Dua Lipa, Sza and Coldplay to headline Glastonbury Festival
LONDON – Musical acts Dua Lipa, SZA and Coldplay will headline the 2024 Glastonbury music festival, organisers said on March 14, marking the first time that women acts take two of the top three slots.
Famed as much for its mud as its music, the wildly popular event has become a fixture in British life since 1970 and is one of the musical highlights of the year.
Tickets for this year’s festival, due to take place at Worthy Farm in southwest England on June 26 to 30, were snapped up within an hour of going on sale in November 2023.
A standard ticket for the event was priced at £355 (S$604).
British-Albanian pop sensation Dua Lipa, who played at the event once before in 2017, will make her headline debut on the main Pyramid stage on the night of June 28.
“I have dreamt of this moment all my life. Something that lived only in my wildest dreams and highest manifestations,” she wrote on her Instagram page.
Grammy and Brit winner SZA, who’s real name Solana Imani Rowe, will headline the show on June 30.
It will be the first time that the American R&B singer, who is known for the songs Snooze and Ghost In The Machine, will perform at the festival.
British pop-rock band Coldplay will make their first Pyramid stage appearance since 2016 on the night of June 29, becoming the first act to headline Glastonbury five times.
South Korean boyband Seventeen are also set to make history at the festival’s iconic Pyramid Stage as the first K-pop act to perform at Glastonbury. The exact date and time of their performance has yet to be announced.
Meanwhile, Canadian singer-songwriter Shania Twain, known for hits including Man! I Feel Like A Woman!, You’re Still The One and That Don’t Impress Me Much, will perform in the legends slot on the afternoon of June 30.
“There’s like a stamp that comes with this slot and I feel like I’m there, I’ve arrived at this slot,” the five-time Grammy award-winner who has sold more than 100 million records, told the BBC.
United States rock band LCD Soundsystem, British rapper Little Simz, Nigeria’s Burna Boy, 1980s star Cyndi Lauper and British soul singer Olivia Dean, will also perform on the Pyramid stage.
British dairy farmer Michael Eavis first organised the festival in 1970, the day after American rock star Jimi Hendrix died. Fans who came paid £1 each for entry and received free milk from the farm.
The festival was held intermittently in the 1970s but it wasn’t until the 1990s that it began to acquire its current cult status.
The headliner for 2023 was English musical icon Elton John, who played his last concert in Britain during the festival.
In 2022, British pop legend Paul McCartney brought the festival back with a bang after Covid interruptions in 2020 and 2021. – AFP, REUTERS
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