Glastonbury headline sets – ranked!

20. Tyrannosaurus Rex (1970)

Tyrannosaurus Rex weren’t even featured on the bill for the first Glastonbury – they filled in for the Kinks, who cancelled. But the festival captured them at the perfect moment: on the brink of turning into T Rex, weeks away from releasing Ride a White Swan. Michael Eavis later said it was one of his all-time favourite Glastonbury performances.

19. Echo and the Bunnymen (1985)

The kind of intriguing, slightly off-beam set you probably couldn’t get away with in the headline spot these days: Echo and the Bunnymen unexpectedly interspersed their own material with covers of the songs that inspired them, by the Modern Lovers, Television, the Doors and the Rolling Stones.

18. New Order (1987)

New Order could be hit-or-miss live, but their 1987 set, broadcast live on Radio One, in a portent of the wall-to-wall coverage the festival would eventually receive, was a stormer. Delivered as insouciantly as ever, Your Silent Face and Temptation sounded as though they were made to boom out across a vast field.

17. Elvis Costello (1987)

A radical approach to headlining: Costello played accompanied only by a drum machine and his distorted electric guitar (performing Pump It Up as a medley with Prince’s Sign o’ the Times) before unexpectedly, 17 songs into the set, bringing on the Attractions and throwing a cover of Abba’s Knowing Me, Knowing You in among the hits.

The first heavy metal band to headline Glastonbury, Metallica took the precaution of turning up with their own fans at the rear of the stage. But the Worthy Farm crowd are more open-minded than some commentators would have you think. “You really like this stuff?” asked frontman James Hetfield disbelievingly at one point. The answering roar suggested they did.

15. REM (1999)

If you want an example of the event’s ability to potentiate music, look no further. Everybody Hurts was desperately overplayed by the time REM headlined, but their performance of it was authentically magical: the crowd’s response seemed to spur a visibly moved Michael Stipe on, the song’s emotional power rediscovered.

14. Stevie Wonder (2010)

For an artist with an oeuvre as rich as Stevie Wonder’s, performing at Glastonbury should be easy. And so it proved: one classic after another – Sir Duke, Superstition, Living for the City, Uptight – delivered in euphoria-inducing style. He also lobbied the crowd on disability rights and sang Happy Birthday to Michael Eavis.

13. Fela Kuti (1984)

Mercifully captured for posterity by a BBC documentary crew in an era when the festival was never broadcast on TV, Kuti’s 1984 set was blistering, uncompromising Afrobeat: an hour and 10 minutes of music consisting of only two songs, CBB and Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense, a ferocious condemnation of colonialism presented to a largely white crowd.

12. The Cure (1990)

The Cure have headlined three times, but their 1990 appearance found them on peak Disintegration-era form: hits balanced by killer versions of deep cuts including A Strange Day and Lament. The set was interrupted by a police helicopter, Robert Smith taking the pause as an opportunity to read out the World Cup results.

11. Chemical Brothers (2000)

Few dance acts seized the challenge of playing to huge audiences with quite so much gusto as the Chemical Brothers. Allegedly drawing the biggest crowd ever to the Pyramid stage, their 2000 set dealt in musical intensity and visual overload, culminating in a spectacularly heady version of the Private Psychedelic Reel.

10. Coldplay (2016)

Coldplay are experts at filling the top slot, but their Sunday night appearance in 2016 – a rainy festival that began as the results of the Brexit referendum were announced – felt like a warm group hug, complete with guest appearance from Barry Gibb and a lovely tribute to the members of Viola Beach, who had recently died in a car crash.

9. Blur (2009)

Blur had headlined Glastonbury a decade earlier, but their 2009 performance clinched it. The warmth with which the crowd greeted the reformed band – which included taking up the refrain from Tender long after Blur had left the stage – appeared to have Damon Albarn on the verge of tears. A perfect welcome back.

8. David Bowie (1971)

Bowie’s 2000 set was justly acclaimed, albeit posthumously as it attracted scant critical attention at the time. But his 1971 performance sounds extraordinary: there’s the live debut of Changes, a stage invasion by a girl Bowie recalled as “even more stoned than I was”, and a reception that he claimed had restored his faith in performing live.

7. The Prodigy (1997)

Orbital’s performances may be most closely associated with Glastonbury’s 90s embrace of dance music, but they never made it to Pyramid Stage headlining status, playing second fiddle to Pulp in 1995. The Prodigy did. Overshadowed by Radiohead’s appearance the following night, it was an incredible set: a street-punk band gatecrashing a rave.

6. Jay-Z (2008)

A controversial booking – at least for Noel Gallagher – Jay-Z’s performance opened with a sarcastic cover of Wonderwall, followed by a furious medley of 99 Problems with AC/DC’s Back in Black. From then on, Glastonbury’s first hip-hop headliner was effectively home and dry: not just a fantastic set, but a pop-cultural moment.

5. Pulp (1995)

Sometimes Glastonbury captures a band at precisely the right moment. The fourth choice to fill in when the Stone Roses cancelled (the Levellers, Rod Stewart and Primal Scream turned the slot down), Pulp turned an unexpected opportunity into a triumph, the concluding mass singalong to Common People cementing their newfound stardom.

4. Beyoncé (2011)

“I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but I’ve never played to 175,000 people,” offered Beyoncé, midway through an astonishing set. It was less radical than her subsequent marching band-assisted Coachella show, perhaps, but still featured a joyous explosion of hits, hugely impressive choreography and an unexpected cover of Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire.

3. Paul McCartney (2004)

McCartney’s second Glastonbury appearance in 2022 made history – at 80, he became the oldest artist to headline the event. However, his first was more musically spectacular: a relentless, crowd-pleasing, joy-bringing trawl through one of the greatest back catalogues in pop history, laden with Beatles hits, from I Saw Her Standing There to The Long and Winding Road.

2. Stormzy (2019)

Glastonbury’s first grime headliner, judged as a risky booking by some, turned out to be a triumph and a landmark performance, involving ballet, BMXers, a Banksy-designed stab-proof vest, a skyscraping take on Blinded By Your Grace Part 2, and the ever-welcome sound of 100,000 people shouting “Fuck the government, fuck Boris,” live on the BBC.

1. Radiohead (1997)

Not so much a live performance as a psychodrama playing itself out in front of thousands of sodden festival-goers, who had already seen various artists cancel, the lowest temperatures ever recorded during the event and the Other Stage listing precariously in the mud. Beset by technical difficulties, Radiohead nearly abandoned the show midway, with guitarist Ed O’Brien warning Thom Yorke that he would “regret it for the rest of [his] life” if he walked off. But frustration and tension led to the band playing out of their skins, adding a startling potency to a set that confirmed OK Computer as the defining sound of rock’s post-Britpop shift.