Principality Stadium, Cardiff
This is playlist Oasis, with their later fallow years ignored almost completely – and that makes for a ferociously powerful set to an utterly adoring crowd

• Brothers in arms: Noel and Liam reunite on the Oasis reunion tour – in pictures

• ‘Liam hasn’t sounded that good since the 90s’: fans react to the first night of the Oasis reunion tour

The noise from the audience when Oasis arrive on stage for their first reunion gig is deafening. You might have expected a loud response. This is, after all, a crowd so partisan that, in between the support acts, they cheer the promotional videos – the tour’s accompanying brand deals seem to involve not just the obviously Oasis-adjacent sportswear brand Adidas, but the more imponderable Land Rover Defender.

Even so, the noise the fans make as the reconstituted Oasis launch into Hello takes you aback slightly, and not just because Hello is a fairly bold choice of opener: this is, after all, a song that borrows heavily from Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again by Gary Glitter. But no one in Cardiff’s Principality Stadium seems to care about the song’s genesis: the noise is such that you struggle to think of another artist that’s received such a vociferous reception.

It’s the most anticipated tour date in recent memory, bringing Noel and Liam Gallagher back together on stage for the first time since 2009. See it unfold here – from setlist to stadium singalongs

While the Oasis subreddit is overspilling with speculation and excitement about the first gigs of the reunion tour, the Cardiff subreddit has been driven up the wall by banal questions from non-locals about travel logistics. It’s inspired increasingly deranged spoof posts about the so-called Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, that green Oasis® foam used for floral arrangements, the fruity soft drink Oasis and where you can weigh your sister in the city … geddit … oh-weigh-sis.

Fans have been soaking up the atmosphere – though I’m not sure that cardboard Liam is too happy about it.

As the Gallagher brothers prepare for the decade’s most anticipated tour, our critic offers 20 useful tips for what to play – including the deep cuts they really should pick

From the title to the chorus’s apparent declaration of fraternal loyalty – “we need each other” – Acquiesce seems the ideal opener for a reformed Oasis. But given that Noel’s always insisted it’s not about fraternal loyalty, it probably won’t be …

As his debut album Brown Sugar turns 30 this week, we look back on the relatively slim but astoundingly rich catalogue of the architect of neosoul

For an artist no one could describe as prolific, D’Angelo has contributed a surprising number of exclusive songs to films. Good songs too, as evidenced by this, from the Space Jam soundtrack: a fine, funky, faintly Stevie Wonder-ish, mid-tempo example of his initial retro-yet-somehow-modern approach to soul.

(Kesha Records)
After a long legal battle, the pop star’s sixth album harks back to her 2010s era, with a buffet of pop styles and only rare hints of her highly-publicised trauma

Kesha Sebert has described her sixth album . (referred to hereafter as Period) as “the first album I’ve made where I felt truly free”. It comes accompanied by a lengthy world tour, advertised by a photo in which the singer expresses her freedom – in what you have to say is a very Kesha-like manner – by riding a jetski while topless. Long-term observers of her turbulent career may note that this doesn’t seem so different from the way she framed her third album, 2017’s Rainbow, which she described at the time as “truly saving my life”, and featured her on the cover naked and was accompanied by a tour called Fuck the World.

But it would be remiss to deny her the ability to make a similar point again. Rainbow was released at the height of her legal battle with her former producer “Dr” Luke Gottwald. Kesha had accused him of sexual assault and other allegations, which he denied, resulting in a series of lawsuits and countersuits. Although alternative producers were found to work on Rainbow, she was still legally obliged to release the album – and its two successors – on Gottwald’s Kemosabe label. The two reached a settlement in 2023, her contract with Kemosabe expired shortly afterwards, and Period is now released on her own label.

Pyramid stage
With a genuinely surprise appearance from the Cure’s Robert Smith and a magnificent theatricality to her lovelorn songs, Rodrigo totally steals the entire festival

Olivia Rodrigo’s first Glastonbury appearance in 2022 was the stuff of minor legend. Aged 19, already the author of an 18m selling debut album, but something of an unknown quantity in festival terms, she turned out to be rather more feral and off-message than you might have expected a former Disney Channel star turned teen-popper to be. At one juncture, she named each individual judge responsible for overturning Roe v Wade that weekend, shouting “We hate you! We hate you!” then performing Lily Allen’s Fuck You in duet with its author.

Three years on, with another huge-selling album in the bag, and lifted to the status of headliner, nothing quite so likely to stir up controversy on Fox News happens. But the singer is still capable of springing surprises, when she announces the arrival of a special guest – “perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England … a Glastonbury legend and a personal hero of mine”, you somehow automatically expect Ed Sheeran to appear from the wings, acoustic guitar in hand. But this does Rodrigo something of a disservice. It turns out to be Robert Smith, who duets with her on versions of Friday I’m In Love and Just Like Heaven.

Pyramid stage
While you might quibble that Chic’s set has become more reliable than revolutionary, you can’t argue with the effects of the greatest pop music ever made on the crowd

Sunday at 6pm is a point in the Glastonbury experience what you really need is something dependable. You are sunburnt. The heat is still brutal. You are exhausted. The state of the toilets is unspeakable, and you crave a certain straightforward reliability. And, despite his attempts to reboot the Chic brand with a new album a few years back and a handful of fresh production gigs, Nile Rodgers seems largely content to see out his days in the business of straightforward reliability, simply touring the world playing his old songs. In fairness, if you’d written the catalogue of material he has, you might be inclined to ensure people don’t forget about it.

The initial shock you may have felt at seeing a reconstituted version of the greatest disco band of all playing Glastonbury’s West Holts stage in 2013 has long disappeared – Chic have become a ubiquitous live presence in Britain in the ensuing years – but the meat of their set remains preserved in aspic, more or less the same as it was 12 years ago. That said, anyone who quibbles with the quality of said meat – Everybody Dance, I’m Coming Out, Upside Down, He’s the Greatest Dancer – is the kind of person who shouldn’t be allowed to express any opinions about music whatsoever: this is unequivocally some of the greatest pop ever made.

Pyramid stage
Returning to headline the Pyramid for the first time in 30 years, Jarvis Cocker and co are as dark, grubby and joyous as ever, instantly turning the audience to misty-eyed displays of devotion

“Sorry for people who were expecting Patchwork,” says Jarvis Cocker, in reference to the mysterious name that appeared on the Glastonbury bill in lieu of Pulp’s. “How did you know we were going to play?”

In fairness, Pulp did their best to conceal their appearance at the festival (as Cocker says, it’s 30 years and four days since they were parachuted into the Glastonbury headlining slot, a now-legendary performance that sealed their ascendancy). Keyboard player Candida Doyle even gave an interview to a local Somerset newspaper insisting that while they wanted to play, Glastonbury “weren’t interested”. But clearly no one was convinced – the Pyramid stage is headlining-set heaving.

West Holts stage
From Rod Stewart to Keir Starmer, no one is safe from the Irish group’s ire, as the weekend’s most talked-about set became a mosh-heavy, provocation-filled melee

• Mosh pits and mayhem: Kneecap play Glastonbury – in pictures

It is perhaps worth recalling Kneecap’s appearance at last year’s Glastonbury, a lunchtime set in the Woodsies tent that saw the band widely acclaimed as bringers of boozy, edgy hilarity, complete with songs called Get Your Brits Out and Rhino Ket. Twelve months and some provocative onstage comments about Palestine and Conservative MPs later, they’re both folk devil and cause celebre, whose appearance at the festival is the most hotly debated of 2025 – both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition have had strong opinions about it.

It’s a perfect example of how quickly stories can become overheated in the 21st century: vastly more people now have a opinion about Kneecap than have ever heard their music, which is, traditionally, a tricky and destructive position for a band to find themselves in. Invoking a name one probably shouldn’t invoke under the circumstances, you might want to ask the surviving members of the Sex Pistols how that worked out for them.

Pyramid stage
Perhaps joking, or perhaps not, Matty Healy pronounces himself ‘the greatest songwriter of my generation’ – and that’s only a slightly ridiculous statement

The 1975’s first Glastonbury headlining slot arrives preceded by some intriguing rumours about what’s going to happen. Some fairly eye-popping figures are being bandied about regarding the cost of their set’s staging – which allegedly vastly outweighs the fee the band are being paid – while one dubious online source insists Healy has shaved his head for the occasion. He hasn’t (he appears onstage tonsorially intact), but clearly large sums of money have been spent somewhere along the way.

What ensues isn’t quite as complex as their last tour, which featured lead singer Matty Healy eating raw steak, doing push ups, climbing through a television and Prince Andrew’s face appearing on a bank of television screens accompanied by the strains of Mahler’s 5th Symphony. Nevertheless, there are huge video screens everywhere: not just behind the band, but above them and at either side of the stage, and indeed below the actual video screens that Glastonbury traditionally provides. The treadmill that ran across the front of the stage during their 2018 tour – there for Healy to glide around on, something he does with admirable insouciance – makes a reappearance, while, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the rear half of a car makes an appearance stage right at one point. Healy sings from within it.