SZA’s striking set failed to set Glastonbury alight

After Dua Lipa and Coldplay’s modern and environment friendly units, Glastonbury’s Sunday night time headliner had a troublesome act to comply with.

After a rumoured look by pop queen Madonna fell by, the slot finally went to US R&B star SZA.

Probably the most-streamed artists on this planet, she’s a vibrant, assured performer, whose advanced, messy dissections of contemporary relationships have endeared her to millennial followers.

However their ardour didn’t ignite any magic on the Pyramid Stage.

The star drew the smallest viewers I’ve ever seen for a Glastonbury headliner, in additional than 20 years of coming to the competition.

It did not assist that, for not less than the primary half an hour, her microphone was each distorted and muffled – a difficulty for an artist whose enchantment lies within the precision of her lyrics and the fantastic thing about their jazzy vocal runs.

The 33-year-old additionally dedicated the competition sin of failing to deal with the gang. Her solely interplay within the present’s first act was to ask if any of her “day one” followers had been current.

“You understand I want you, proper?” she mentioned, maybe acknowledging that this was not her pure viewers.

By the point she received to her greatest hit – the darkly comedian homicide fantasy Kill Invoice (1.9 billion Spotify streams) – individuals had already drifted away to look at units from The Nationwide, James Blake and London Grammar elsewhere on the location.