Kanye West delivered an uncompromising headline performance at Glastonbury Festival on Saturday that ignited when the US rapper left the Pyramid Stage to take to the sky for hits Touch The Sky and All of the Lights.
West was the polarising figure of Europe’s biggest greenfield festival, and the announcement of his appearance prompted thousands to sign a petition against the choice of a rap act for the top billing.
The multi-talented West, who arrived with reality star wife Kim Kardashian in a helicopter, proved doubters wrong by attracting a large audience who knew the words to many of his tracks.
He opened his set with Stronger, performed under a low-lighting rig that compounded the intensity of his rapping.
Later Touch the Sky was abandoned a few bars in, only to restart with West high above the stage in a breathtaking moment of theatre.
West, whose ego is as well known as his songs, did not launch into any monologues, a feature of some performances, but he did proclaim: “You are now watching the greatest living rock star on the planet”.
Kieran Brooks, 21, agreed, saying the performance was “absolutely incredible”, although he added that West pitched the show at existing fans.
But the hotly anticipated headline slot was briefly interrupted when someone invaded the stage. Lee Nelson, the comedian-turned-prankster, ran on to the Pyramid stage during the American rapper’s fourth song before being quickly wrestled off by a security guard. West attempted to continue with the song, Black Skinhead, but seconds later called a halt and restarted the performance. The interruption is not the first high-profile prank by Nelson, whose real name is Simon Brodkin. He managed to sneak into a photograph with the England football team before last year’s World Cup in Brazil.
Pharrell Williams earlier in the evening had a huge crowd dancing and jumping to hits Blurred Lines and Get Lucky.
A group of young children joined the US singer and producer on stage for Happy, his huge seller of last year.
“Make some noise for the English future on stage,” he said.
British singer-songwriters George Ezra, Paloma Faith and Burt Bacharach, a pop legend almost four times his age, delighted afternoon audiences at the dairy farm in southwest England.
Ezra’s sun-drenched set included hits Budapest, which he premiered on a smaller set at the festival two years ago, Blame It On Me, and a cover of Macy Gray’s I Try.
“His voice melts my heart,” 24-year-old fan Holly Harvey said after his performance on the Pyramid Stage.
Bacharach initially left the vocals to his singers for a medley of songs that soundtracked the sixties and seventies, from I Say a Little Prayer to Trains and Boats and Planes and I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.
The 87-year-old songwriter took to the mic later in his set, before leading the crowd in a mass singalong of Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head as, right on cue, light drizzle started.
The rain interrupted a day of sunshine. The warm weather dried up most of the mud on the site caused by heavy downpours — a perennial feature of the event — on Friday.
