Glastonbury – with the exception of the naughty late night areas that we can’t bring you coverage of in a family newspaper – is over for another year. And what a year it has been. There were huge headliners, rising stars, fascinating curios and Louis Tomlinson lugging an Argos telly on to the site.

Although this liveblog is winding up, the Guardian’s coverage of Glasto will continue tomorrow morning with Alexis Petridis’s annual round up, our big picture essay of the final day and 24 things we learned from this year’s festival. So do check back in for those.

But from us it’s so long – see you next year for Glastonbury 2025!

Here it is, the final review of the weekend, as Alexis gives SZA the big five stars:

Other stage, 9.45pm

On 6 May 2010, the National played the Royal Albert Hall in London. During the encore, news came through that the Conservatives had won the election. This week, the Cincinnati-formed band are, coincidentally, back in Britain to hopefully bookend that diabolical era (they’re playing Manchester on Thursday’s election night). Obviously, this is a fact that only extreme heads know – the RAH show was my third ever National gig; tonight is my 38th and on Friday I’ll reach 40. (Yes, take it as read that I have little critical objectivity here: before the set starts, Guardian journalist Dorian Lynskey jokes that I love the National more than he loves his own children.) Nevertheless, it’s one of many layers of poignancy nestled in the five-piece’s masterful Other stage headline set tonight.

“Getting pretty dark out there isn’t it,” says frontman Matt Berninger as the sky dims. “Getting pretty dark out there in America … I’ll talk about that later.” Then follows The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness, a song about political dysfunction and misinformation spliced with a beaten piano that resounds like a warning shot, and an impossibly groovy guitar solo by Aaron Dessner. Later, they do a one-two of Fake Empire, a song about political disaffection that Berninger introduces as one that “keeps getting more and more appropriate, and that’s really depressing”, and then Mr November, a raging, triumphal song about a presidential candidate high on hope and hubris that hits painfully hard given Biden’s faltering debate performance earlier in the week.

In the past year, the National have been delving deep into their catalogue to laden their setlists with rarities. Tonight, their first Glastonbury stage headline slot, isn’t one of those, though we do get an incredible rendition of Abel, from 2005’s Alligator, Berninger shredding his voice on the screams of “my mind’s not right”. Instead, it’s a run through the classics that also makes a convincing case from some newer songs – from the highly underrated pair of albums they put out last year, Last Two Pages of Frankenstein and Laugh Track – as classics in the making. Eucalyptus is low and rumbling, Berninger furiously gesticulating and petulant as he plays the self-sabotaging party in a relationship. Tropic Morning News frets at losing a connection with the person you thought understood you best, though ends in a wickedly loose riff from the Dessners. Drummer Bryan Devendorf has been the best player of his kind in indie rock for years, but he’s on another level this evening, sounding fleet and filigreed.

Two years ago, I saw the National play at Primavera festival in Barcelona, during a now well-publicised period of mental ill-health for Berninger. He was so clearly ill at ease that it was upsetting to watch. So much has changed in the intervening period: tonight, he’s a perfect combination of Morrissey-influenced showman and the crushed embodiment of his dejected, fretful lyricism. A photographer’s dream, with his Jarvis-worthy shapes – he dances and contorts himself so much that the elbows of his suit are worn threadbare – he spends a good amount of the set running up and down the pit, shaking hands and clutching audience members by the head. For penultimate song Terrible Love, he runs into the field and performs much of it screaming by a metal green fence as fans throng around – a thrilling moment for a band often unfairly dismissed as buttoned up.

It’s a stark contrast to the final song, the hushed, fearful ballad About Today, from the 2004 Cherry Tree EP. (I far prefer them closing with this to the a capella version of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks, which they’ve been doing for years.) It plays as another elegy: “How close am I / To losing you?” Berninger sings as the Dessners’ hesitant guitar loops brim into full-blown noise – a song about a relationship that also serves as a reminder of how easily the status quo can slip through your fingers. The National came back from the brink just in time to soundtrack ours.

Fat Dog must be exhausted. They’ve already played three sets this weekend, two of which have taken place in small, rowdy bars in the early hours of the morning. And now it’s Sunday evening, which is – for many – the moment the social battery starts to switch off. But when they bound out to Carl Orff’s epic O Fortuna, it’s all guns blazing. Within no time, frontman Joe Love is pushing through the crowd to their chaotic storm of noise while members of the rhythm section stalk around and perform silly synchronised choreo.

In many ways, Fat Dog are a typical south London band: they don fisherman’s overalls and utility wear with cowboy and trapper hats – pretty much the unofficial Windmill Brixton uniform. Musically, they draw on that formula too, with a blend of choppy post-punk and winding klezmer, tied together with guttural growls, wandering sax lines and a wry performance of macho bravado. It immediately recalls groups like Black Country, New Road or Fat White Family, with a hint of Kasabian (sorry!). But the vocals are strong and the gritty references to EBM and dark disco are a nice touch.

They’re received extremely well by a sprawling Lonely Hearts crowd, who start mosh pitting almost straight away, whilst chanting along and chucking cans. It’s an impressive turn out. But quite quickly, Fat Dog’s schtick grows a little tired: the choreo; the drummer’s dog mask (a gimmick already so established that several audience members wear them too); the deepthroating of the microphone. The sleazy, shredding cover of Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction is both clever and good, but it loses a bit of its magic the second or third time round. It makes you wonder how much longevity they’ll have.

Tricks and imitations aside, most of Fat Dog’s tunes sound great. And to their credit, they do know how to put on a show: their crowd is probably the most raucous one I’ve seen all weekend. With that in mind, fair play to ‘em.

West Holts, 8pm

Teeing up Nia Archives’s is a recording of an 90s DJ extolling the wonders of jungle, its working class credentials, its diversity and its spirit of adventure. “I wish everything in Britain could be as good as jungle,” he cries, as grainy footage of old school ravers plays on the big screen. Archives, at 24, may firmly be in the Gen Z camp but the Bradford DJ has a keen sense of jungle and drum’n’bass heritage, something that she smartly taps into in front of a crowd who were there the first time around.

Perched regally atop what looks like a giant inflatable row of silver teeth, she opens her set with a run of crowd-pleasing remixes: a pitchshifted You Got the Love, Pump up the Jam, Mousse T’s Horny, Hollaback. Familiar motifs, riffs and melodies whizz past thrillingly in the blink of an eye, while Archives bounces gleefully up and down.

Midway through her set Archives switches to her own material from well received debut Silence is Loud. It’s a jarring shift, a giddy succession of classics replaced with something ever so slightly more sombre, and the crowd energy dissipates a little in response. But soon they’re won over by the lovelorn alt-rock-tinted bangers, full of raw twentysomething emoting. She closes with a return to more buoyant remixes, a thrilling flash of past, present and future.

Here’s Alexis’s review of the rammed Avril show. I’ve had My Happy Ending stuck in my head since catching it on the breeze an hour or so ago.

Woodsies, 6.30pm

One reason Glastonbury is so beloved is its famous “bubble” atmosphere, where all in the world seems good for a few days and it’s possible to believe that everyone in it (or at least on the farm) is righteously committed to bettering it even more. Very admirable, of course, but Kim Gordon’s set on Sunday evening brings an extremely welcome dose of evil to the peace-and-love vibe. Never mind grabbing a shower – it feels unbelievably cleansing to be strafed with thick, revolting noise on opener Bye Bye, whose piercing synth shards evoke trying to catch your reflection in a broken mirror.

There’s so much tension and release in her music, which is pocked with glinting, dripping synths and scabrous textures conjured by her guitarist attacking her instrument with a screwdriver. During one song that sounds fit to soundtrack a goth strip club, Gordon lays on the ground and dangles the microphone over her mouth. And when metal and heavy music tend to get an underwhelming showing at Glastonbury, Gordon’s trademark dank bass tuning, blasts of monstrous, malevolent hardcore and lurching distortion are filling a void (and evoking one, too).

If only more people were at Woodsies to see it: not to be that person, but it is hard to shake a little resentment that the Other stage is currently log-jammed with tens of thousands of people watching commercial pop-punk brand Avril Lavigne when there’s a genuine, 70-year-old avant garde legend seething about US gun culture (It’s Dark Inside) and restriction of women’s rights (Grass Jeans – originally released to support a charity that assists Texan women with travelling to abortion clinics) on offer. Granted, Gordon can’t match Lavigne for singalong choruses, but she’s possibly the definitive model of what’s possible when you reject nostalgia to prioritise constant reinvention and evolution. I know I said this about Mdou Moctar earlier, but this is hands down my favourite set of the festival.

Here’s my review of Shania Twain, bringing country glamour to the Pyramid stage.

Other stage, 6pm

If Shania Twain’s legends slot feels strangely timely given the amount of pop-country currently in the UK singles chart, you could say the same thing about Avril Lavigne’s performance, which seems a little like a legends slot in all but name.

Pop-punk is very much a thing again, and while you can trace the genre’s roots back to the Buzzcocks’ debut single, no artist can claim to have made punk more pop than Lavigne did in the early 00s: refashioning its sound – with a dash of grunge’s angst – as bratty but harmless tweenage entertainment. Her debut album shifted so many copies that its follow-up was deemed a commercial disappointment on the grounds that only sold 10m, as opposed to its predecessor’s 16m. Moreover, its current practitioners have been more than happy to pay tribute to a woman they clearly consider to be the OG: Olivia Rodrigo covered Complicated when she played Glastonbury (and the same stage) two years ago.

“Here’s to never growing up,” Lavigne sings, as well she might: after briefly dabbling with a more mature sound – moody Christian rock, if you please – on 2019’s Head Above water, she clearly realised which way the wind was blowing and leaned back into her original mall-rat teen-punk persona. On one hand, you have to feel for her: the song’s protestations notwithstanding, it has to be weird to be trapped in a perpetual fishnets-and-tartan-miniskirt adolescence, doomed for the rest of eternity to write songs called things like Love Sux and Bite Me, and to have to screw your face up, stick your tongue out and do the devil horns things with your hands every time a camera’s pointed at you.

On the other, look at the size of that crowd. In another example of this year’s weird scheduling choices, she’s on The Other Stage at the same time Janelle Monae is on the Pyramid: the latter plays to a sparse audience, while there’s so many people crammed into the smaller area that stewards are forced to close one entrance to stop anyone else turning up. Inside the audience are – as the band Lavigne professes to enjoy singing along to at the top of her lungs would put it – packt like sardines in a crushd tin box. There really are an awful lot of early 30-something ladies on people’s shoulders, not merely singing, but cathartically emoting like mad to Losing Grip and I’m With You: the moment when Lavigne organises a crowd singalong to the latter seems a little surplus to requirements, given that everyone in the field already seems to bellowing along to every word she sings anyway.

Critically mocked as cosplay punk and rounded-edge grunge her music may have been – the idea of Avril Lavigne being widely hailed as a major influence would have been a very peculiar notion to conjure with in 2004, which just goes to show how wrong you can be – but a song like Don’t Tell Me, which advised her her fans not to feel pressurised into having sex, clearly spoke very directly to a generation of women only a few years younger than Lavigne herself when her debut album was released.

For someone who evidently had such an impact on people’s lives, she’s a coolly professional rather than wildly engaging stage presence, although her voice sounds great. But that scarcely matters. Anyone who wasn’t under her spell in the early 00s might be startled at how robust her songs sound 20 years on. They’re exceptionally well written, and moreover there doesn’t seem to be much of a drop off in musical quality when the set veers away from her first two albums into her more recent oeuvre. Certainly, there’s no drop off in the audience’s enthusiasm: the field remains packed and noisily devoted to the end – a rapturously-received run through Sk8r Boi – which rather suggests they’re here for more reasons than mere nostalgia.

Followers to the live blog will be aware that someone set up a flatscreen TV in the campsite to watch the England game, after the festival organisers refused to show the game. It turns out that the TV organiser is none other than One Direction star Louis Tomlinson, who had a generator, a telly on wheels and a dongle working in perfect harmony. He left Glastonbury this morning, got it all from Argos, and came back with it. I love this so much.

Gwilym spoke to him. Louis tells us: “It’s the second screen I’ve bought. The first one cracked. I wasn’t going to take credit for it if we lost in normal time but now that we’ve equalised I’m happy to.”

Pyramid stage, 5.45pm
The odds feel stacked against Janelle Monáe. As if following on from Shania Twain’s anticipated legends set isn’t a raw enough deal, nostalgia frenzy means Avril Lavigne’s Other stage set is rammed, and on top of that the football’s started. As such, the audience size feels barely worth the premier placement of the Pyramid stage. Though these moments are where an artist can truly prove their worth – to be one of those acts you feel some mild regret for missing.

Sadly I’m not sure this can be said for Monáe’s set, which suffers from pacing issues and incoherent production. It takes too long to get going – each member of the band enters the stage one at a time, bows and waves which is nice but tedious. When the singer-actor finally emerges, she’s clad in a floral crown, boots and overcoat for a performance of Float. It’s a fabulous, trippy performance which makes good use of trap drums and there’s a considerable swagger to Monáe. She very naturally transitions between singing and furious rapping but her live runs are inconsistent: sometimes divine, sometimes unimpressive.

On to Champagne Shit and the coat is thrown off to reveal a power shouldered black bodysuit. Last year, on release of album The Age of Pleasure, Monáe enjoyed something of a sexual reinvention, throwing off the previously more conservative dressing, sci-fi glitz and Catholic-style head coverings to be wonderfully scantily clad. This was accompanied by a message of sexual liberation and self confidence, and indeed “it’s all in them hips” as she shakes and twists with her dancers. In her familiar paeans to black queer sexuality she shouts out Pride month, but spends entirely too long talking through different historical icons and getting a band member to perform a solo that she’s ended up nearly 20 minutes in only performing two songs. By Django Jane, though it’s a ferociously good bossy anthem, you start to wonder where it’s all going.

Soon we’re treated to the iconic pink pussy pants with a Jean Paul Gaultier pink bodysuit as Monáe finally comes into her stride with performances of Pynk and Yoga. As she twerks, bends and flashes the crowd a man next to me says “she’s a frisky girl isn’t she!” For I Like That, Monáe excels and the crowd swoons. In a Michael Jackson-like glittering black suit with white socks, she sings while strumming a guitar for Make Me Feel which is groovy, funky, fun.

There is a great, multitalented performer here, and elements of a good production. But the set never really exceeds being just enjoyable enough.

West Holts stage, 3.30pm
While Shania Twain takes on the legends slot over at the Pyramid stage, the crowd at West Holts are treated to a bass-rattling performance from legends closer to home. Formed in 1975 in Birmingham, Steel Pulse changed the musical and political landscape of the time with their punk-adjacent rock-reggae sound and their contributions to causes like Rock Against Racism. Their 1978 debut album Handsworth Revolution, a staple in the reggae canon, projected their experiences as second-gen Black British people in the Midlands, addressing questions of police corruption, social justice and revolution.

Here at Glastonbury four decades on, they still strike a chord. Though their rhythm section have rotated, original frontman, David Hinds, and keyboard player, Selwyn Brown, remain and show little signs of slowing down: their vocals are still strong and they perform with real dexterity and bravado, bounding around the stage as they thrash through their extensive back catalogue. The whole eight-piece band are tight, and there are moments when each of them shine: the excellent winding horn section in Don’t Shoot, the trickling percussion in Soldiers and the absolute shredding in Steppin’ Out. There’s also plenty of rumbling low end, as there should be.

Steel Pulse’s political themes also continue to resonate. Midway through their set, the music crashes to a halt. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem!” Hinds declares. “God damn it, can you believe it’s 2024 and we’re still having to be rocking against racism?” He outlines his targets to enthusiastic cheers: “Racism, nazism, poverty, police brutality – that’s always the loudest cheer of all!” He calls for prosperity and “peace in Ukraine and the Middle East”, before letting out an ear-piercing shriek. Later on, during the upbeat stepper Don’t Shoot, the band put their hands up in sync and the sound of gunshots echo from the stage. Even amid their high spirits and bouncing rhythms, their message remains strong.

Other stage, 3pm

If Don Logan from Sexy Beast were to join an ashram and dance like nobody’s watching, he would strongly resemble Tim Booth. The intensity of the singer’s gaze suggests he is about to either cajole you into one last bank job or make you do the downward-facing dog. Probably the latter. As he recalls James’s Glastonbury debut in 1990, he waxes lyrical about leylines, “bacchanalian revelry” and “this magical land”. A statuette of Ganesh surveys the crowd.

Anyone who lost contact with James after their 1990s hits (me) may be amazed to learn that they’re fresh off an arena tour, but it’s not hard to see why. This is heady stuff. In fact, they’re able to play tambourine-shaking Madchester anthem Come Home and hearty singalong Sit Down early on, and Laid not at all, without any loss of energy. They turn out to be the ideal Sunday afternoon festival band to soothe and rouse the fragile.

The shamanic trance-rock of Sound sets the surging, psychedelic tone while Out to Get You reaches a brain-spinning climax worthy of Spiritualized. Even the double drum solo (drum duet?) is a thrill, which is not usually true of drum solos. The female percussionist may be the most jubilant performer I’ve seen all weekend.

The gorgeous visuals are suitably bright and trippy: live footage merging into Indian-influenced art, a rainbow storm of butterflies. And Booth is never less than mesmerising, whether dancing like he’s expelling evil spirits or swimming into the throng during Life’s a Fucking Miracle for a bout of ramrod-straight crowdsurfing that suggests a core of iron.

As the camera scans the crowd during Sit Down, you can see a man who looks like a human time capsule of early 90s Glastonbury – white beard, Terry Pratchett hat, Levellers T-shirt – alongside screaming teenagers. Like Booth’s rigorous fitness regimen, James’s evolution into acid faith healers is keeping them young.

Park stage, 3.15pm

It’s a tall order, going up against Shania in the legends slot on the main stage, but if your vibe is more desert rock than cowgirl, Mdou Moctar’s set is the place to be.

The Tuareg guitarist and his band come out to a stomach-rumbling low vocal drone punctuated with ominous bird caws and cricket scratch, on to a stage promisingly laden with Orange amps, hinting at the volume to come. At first, the khaki-clad Moctar looks cool and unruffled as he plays a fleet-fingered, cantering riff, while his band – all dressed in purple, quite likely in a nod to his remake of the film Purple Rain, entitled Rain the Colour of Blue with a Little Red in It – supply a brilliantly krautrocky groove.

But he’s just warming up – literally. “I was so cold, then I saw some people with no shirt here!” he remarks. Moctar comes from Niger: “In my hometown this is like winter. Earlier I couldn’t come outside because it’s cold for me, but it’s summer for you!”

From that point on, he begins to loosen up. Jumping up and down, kicking his leg and running on the spot, he unleashes fantastic, staticky, strangled riffs that could whip the Glastonbury dust into an even greater frenzy, and suggest hurtling down a highway at phenomenal speed. A few looser, groovier moments add richness, but Moctar’s relentless lightning-strike playing and Souleymane Ibrahim’s merciless drumming are consistently captivating. By the end, a now perpetually grinning Mdou comes down to play in the front row, prompting a sudden influx to the barrier to greet this shyly sublime showman. My favourite set of the festival.

Chaps? Check. Hat? Check. Rhinestones? Check. Taste for country being spliced with pop in the most kitsch manner imaginable? CHECK. The Pyramid audience is packed as far that big tree at the back, the benchmark of pan-festival popularity.

A parade of drag queens, surely from Glasto queer club NYC Downlow, bring Shania in flanked by giant hobby horses as That Don’t Impress Me Much kicks like a mule. Shania looks fabulous in a giant pink floral ensemble and – of course – cowboy hat. Coolest touch, though, is her own line dance instructor out front, acting rather like the sign language interpreters for deaf fans, but for drunk people trying to co-ordinate themselves. The security detail out front are all dancing in unison and even though her voice is still warming up a bit – and her mic levels are a bit wonky – this is terrifically good fun already.

Park stage, 2pm

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets arrive on the Park stage to the climax of Nessun Dorma. It’s the trademark tongue-in-cheek opener of the psych-prog-rock band, highlighting by contrast their own grungy, tatted-up, cargo-panted, shaggy-dog styles – but it does also generate a sense of occasion for their heavily amplified, roiling set. There’s already a sizeable crowd gathered by their start, and by the end it is reaching up to the Ribbon Tower with more groups seated all the way up the hill by the Crow’s Nest bar.

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets (PPC from now on, for the sake of brevity and my own sanity) are on the heavier side of Glastonbury’s scheduling this year, like the more metal little brother of fellow Aussies King Gizzard. It’s music that draws in an audience, whether you’re catching the guitar solos from far back or headbanging up the front (and there is indeed some headbanging).

There are shades of Judas Priest to singer Jack McEwan’s occasional howls and stream-of-consciousness, nonsense-poetry lyrics. But for all the heavy distortion and shrieking guitar solos, there is – as their name suggests – a central core of whimsy to PPC. It’s signalled by Mr Rodney, a plastic tortoise that takes pride of place on a stool next to McEwan on the stage. (He’s even mic’d up, but maybe low in the mix – at least I can’t pick him out.)

Their songs are stormy but also noodly, and tend to run into each other in the way of a lot of prog and psych stuff, but they are performed tightly and with flair and the crowd are loving it. Nootmare (K.I.L.L.I.n.G) [Meow!] – and please do picture me laboriously typing that out on my phone in a field – is thrashy fun, augmented by the stream of trippy visuals beamed on the screen behind them: reptilian scales, wide-eyed kittens. Bill’s Mandolin is a foot-stomping shout-along, with a storytelling quality born of the Aussie raconteur tradition, even as I struggle to make out the lyrics. That’s not the point. To quote a classic Australian film, The Castle: “it’s the vibe,” and the vibe is fun, fast and loud.

The consistencies within PPC’s songs make the set a bit one-note. The relatively mellow Found God in a Tomato (“a song about finding God in a tomato”) registers as a relief, but even then the protracted proggy instrumental opening turns out to be a slow build, leading to more thrashing. But the energy is matched by the crowd, and McEwan’s obvious thrill to be playing at Glastonbury further endears him. He dedicates Cubensis Lenses to a fan he met earlier in the crowd, and later shouts out their manager and his mum, pointing out that it was only a few years ago that “they were a tiny little band playing basements in Perth … it’s our fuckin’ dream to be here … it’s absolutely insane. Hi, Mum, I’m on the BBC! We did it!” I suspect they’ll be invited back.

Pyramid stage, 12.30pm

This performance couldn’t be more diametrically opposed to that of the previous band to play this stage. Where Coldplay last night brought pyro, fireworks, LED wristbands, lasers, guest vocalists, Afrobeat legends, and projections of K-poppers BTS on the side of the Pyramid, blues musician Seasick Steve has a drummer, a guitarist, and a guitar made out of a Mississippi numberplate. “I made it,” he says. “It’s a piece of shit.” There is a guest star in the form of a barefoot harmonica player, but Steve barely even stands up. With Coldplay’s confetti decaying amid the woodchippings underfoot, the crowd are taken back down to earth after the intergalactic scale of the night before.

One song is introduced as being “about people who try to rip you off on the internet”. Then in droll sotto voce: “… though if you weren’t on the internet, maybe you wouldn’t get ripped off.” Another new song has the lyrics “move out to the country, leave your phones behind ... time to get offline”.

His drummer’s cymbals are frayed; his arrayed guitars are either battered or homemade; his forked-bearded chin probably last saw sunlight in puberty. A cynic might argue that Seasick Steve’s analogue fetishism is as much a schtick as Coldplay’s futurological tomfoolery. But there really is a deeply affecting immediacy to these songs, his raw voice, and the unfiltered electricity of his guitar playing. Barracuda is a highlight, stomping along with gimlet-eyed intent and decorated with an insanely raunchy guitar solo from his sideman. But the sweeter, more bucolic moments are just as strong.

And then there’s the kind of awestruck moment the Pyramid generates more of than any other. Now 73, Steve reminisces about the mid-00s when he was unemployed, his wife was a cleaner, and they were close to losing their house before “the miracle of Jools Holland”, who booked Steve on his TV show. Quickly, “the people of the UK adopted me like some old stray dog”. He looks out at the crowd he has made from nothing and is buffeted by a wave of emotion, tears springing to his eyes. He and the audience are so closely wound for the rest of the performance, though he admits to looking forward to who’s on next: Paloma Faith. “Hoo-wee, I do love that girl. And she crazier than a bat.”

Other stage, 12.30pm

It’s a sleepy Sunday midday set for indie-rock songwriter Rachel Chinouriri, who steps on to stage to the sound of birds chirping. Earlier this year she released her debut album, What a Devastating Turn of Events, combining an aesthetic indebted to Britpop, riot grrrl and the blunt 2000s British indie pop of Lily Allen and Kate Nash with deep reflections on belonging and migrant identity. The latter is most apparent during her luscious performance of The Hills, in which she describes the mental difficulties of her family making a home in England away from Zimbabwe, with grungy lyrics describing “pulling the skin off my bones”. The St George’s cross fills the background, and Chinouriri wears a punky outfit with a British flag motif.

As with the weather switching between sunny spells and clouds, Chinouriri’s music shifts between desolation and upbeatness. An uptempo performance of Ribs has the crowd jumping, but then Robbed, written about losing her six-day-old niece, is dedicated to the people of Palestine and “what they’ve been going through for 75 years”. The dark solemnity of the song quietens the crowd. It is a requiem for the dead that also articulates the confusion and cruelty of losing someone you barely got to know – that “unfamiliar face I should’ve recognised”. She cries after this performance, and is soothed by the crowd’s support.

I’m certain there’s a beautiful, crushing novel within Chinouriri. She tells us that “love has no currency, you can definitely underspend it but you can’t overspend it”. She also speaks of her indebtedness to Black British female musicians – Keisha Buchanan of the Sugababes, Shingai Shoniwa of the Noisettes, and Estelle – and pays tribute with a great cover of Estelle’s song American Boy. She ends her set with a jumper, Never Need Me, which features that classic empowerment trope of turning someone’s mistreatment back in their face. It’s no mean feat to take your crowd through such extremes of mood and experience, and there’s clearly an incredible power and strength within her.

West Holts, 12.30pm

By the time Sunday rolls around at Glastonbury, some serious TLC is required (especially if you spent the early hours trekking back from Block9). But with Jalen Ngonda, the quickly rising east coast-born, UK-based singer-songwriter, we are in safe hands: his slick soul bops and shimmering slow groovers, laced with an imposing falsetto, are enough to soothe any sore, serotonin-depleted heads.

But it’s more than just background music. As soon as Ngonda and his band step into their swaying opening track, those parked up on blankets and camping chairs saunter forwards; within 20 minutes he has people wailing a fragment of a chorus back to him, albeit shakily. “Y’all must be really hungover or something!” he laughs.

Ngonda’s music harks back to the heyday of soul and clear parallels can be made with legacy acts like Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye – just listen to that vocal range! – but it resists feeling corny or pastiche. Just like his breakthrough 2023 album Come Around and Love Me, his Glastonbury debut is a sharp, classy affair, with enough sweet hooks and killer vocals to cut through and stand on its own feet.

Other stage, 11.15am

If you’re looking for a new iPhone alarm, you could do worse than Zuton Fever. Many a dishevelled, bleary head emerges out of a Glasto tent at the screeching riff of the Zutons’s unofficial theme tune.

The Zutons, who haven’t played Glastonbury for 16 years, are a more noisy, abrasive band than you may remember, with Abi Harding’s squawking sax bringing a power and sharpness to their bluesy rhythm section. Tracks such as Pauline and the insistent You Will You Won’t feel like a cold, invigorating slap at this time in the morning.

Obviously one song receives a cheer 10 times as big all the others combined: Glasto singalongs are a rarity before midday, but Valerie prompts one. The Zutons’ original is never likely to dislodge Amy Winehouse’s cover in most people’s affections, but its more energised stomp feels ideal for a big Other stage crowd.

“We were shitting ourselves about this,” admits vocalist Dave McCabe midway through the set. But, bar a few false starts for Pressure Point, they don’t look flustered at all. Instead there’s a tightness and synchronicity in keeping with a band who have been around, on or off, for more than 20 years now. A consummately professional – if noisy – way to kick Sunday off.

Pyramid stage, 11.30am

For any sore heads, jangled nerves and discombobulated limbic systems after what was a very big Saturday night out for many, no full-sugar beverage or shoulder massage will have matched what Birmingham Royal Ballet so beautifully bring to the Pyramid stage. Interlinked is a production from 2022, choreographed by Juliano Nunes, and inspired by “how the energy that we exude bounces from one person to the next, in a never ending circle” – ie an extremely Glastonbury vibe.

Luke Howard’s string-led score features a central melancholy octave-jumping motif that seems to mirror the dancers’ leaping and stretching towards one another. Large groups contract to pairs of dancers, allowing intense bonds to form before being folded into the group again, much like your average Saturday night at Glasto spent copping off with someone you’ve just met before blending your friend groups later on. And with men and women alike in flowing tulle skirts, Birmingham Royal Ballet have clearly got the memo about Glastonbury’s radically relaxed attitude to gendered clothing, while one male dancer has an impressively punkish amount of ink.

The dancing is exquisite – poised but not brittle, and so alive to the possibility of human connection. One of the best feelings at Glastonbury is that everyone here is reaching towards beauty in one way or another; towards the best of what humanity can do and be. This performance thrillingly embodied those values.

Approximating the words of today’s legends slot: let’s crack on. It’s Sunday at Glastonbury (which seems to have gone extremely fast), it’s overcast outside, spirits are reasonably high in the Guardian cabin and I feel like I saw the sun rise far too recently to be up at this hour. We have reviews to come of the likes of Rachel Chinouriri, Janelle Monáe, Avril Lavigne, SZA and more. Absolutely no prizes for guessing who I’m most excited to see today (for the 38th time).