There comes some extent at Glastonbury 2024 the place it turns into simpler to surrender a few mile away from the stage.
Very like Sugababes’ overcrowded set, the grouchy, nostalgic pop-punk queen Avril Lavigne is likely one of the pageant’s must-see acts, but is shoved on a too-small stage in entrance of an amazing sea of individuals. Janelle Monae, over on the Pyramid Stage at the very same time, is the unfortunate recipient of poor planning – a genius pop star performing to a barely-there crowd. It’s not nice.
In troublesome circumstances, crowd-control at Glastonbury do a superb job, preserving everybody protected and herding hundreds of individuals in entrance of the Different Stage and the encompassing areas. All people appears to have the ability to see, and – not like the Sugababes over at West Holts on Thursday – there aren’t any stories of individuals being informed to again away. Lavigne herself is overwhelmed.
“I can’t consider it’s taken me 22 years to play Glastonbury,” she says. “It’s about time.”
This can be a good present, however Glastonbury should study classes from a yr that has vastly underestimated the enchantment of pop nostalgia, and overestimated the curiosity in lots of performing over on the Pyramid.
That stated, there’s something extremely particular about being, roughly, 1,000,000 miles away from the Different Stage and singing in unison with a small nation of individuals of their late twenties and early thirties, to whom Lavigne is one thing of a god.
All of us stuffed behind the group, close to the meals distributors and the bathrooms, know completely each phrase of an artist who, for all of the cynical mockery she skilled at the start of her early fame, immediately spoke to a technology.
“Did anybody right here have a replica of my first album, Let Go?,” Lavigne asks at one level. It takes some resistance for the group to not scream again, “Duh”.
Lavigne is now 39, however retains the laconic, vaguely petulant efficiency model that has at all times outlined her. She strikes slowly throughout the stage, sings powerfully however largely statically. “Right here’s to by no means rising up”, she as soon as sang. She was a minimum of being sincere.
“Girlfriend” kicks issues off with bratty brilliance, earlier than Lavigne segues into “What the Hell”, one other mid-career observe about as synonymous with a selected second in time as a My Chemical Romance patch and much an excessive amount of mind energy spent rating the Wentz brothers.
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There are extra sing-alongs to the evocative rock ballad “My Pleased Ending”, and an enormous, audible “aww” when the attractive strings first kick in for “I’m with You”, a type of formidable gut-wrenchers comfortably sitting within the new millennium energy ballad canon.
There’s a wealthy energy to the plainness of Lavigne’s lyrics, which resist flowery metaphor in favour of direct translation of commonplace woe: “Isn’t anybody looking for me?/ Gained’t any individual come take me house?” she sings on “I’m with You”.
“It’s a rattling chilly night time / Attempting to determine this life…”
She’s by no means been thought of a lot of a songwriter, and even significantly vital within the grand scheme of coming-of-age music, however it’d be beautiful if her Glastonbury set serves as a reminder of her enchantment and her significance.
“Sk8r Boi” – that genius mixture of head-banging brilliance and deep Y2K cringe – brings the set to an in depth, Lavigne grinning from ear to ear. Even pop-punk’s best miserabilist can’t resist the enjoyment radiating from this crowd.
