Ragga-metal, Y2K R&B and folk legends: 30 acts to see at Glastonbury

Thursday

Jyoty and friends

Lonely Hearts Club, 19.30
A welcome addition to the lineup of stages last year was Lonely Hearts Club, which resembled a Miami beachfront art deco cinema after roughly four centuries of post-apocalyptic neglect, and hosted a dizzying array of high-speed dance. Just down the road from a stellar lineup at the new Levels stage – described by Glastonbury as an “open air nightclub inspired by the crossover of architecture, lighting, and experimental musical artforms” – this is the place to be for an unwise quaffing of your entire festival’s booze rations on Thursday night, featuring a squadron of DJs including Lil Silva and Sbtrkt curated and hosted by Jyoty, who herself flings pop and rap a capellas through speed garage, dancehall and a huge swathe of the genre map. Ben Beaumont-Thomas

Skindred

Truth stage, 23.45
It’s quite a rocking Glastonbury what with GN’R, Royal Blood, Måneskin and – if rumours are to be believed – Foo Fighters on the Pyramid stage plus plenty more further down the bill, especially over at the annual Earache takeover in Shangri-La: Ho99o9, Alt Blk Era, Empire State Bastard (a supergroup with Biffy Clyro frontman Simon Neil) and most impressively Skindred, who after 25 years in the game are still one of the most admired on the heavy live circuit. Their blend of ragga with metal is the kind of thing that makes hipsters implode with snobbery but will electrify everyone else. BBT

Friday

Star Feminine Band

West Holts, 11.30
This group of teenage girls from Benin should be kept on a retainer by the festival and deployed throughout the weekend whenever gloom descends or morale flags. Their joie de vivre is potent and their lilting but polyrhythmic, danceable songs, filled with highlife guitars, meandering synths and massed vocals, are the kind that Glastonbury crowds adore. BBT

Alabaster DePlume

Park stage, 12.45
For when you’ve accidentally overdone it on Thursday night, here’s jazz shaman Alabaster DePlume ready with his soothing saxophone hum and reassuring mantras on the festival’s prettiest stage. “Don’t forget you’re precious” is precisely what you need to hear when nursing a self-loathing-laced cider hangover. That said, the Manchester beatnik’s recent shows have tended away from the spiritual and more towards spikier, more invigorating tones. Laura Snapes

Yaya Bey

West Holts, 13.00
Stick around after Star Feminine Band for this Brooklyn singer-songwriter who recorded one of 2022’s best albums, Remember Your North Star: one second she’s announcing her greatness, the next cringing at some faux pas or frailty, making for songs that have the comic beats and breezy appeal of a standup comedian. Spanning neo-soul, reggae, deep house, hip-hop and jazz with sun-coaxing melody in each mode, hers will be the kind of set that draws in every passerby. BBT

Nemzzz

Lonely Hearts Club, 19.00
Alongside the dance at Lonely Hearts Club is a crop of excellent semi-underground rap across the weekend, including Earl Sweatshirt, Kenny Beats, Strandz, Jeshi, Meekz, Finn Foxell and Nemzzz. The latter has tens of millions of streams for his frank, Manc-accented tracks, cast in atmospherically minimal trap and drill productions that allow plenty of space for his casually withering and faintly amused demeanour. BBT

Fred Again

Other stage, 20.30
Few artists are having as much of a moment as Frederick Gibson, the British dance producer whose UK bass tracks, infused with sonic flotsam including vocal samples and field recordings, have defined post-pandemic raving. With Royal Blood and Warpaint providing little competition on other stages, everyone under and many over the age of 28 will be here for sunset: surely a star-cementing moment. BBT

Sparks

Park stage, 21.15
With interest in the septuagenarian US duo invigorated by Edgar Wright’s brilliant documentary, Ron and Russell Mael are having the time of their lives on their current touring run. It’s effectively in service of this year’s The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, though the wide-ranging setlist is a reminder of just how many hits they’ve had: The Number One Song in Heaven, When Do I Get to Sing My Way … Ron remains doing his fantastically impassive bit at the keys; Russell skips around in a way that puts performers half his age to shame. Even if you’re totally unfamiliar, if the idea of watching your two naughtiest uncles do cabaret appeals, don’t miss them. LS

Arctic Monkeys

Pyramid stage, 22.15
For all that the headliners feel a bit stodgy and blokey overall, there’s no doubt that Elton John will bring the house, sky and neighbouring herds of dairy cows down with a barnstorming headline performance on the Sunday, and while Guns N’ Roses may not have quite enough big hits for a headline slot, the ones they do have are the stuff of Glasto euphoria. Arctic Monkeys, meanwhile are deep into a world stadium tour and in the form of their lives (though a laryngitis diagnosis now has fans worried). Alex Turner teeters on the edge of irony with his “frontman” performance, all knowing croons and swagger, but there’s a warmth and fun even as he does play with rock star tropes. New songs such as Body Paint and There Must Be a Mirrorball are muscular live, and older singalongs have more brawn than ever. BBT

Hot Chip

Woodsies, 22.30
It’s easy to take Hot Chip for granted – almost 20 years after releasing their debut, they remain as consistent as ever – but it’d be a fool who skipped out on seeing them play a big-tent headline set at Glastonbury, where they’re always in their element. Here’s the fun foil to their Domino labelmates’ knowing performance on the main stage, plus a chance to dance to One of the Best Songs of All Time (says me), Over and Over. LS

Saturday

Wunderhorse

Woodsies, 12.45
Cantering up to indie’s big league is this band fronted by Jacob Slater (who you may recognise from previous band the Dead Pretties or as Paul Cook in the Sex Pistols TV biopic). Debut album Cub last year was superb, with beefy blues-rock, pastoral Britpop, droning psych, and, in Teal, an all-timer that recalled Lou Reed at his best. BBT

Hagop Tchaparian

Stonebridge Bar, Saturday, 13.00; The Levels, Sunday, 13.30
Tchaparian played Glastonbury long ago in a totally different guise, as guitarist for post-Britpop band Symposium. Of late, though, he’s been turning heads with a series of maximalist dance productions released on Four Tet’s label, where live instrumentation recorded on the fly wherever he encountered it around the world – reedy pipes, pounding hand drums – is paired with pounding techno and garage. This globalised, welded-mutant sound is in some ways the sonic analogue to the knocked together metal sculptures of Joe Rush that dot the festival site. BBT

Raye

Pyramid stage, 13.15
Raye is stopping off in between dates supporting SZA on her UK tour, where she’s been wowing crowds with her whopping voice and between-song charm. This Pyramid stage slot is a well deserved crowning for the British pop star, who argued her way out of her limiting major label contract to release her fantastic 2023 debut album, My 21st Century Blues (imagine the sort of angry, empowered pop music that Amy Winehouse might have made had things been different). It wasn’t just a victory for her, but an argument for giving young women their artistic freedom and seeing what brilliance might emerge. LS

Jockstrap

Park stage, 15.15
Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye make showtunes through a dark mirror; dubstep regurgitated by two conservatoire-trained brains; they clash medieval dankness with disco freshness, and somehow, it comes off as the greatest pop music never made before. As knotty as their music is, it’s also the sort of thing that’s going to sound radiant mid-afternoon on the Park stage. LS

Erika de Casier

Lonely Hearts Club, 16.15
The Danish producer couldn’t be on a more appositely titled stage: her off-kilter Y2K R&B, warped by strangeness and a debt to UK garage, trades in poised kiss-offs of the “I’m not angry, just disappointed” variety. Hers will be a sophisticated set – no scrubs allowed. LS

Richard Thompson

Acoustic stage, 17.00
In one of those demonstrations of how Glastonbury is actually about 20 world-class festivals in one, the Acoustic stage alone is stuffed with quality folk-adjacent stars: Steve Earle, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Paul Carrack, Rickie Lee Jones and Badly Drawn Boy among them. But standing out with a songbook of total pedigree and a voice of hair-prickling expression is Richard Thompson, who at 74 has a lifetime of stirring craft to draw from. BBT

Central Cee

Other stage, 20.45
This is the kind of set where you’ll see people crowdsurfing holding crutches: pure pandaemonium will greet a British MC who has risen to real stardom, but who you sense will climb further yet. Performing live, his mic technique is on point even when negotiating tricky triplet-time drill, and given he’s just dropped a whole EP with Dave and will probably still be top of the singles chart with their track Sprinter when he takes the stage, the latter MC is surely going to be one of the weekend’s big guest appearances. BBT

Vigro Deep

Iicon, 21.30
The beautiful sound of amapiano – a South African dance subgenre built around bulbous bass, lugubrious tempos and an almost malevolent sense of forward prowl – has crept with sensual stealth into club culture in recent years. Vigro Deep is one of its best proponents, with productions that throb with bass and keep you perched on the edge of release. He’s playing from the vast sci-fi head of the Iicon stage, making for a dramatic, cinematic start to your Saturday night. BBT

Kelis

West Holts, 22.15
Kelis was recently sampled (and then removed) from Beyoncé’s Renaissance, and warped through Jpegmafia and Danny Brown’s Fentanyl Tester – but here’s a chance to see a true original in her undiluted form, as well as a legend receiving her flowers with a well deserved stage-headlining slot. That said, of all the Glastonbury clashes, the sharp end of Saturday night is particularly crushing: do you pick deliriously flossy attitude at Kelis …

Lana Del Rey

Other stage, 22.30
… rangy, unpredictable balladry with Lana…

Christine and the Queens

Woodsies, 22.30
… or gauzy, grief-stricken epics with Chris, fresh from the release of his five-star new album, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love? (At any rate, anything’s better than Guns N’ Roses caterwauling on the main stage.) LS

Skepta b2b Jammer

Arcadia, 00.00
There’s a wealth of great back-to-back sets in the fire-breathing spider of Arcadia: pairs of DJs risking singed eyebrows including Floating Points and Daphni, Skream and Interplanetary Criminal, DJ Q and Yung Singh and the ultimate Glasto twosome, the Chemical Brothers. But most exciting is this meeting of two of grime’s greatest figures, throwing down rowdy classics and presumably sparring on the mic. BBT

Sunday

Cmat

Woodsies, 12.30
Have yourself a lovely afternoon of country music on Sunday, starting with the brilliant emerging Irish pop star Cmat, whose dialled-up twang brings a grippingly manic edge to her hooky pop songs. And then …

The Chicks

Pyramid stage, 13.30
… dash to get back to the source, as the legendary country trio FKA Dixie Chicks kick off a very rare UK tour here. The pandemic meant they never got to bring over their excellent comeback album Gaslighter – their first in 14 years – so here’s hoping for a set that splices old and new, as well as acting as something of a litmus test for the UK’s ever-growing appreciation for country music. LS

Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul

Park stage, 14.00
One of the most fun live shows going today, although one that comes with a quizzical side: the Belgian duo make utterly danceable electro-pop that satirises xenophobia, misogyny and racism, making you dance – then question your complicity. Their themes are serious, but they’re delivered with such silliness and sarcasm that it’s more like a brilliant lesson from an innovative teacher than a lecture, guaranteed to leave you buzzing. LS

Speakers Corner Quartet

West Holts, 15.30
This group put out their debut album this year – but have spent over 15 years getting there, having long backed spoken word and varied musical creativity at their Brixton jam sessions. Those brought them into the orbit of numerous luminaries, some of whom appear here – Kae Tempest, Shabaka Hutchings, Tirzah and more – to contribute to one of the most familial sets of the weekend where psychedelic soul, boom-bap beat and jazz mindsets fold around each other. BBT

Toyah Willcox & Robert Fripp

Acoustic stage, 16.10
Having earned huge viral fame for their livestreamed performances that play out like the dinner entertainment at a swingers resort, pop’s embarrassing parents come to Glastonbury for what will be a gloriously entertaining show. With a karaoke bar of hits now in their arsenal – from Heroes to Creep to Enter Sandman – expect mass singalongs, silly costumes and dextrous guitar theatrics. BBT

Thundercat

Park stage, 19.45
Three years since the excellent It Is What It Is, we’re surely due a new LP from Stephen Bruner, the west coast bassist and producer whose chops are always offset by a magnetic breeziness. There’s no better time for a dose of daydreamy funk virtuosity then when the sun starts to dip on Sunday night. LS

Caroline Polachek

Woodsies, 20.00
Arguably the most essential thing to see on this whole list. Having made her way from NY alt-poppers Chairlift into an ever-more spectacular solo career, she’s on more indomitable form than Erling Haaland and HBO’s drama team combined. Polachek has a Mariah-like mastery of her high vocal register, so piercingly, supernaturally pure that it really does feel beamed from the heavens, and her songs have complex emotional drama done with a big pop wallop. Go bask in greatness. BBT

Phoenix

Woodsies, 21.30
A fairly brutal clash against Elton John, but if you’ve already caught his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road retirement tour, or your vibe is more chanson than chateau, the French pop-rockers never fail to deliver on euphoria, spectacle and giddy choruses that you think you know, then realise mid-mouthful that you have precisely no idea what frontman Thomas Mars is actually on about. Truly, “where would you go with a lasso?” LS