“I’ve dreamt about this my whole life, and I can’t believe I’m with you,” Dua Lipa tells a packed Pyramid Stage field as the sun sets over the first full day of Glastonbury 2024. She’s three songs into her first headlining performance at the festival and clearly relishing it – as are the massive crowd who’ve come to let the pop star really get their Friday night party started.
In the run-up to this momentous milestone in Lipa’s career, the artist promised to turn Worthy Farm “into a nightclub”. On the surface, that seems like a fairly tricky job, given clubs are often dark, sweaty enclaves where you can feel the speakers thumping in your chest, and Glastonbury is, well, the opposite of that. As she gets deeper into the set and the night gets darker, though, it’s clear that Dua can pull off the assignment she’s given herself.
It takes a minute to get there, though. The opening section of the performance is packed with bangers like ‘One Kiss’ and ‘Break My Heart’, but is missing something that makes it really hit hard. It’s not until ‘Levitating’, when the stage is lit up with the first of a ream of sparkling fireworks, that the atmosphere begins to build to the euphoria and ecstasy that you want from a headline set. After illuminating the night sky, Lipa ramps things up quickly, with a rousing ‘Be The One’, during which she enlists the crowd as her extended group of backing vocalists.
“Tonight, I get to pretend I’m in Tame Impala,” the star announces afterwards, as she ushers on her only special guest of the night – and her ‘Radical Optimism’ collaborator – Kevin Parker. The pair duet on a playful version of Tame’s ‘The Less I Know The Better’ and, when they mess up a line, turn it into a sweet giggle between mates.
Much has been said of Lipa’s performance skills in the past, but if tonight proves anything, it’s that she’s put the work in on that side of her craft. She confidently nails the choreography throughout, while her consistently strong and stable vocals never suffer from the moves she’s pulling. She utilises her dancers perfectly, too, letting them take centre stage while she goes off for a costume change before we really get into the party peak of the set.
As those dancers dazzle on stage, lasers shoot out from the Pyramid over the crowd and the visuals on the big screens turn blurry and trippy. Yellow smiley faces pop up every few seconds, hammering home that Lipa doesn’t want this to be your average headline performance but a gigantic rave. When she returns to the stage, she makes that clear with a new take on ‘New Rules’ that interpolates Bicep’s ‘Glue’, and a sizzling version of her Silk City collaboration ‘Electricity’.
The energy doesn’t drop as she gears up for the end of her big moment, with a powerful encore of ‘Physical’, a ferocious ‘Don’t Start Now’ and ‘Houdini’, which sees Parker return to the stage. “This has been the maddest night of my life,” Lipa exclaims before that run kicks off. It’s an achievement she’s more than earned, though, setting the bar high for the rest of this year’s headliners.
Dua Lipa played:
‘Training Season’
‘One Kiss’
‘Illusion’
‘Break My Heart’
‘Levitating’
‘These Walls’
‘Be The One’
‘The Less I Know The Better’
‘Falling Forever’
‘Love Again’
‘Pretty Please’
‘Hallucinate’
‘New Rules’
‘Electricity’
‘Cold Heart’
‘Happy For You’
‘Physical’
‘Don’t Start Now’
‘Houdini’
