already at capacity. We’ll have a review of that set – and the rest of the day’s acts, including the 1975, Alanis Morrisette and more – very soon.