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7 of the best Glastonbury 2024 performances to stream on BBC iPlayer
By Tom Wiggins,
1 day ago
Glastonbury might be over for another year, but if you want to relive any of your favourite performances (or catch anything you missed), BBC iPlayer is packed with full sets from across the weekend.
Whether it’s Coldplay’s technicolour performance from Saturday night, Shania Twain ’s appearance in the ‘legends’ slot on Sunday afternoon, or K-pop making its Glastonbury debut on Friday with Seoul’s 13-piece boyband Seventeen , you could spend hours catching up with what happened on Worthy Farm this weekend. But, we’ve decided to make the task a little bit simpler by picking out the performances that generated the most buzz.
Here are seven unforgettable sets to catch before they disappear from iPlayer in a month.
The National
In recent years The National has fully embraced its reputation for being a band of sad dads who write songs for other sad dads, but there’s an emotional depth and maturity to their music that clearly resonates with plenty of people outside of that particular demographic.
In Matt Berninger, they have a frontman who believes so strongly in every word he sings that he sometimes seems on the verge of a breakdown, and as the last band on the Other Stage on Sunday night they put in a powerfully memorable performance. Berninger is known for leaving everything out there on the stage, but when he goes on an extended walkabout during the penultimate song Terrible Love , it seems fairly likely there’s a piece left out in the crowd too.
Of this year’s three Pyramid Stage headliners, it was always Dua Lipa who had the potential to be the most intriguing. SZA lacks universal appeal, and Coldplay are, well, Coldplay, but the British singer’s bucketload of hits and recent partnership with Kevin Parker from Tame Impala piques the interest of pop fans and indie kids alike.
Dua Lipa’s 2017 appearance in the John Peel Tent (now known as Woodsies) had people spilling out the sides, and it’s estimated that nearly 100,000 flocked to the Pyramid Stage to see her perform hits such as New Rules , Be The One , and Levitating , plus a duet with a Parker on his 2015 hit The Less I Know the Better .
Wearing shorts, a black polo shirt that couldn’t quite hide a slight paunch, and a pair of customised Reebok Classics (what else?), Mike Skinner took to the Other Stage on Saturday night looking like a cabbie who had just dropped off a fare nearby and decided to reel off an hour of pilled-up poetry.
Skinner is an unlikely pop star that’s for sure, but he has the audience eating out of the palm of his hand as he crowd surfs, helps members of the front row with selfies, and threads a running commentary right through a set that includes raucous renditions of Don’t Mug Yourself , post-lockdown anthem Who’s Got the Bag? , and Fit But You Know It , making it feel truly one-of-a-kind.
With names like Georgia, Aurora and Ocado (OK, maybe not that one), The Last Dinner Party sound like a stereotypical bunch of public-school girls from Surrey, but if you were to scour this year’s Glastonbury line-up for future headliners the London-based five-piece would have to be up there.
Playing to a packed Other Stage crowd on Saturday afternoon, they already look like bonafide pop stars, but they also have the tunes to match. With only one album (and two new songs) to build their set from the pacing suffers a little, with charismatic frontwoman warning the audience to “get your crying out of the way now” as they play “some more really weepy ones”, but in closer Nothing Matters they have a genuine festival anthem.
LCD Soundsystem crammed the Pyramid Stage so full of gear that there was barely any space left for the band. Like many of their best songs, the set takes a little while to burst into life, but amid a whole museum’s worth of analogue synthesisers, James Murphy and co gradually whip the late-afternoon crowd into a frenzy.
The beauty of watching on catch-up is that if you’re impatient you can just skip to the last three songs of the set: a euphoric triple-whammy of Someone Great , Dance Yrself Clean , and the practically perfect All My Friends , which triggers a mass, platonically loved-up singalong as the sun goes down behind the Pyramid Stage. Glorious.
Little Simz spends a lot of her 60-minute set alone on the Pyramid Stage, but there’s no doubt that her talent is more than big enough to fill it. The 30-year-old rapper ‘manifested’ this moment (as the kids say), predicting when she performed back in 2022 that her next appearance would be on Worthy Farm’s most prestigious platform, and she delivers an eclectic set that shows exactly why she’s been promoted.
It’s a performance that’s simultaneously very down-to-earth and also brimming with confidence – at one point she wants to make sure the crowd is aware they’re witnessing greatness, but she also bids farewell at the end with an almost throwaway “love you, bye” as if she’s hanging up the phone to her mum.
Considering the size of the crowd that gathered for the Sugababes at West Holts late on Friday afternoon – it was so oversubscribed security had to restrict access to the field – the trio would probably have been better suited to the Pyramid Stage instead, but overcrowding isn’t something you have to worry about when you’re watching at home.
Those who did make it in before the gates were shut were treated to an hour of back-to-back bangers, including a cover of Sweet Female Attitude’s UK garage classic Flowers. Hit play and relish the fact that you can enjoy it without having to impersonate a sardine.
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