Saturday at Glastonbury: Paul McCartney headlines the Pyramid stage – live! | Glastonbury 2022

We’ll have a full review of Paul McCartney from Alexis Petridis shortly, plus reviews of some of the headliners of other stages around the site: Jamie T and Jessie Ware.

The crowd are getting to truly write off their vocal cords with Carry That Weight, another mass singalong. Springsteen and Grohl are back out, jamming together on an extended wigout. That has pretty massively raised the bar for Glasto’s star-guest tradition – McCartney has played live with each of them before (Springsteen earlier this month in the US, even) but never all together like this.

And then it’s all over, ending a set that had some really compelling curios amid the gigantic classics – possibly losing a few more casual fans at points, but uniting them again in the most euphoric way imaginable.

Now we’re into a really muscular-sounding Helter Skelter, with McCartney’s delivering some impressibly lusty hollers – and this is an 80-year-old now 90 minutes into a set in front of 100,000-odd people. There have been a couple of slight vocal wobbles during tonight by all accounts, but that sounded decidedly un-octogenarian.

Now there’s an airing of a moving bit of technological sleight of hand, allowing McCartney to duet with Lennon on I’ve Got a Feeling, the latter’s vocals having been isolated during the making of the Get Back documentary. This is the coup de grace in a set that has felt like a true encompassing of the breath of Macca history and lore. “That’s so special for me man,” McCartney says. “I know it’s virtual but come on – it’s John. We’re back together.”

After leaving the stage with the crowd singing Hey Jude over and over, McCartney is back out and waving a Ukraine flag: the most high profile show of support at a festival admirably full of it. His band hold a rainbow Pride flag and also a Union Jack.

As was absolutely inevitable, the Hey Jude singalong is the big moment of Glastonbury. Much like someone doing a club PA in your local Pryzm nighclub, he’s getting just the ladies to sing, now just the guys, all in a cappella. And now the horns have blasted back in. Dopamine levels are skyrocketing. “I wonder if this is how religious people feel in church,” says our Keza MacDonald. Here’s the view from the crowd:

Other stage, 10.30pm

Arriving on stage in black fur, a studded leather corset-leotard and screams of “real hot girl shit!” amid airhorns, our patron saint of hot girl summer is here and she did not come to play. By third track Freak Nasty, Houston’s latest legendary rapper is flanked by her poised dancers, the fur is off and every time she clutches her crotch or shakes her bum for the camera the crowd screams. “Y’all making me to feel too good” she grins after a flawless rendition of Simon Says into Big Ole Freak.

The dancers leave and she starts writhing on the ground, tongue out, before the refrains of “eat it, eat it till I come” (a dancer comes and Meg puts her leg over him to simulate this). It’s a set that takes us from Tina Snow days to the present, interspersed with calls to the crowd to shout if they love themselves just the way they are (and it’s testament to her power that this isn’t cloying). By the time we get to WAP it’s a party, and it’s a barometer of how great a song it is that everyone can rap along with those ridiculously quick bars.

Next up, Body gets everyone into a frenzy. “This the biggest goddamn crowd I’ve seen in a long time,” she smiles. Later she’ll talk about what’s happening in the States with Roe v Wade: “You know I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t say something about these stupid ass men. Texas really embarrassing me right now, y’all. The hot girls and hot boys do not support this shit. My body, my motherfucking choice!” She calls on everyone to chant this last line and stick their middle fingers in the air.

And then, in this spirit of women loving their bodies. we are back to hot girl summer (“It’s about motherfucking ladies doing what they want to do!”), her recent collab with Dua Lipa gets a nod, as does the Beyoncé remix of Savage. She ends on a brief but glorious version of Eazy-E-interpolating Girls in the Hood, before saying: “I’m Megan Thee Motherfucking Stallion … and if you still don’t know me, ask your boo.” Outstanding.

Seemingly Somerset’s entire stock of pyro is being detonated for Live and Let Die – and then it’s Hey Jude. This isn’t so much crowdpleasing as it is crowdlovebombing.

And now time, Spingsteen having departed, for one of the greatest songs ever written and on some days my favourite in the entire Beatles catalogue: Let It Be, whose simple melodic and lyrical logic is like a consoling hand on one’s arm from a friend. It gets a very showy and widdly guitar solo which I think is gilding the lily a bit, but that chorus is sounding so sumptuous. There will be so many tears falling on that Pyramid stage grass.

Please note that there is a Glastonbury-date-shaped hole in Springsteen’s touring schedule next year, when he’s doing a European tour. Is this the world’s most ballsy warm-up? Now they’re duetting on a version of 1963’s I Wanna Be Your Man. Boomers are actually exploding right now.

This rumour actually came good! Ye gods! This is Pyramid history – and a delighted squeal goes up. They’re doing Springsteen’s own Glory Days, and the Boss’s weatherbeaten voice sounds so good being fired into the night sky.

To clarify, this is Springsteen solo, with Macca and Dave having left the stage presumably for a restorative cup of Bovril.