Dua Lipa at Glastonbury review – headliners are rarely this hook-laden and hedonistic | Glastonbury 2024

According to probably the most intriguing little bit of her between-song chat, Dua Lipa’s headlining Glastonbury slot took place because of an act of childhood manifesting. The singer claims she wrote out her need to prime the invoice on the Pyramid stage intimately, as much as and together with what night time mentioned occasion ought to happen on: a Friday, so she “might spend the remainder of the weekend partying”. And now right here we’re: watching a barely peculiar video of Dua Lipa signing her identify and writing the phrases “GLASTO 24” on a pane of glass, then licking it.

Whether or not you purchase the stuff about manifesting or not, Dua Lipa has clearly spent a variety of time fastidiously learning and absorbing how a profitable Glastonbury headline set works, and placing what she’s gleaned to good use. The announcement of her look led to a level of consternation, significantly after her most up-to-date album, Radical Optimism, failed to duplicate the sort of world-beating success afforded its predecessor, the lockdown smash Future Nostalgia. However she already has a stockpile of inescapable hits, from New Guidelines to her Elton John collaboration Chilly Coronary heart, which is half the battle gained. And moreover she throws all the things she has at her set to be able to lend it a way of occasion, fairly than it being merely one other pop present transposed to a area in Somerset, one other stop-off on a world tour that occurs to be on a farm.

There are confetti canons galore. There are pyrotechnics – so lots of them throughout Levitating that you simply surprise what they will presumably do for the finale, though they only about handle to prime it. There’s a crowdpleasing reference to the pageant’s hedonism, albeit not from the lips of the singer herself, who largely confines herself to asking the viewers how they’re feeling: as a substitute, she takes the stage to the well-known clip of Peter Fonda within the 1966 biker film The Wild Angels informing the squares that he desires to get loaded and have a very good time. And there may be an equally crowdpleasing visitor look by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker – his denims and T-shirt at odds with the principle attraction’s fixed costume adjustments; a second the place the pair fluff their vocals and chortle at odds with the present’s tightly choreographed really feel – performing not one among his Dua Lipa collaborations however his personal largest hit, The Much less I Know the Higher: 1.6bn streams and counting.

Hallucinate makes a few of Lipa’s more moderen efforts look slightly wan by comparability. Home-fuelled and thrillingly hook-laden, it might be probably the greatest pop singles in current reminiscence – which isn’t a declare anybody goes to make on behalf of the serviceable however unexceptional Houdini, nor Coaching Season. There are a few much less spectacular songs from Radical Optimism thrown into the combo: the pass-aggy Pleased for You; the acoustic guitar-driven These Partitions.

The latter was the solitary observe on mentioned album which vaguely steered the Britpop affect she spent a variety of time speaking up previous to its launch, however listening to it tonight, it sounds extra like the opposite stuff that bought tens of millions within the 90s. It’s not an enormous stretch to think about it sung by Texas or Natalie Imbruglia and even the Corrs. However the set tucks these songs away amid the hits so efficiently that you simply scarcely discover. There’s at all times one other cast-iron banger on the best way: Levitating, Bodily, Phantasm.

“It’s quite a bit, innit,” she gasps at one level, surveying the complete extent of an unlimited crowd, who furthermore keep put all through: there’s not one of the wastage that indicators a Glastonbury headliner getting it improper and driving their viewers in the direction of the pageant’s different manifold delights. It’s an unequivocal success.