Sunday at Glastonbury 2023: Yusuf Stevens, Lil Nas X, the Chicks – plus Elton John still to come – follow it live!

Cat Burns reviewed!

Keza MacDonald

Woodsies, 3.30pm

Buzzy TikTok-famous singer-songwriter Cat Burns has a pretty fanatical young fanbase, but it doesn’t look like much of it is here for her heartfelt bedroom-pop songs today. There’s a decent-sized crowd but you can hear them chattering over her sparse, emotive guitar and emotionally naked lyrics. She sings about young-people stuff – breakups of all kinds from toxic to healthy, romantic to friendship; jealousy; mental health; finding yourself – in a way that is universally relatable but oddly non-specific.

Halfway through the set she does a cover medley of Ed Sheeran’s A Team and Justin Bieber’s Love Yourself, which makes me feel 1,000 years old. She channels those artists a bit on a new song about “not being chosen”, and suddenly we get a much bigger sound from her: “I’m entering my pop-rock era,” she tells us. “Just once every so often, when I’m feeling a bit different.”

She’s super confident up there in a slouchy blazer with rolled-up sleeves and shorts, chatting breezily, totally unfazed by the occasion. People Pleaser is an easy clappable singalong; Love More serves up anthemic if bland positivity (“If there’s something you want to do, just do it – don’t let your head stop your heart from moving”); and her giant slow-burn hit Go closes the set. Only now, for these final songs, do the audience feel truly enthused. “Four years ago I was busking on the South Bank, singing for my supper, and now I’m here,” she says. She seems determined to go further.

The site is abuzz with people convinced that Elton John will be bringing out Britney Spears later to perform their updated club version of Tiny Dancer. Shaad spoke to some people camped out at the main stage who swore blind she was coming; there are already any number of clickbait articles piecing together “clues” from Spears’ Instagram, where she recently mentioned coming to London to go shopping and shared images of [checks notes] an apple that may or may not be cut into the shape of the St George’s flag? A painting of a McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish next to a rose captioned with three Union Jacks??? Plus there are the entirely unconfirmed “reports” of her being spotted at Bristol airport doing the rounds. Personally I think it’s really unlikely – Spears was anxious enough about the recording of Tiny Dancer coming out and hasn’t performed live since 2018 – much as I’d love to see it.

Black Country, New Road reviewed!

Ben Beaumont-Thomas

West Holts, 2pm

It’s testament to the originality, musicianship and emotional wallop of Black Country, New Road that they can draw a crowd this big for a set of what is essentially long-form prog-folk songs, without any of the tracks that made them famous.

They play the whole of the set that features in their recent live album Live at Bush Hall, plus a couple of new songs: one a rather meandering one helmed by Georgia Ellery (also of Jockstrap) singing and playing mandolin, the other absolutely terrific, based around a fiendishly intricate and beautiful melody and a vocal from bassist Tyler Hyde.

In the wake of vocalist Isaac Wood leaving, the singing is split between four members and each has their appeal – but it’s Hyde who has the most affecting moments. On this new song she creates the sense of coming to terms with something in real time, while on Laughing Song she sings “I have accepted that no one else will make me laugh like that”, adding a crushed little “ever again” after the band has gone silent. The weather broods and fusses, unsure of whether to rain.

Dressed in the manner of every generation of art student – clothes so rejected and uncool that they go round the other side and become cool again – the band has some hideous ties and three-quarter length shorts on display here. There’s also a lovely sense of camaraderie as four of them huddle together, hug and chat while Ellery and pianist-vocalist May Kershaw perform pristine ballad Turbines/Pigs.

It’s also wonderful to see them moving around masterfully between vocal duties and instruments: drummer Charlie Wayne picks up a banjo, say, while singer Lewis Evans toggles between sax and flute. Songs will drift or waltz around before ramping into crescendoes, some of them violently intense. Dancers ends with Wayne screaming down his mic, and he gives Turbines/Pigs a pummelling climax totally at odds with the delicacy of Kershaw and Ellery’s earlier passages, while I Won’t Always Love You goes almost math-rock in its colliding banks of noise. There’s room, though, for some traditional festival fist-pumping on Across the Pond Friend. The large audience – who have been almost silent during the quietest moments, amazing for a crowd of this size – seem totally beguiled by this singular band.

Keza is up at Cat Burns, who “has just covered Ed Sheeran’s A Team into Justin Bieber’s Love Yourself – really baiting gen Z here.”

The Chicks reviewed!

Laura Snapes

Pyramid stage, 1.30pm

The Chicks (FKA the Dixie Chicks) filled my own personal legends slot, no disrespect to Blondie. They haven’t played the UK since 2016 and had to delay the tour for their 2020 comeback album Gaslighter for obvious reasons. During that time they’ve also been reclaimed by a generation who were kids in 2003 when the band were blacklisted and pilloried by the US country industry, and had protestors burning their CDs outside their shows, after singer Natalie Maines said the Texan trio were ashamed to be from the same state as George W Bush following the invasion of Iraq. Beyoncé invited them to perform her song Daddy Lessons live at the Country Music awards in 2016, and in-demand pop whisperer Jack Antonoff produced their brilliant comeback record, which assessed Maines’s divorce in cutting detail. In hindsight, that blacklisting was evidently nothing other than rank misogyny by an industry keen to cut some exceedingly powerful women off at the knees – before they come on, the compere reminds us they’re the biggest-selling all-women band ever – and the Chicks’ return to their rightful stature validates the message that courses through their music about women’s righteous (and often deliciously vengeful) pursuit of freedom.

Maines and sisters Emily Strayer on banjo and Martie Maguire on fiddle absolutely blaze on with Sin Wagon (“He pushed me around / Now I’m drawin’ the line”), a baller, blaring workout that blows your hair back and shakes out the Sunday cobwebs. It’s an epic in five minutes, the trio backed by a crack six-piece band who ground them so that their radiant vocal harmonies and intricate musicianship can fly. In this heat, you’d pass out if you kept playing at that pace, and they cool the tempo for the poppy Gaslighter, one of several shots at Maines’ ex-husband delivered with tartness and no small enduring amount of rage: “Boy, I know exactly what you did on my boat,” she sasses, a detail that’s only more delicious when you know that she gave him the boat as a present … and it’s called the Natalie Maines. (The song has a wider resonance, too: one woman near us waves a homemade banner that reads “Rishi Sunak is a gaslighter.”)

You have to be a phenomenally tight unit to be this versatile, and the Chicks’ wistful older songs – Wide Open Spaces, Cowboy Take Me Away, both longing for opportunity of different kinds – sound gorgeous, prompting mass singalongs. And the crowd is impressively huge, given the UK’s long antipathy towards country music.

The end of the set skews spikier: Tights on My Boat is another comic shot at Maines’ ex that comes with visuals of a naked Putin riding a unicorn; White Trash Wedding is a ferocious hootenanny; and their cover of Daddy Lessons is a cool flex, backed by intimate visuals of the band rehearsing the song with Beyoncé.

The closing run threatens to undersell the Chicks’ innate power by being over literal. For Pride month, they cover Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus’s Rainbowland – a nice gesture but a terrible track. March March works better live than on record, where it’s a well-meaning but all-purpose protest song; live, there are powerful visuals of historic freedom fighters, at one point overlaid by the names of hundreds of Black people killed by police, and the performance is all the better for how sombrely the group play it. More striking is the winking subtext in going from the flagrantly political March March to Not Ready to Make Nice, their original refusal to apologise for the Bush fallout. Rain clouds close in overnight, accentuating its message of wounded pride. The message is clear: you can’t keep the Chicks down. Their closing song, the gleefully taunting Goodbye Earl – about a woman killing her cheating husband by poisoning his beans – suggests you’d be very silly to try.

Woodsies, 12.30pm

All across the weekend, mysterious stickers have been appearing in the longdrops, promising the rather iconic pairing of CMAT and BRITNEY SPEARS. Spears does not actually show up (maybe she’s saving it for Elton, as is the rumour on site), but it’s solid promo for an impressive showcase of the Irish singer’s playful humour and hearty affection for a cowboy motif.

While her music is entirely different to that of Self Esteem, there’s a similar feeling of communal giddiness in the tent as there was for Rebecca Taylor’s set in here last year: working-class guys, gals and non-binary pals who are thrilled to have found an artist who properly feels like one of them, revelling in all the same pop culture references and self-deprecation. “I’ve been here since Tuesday! And I don’t have a UTI! Here’s a fucking banger!”

CMAT was raised on a diet of Dolly and Dolores O’Riordan, and her vocal trills sound excellent, rarely faltering in spite of all the horseplay: a snatch of ballroom dancing with her bandmates; sliding into the splits on Peter Bogdanovich; a slow-tease removal of her tasselled sequin jacket to reveal a bold vest with another slogan: “CMAT IS A SILLY BITCH”.

The older material makes for a happy bob-along but the double-header of No More Virgos and rooting-tooting new single Have Fun! are the real gems, and a brilliant indicator of her knack for raunchy alt-pop that still feels fit for daytime radio. “I bet some of youse are like ‘Nah, I only came here cos the Guardian told us to,’” she quips, when asking the crowd if they have another singalong in them. She’ll likely be too busy celebrating her biggest set to date to check in on this liveblog, but if she does, count this as a double dose of approval.

The Guardian’s Glastonbury group chat just exploded with messages: “RAIN”, “THE RAIN IS COMING DOWN”, “THANK YOU JESUS”. Not sure if rain’s ever got a cheer at Glastonbury before, but it’s a relief after the beating heat (and may also help wash some of those gross little dusty suncream clods off our skin…).

Also hello, it’s Laura taking over from Gwilym for the afternoon.

Keza MacDonald

As promised, here’s that writeup of Mel C’s in convo with Laura Snapes earlier today. Lots of juicy tidbits here: she’s pushing hard for a Spice Girls Glastonbury appearance:

It’s a seriously stacked Pyramid stage lineup today. Yusuf/Cat Stevens next, then Blondie, then Lil Nas X and then, of course, Elton. Not bad for what was being framed as a quiet year after 2022’s 50th anniversary bonanza.

Earlier today Japanese Breakfast were supposed to play the Other stage, but a Trains, Planes and Automobiles-style misadventure meant that they didn’t make it in time. You have to feel for them:

At Woodsies The Big Moon are having a lot of fun blasting through their 2016 single Cupid. Absolute belter of a chorus on that one.

On the Park, Belgian duo Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul are getting their outsider electropop thing on. One song just seems to be Adigéry maniacally cackling over a thudding beat … and I must say, I’m into it.

Dark clouds over Worthy Farm: are we finally going to experience the first rain of the weekend? Whisper it, but a few of us wouldn’t mind a bit of the clear stuff to break up this stiflingly humid weather.

Over at West Holts, Black Country, New Road are making a right old avant garde racket. For my money, they’re the lesser of the oddball Brit newcomer bands with Black in their name – losing out, just about, to Black Midi – but never a dull proposition.

When he’s not blasting out sick beats on the Park stage (see 12.17pm), Fatboy Slim is busy taking aim at the government’s ban of onsite festival drugs testing, reports Home affairs editor Rajeev Syal:

Keza MacDonald

Coming soon is our report on Mel C in conversation with the Guardian’s Laura Snapes, but here’s a juicy morsel to get you going:

Mel is still insanely active – she tells us she busted out eight pull-ups at the gym the other day (close-grip, fitness enthusiasts). Around the time she released her first solo album, she wanted to distance herself from the idea of Sporty Spice – but lately she has come to realise that it’s just who she is. “I was always dressing in sportswear… a lot of girl bands had co-ordinated outfits for everyone, but for us, someone always looked and felt uncomfy,” she says. “At rehearsal Emma was always in a babydoll dress, I was in tracksuits, Victoria was more posh … we looked in the mirror and thought, why don’t we just wear what we wear? I realised before our 2019 tour, I am Sporty Spice! It’s not something I become, or something I put on. It’s who I am. Not my entire self, but part of it.”