Top 7 Glastonbury Sets: Glastonbury Festival 2017

Top 7 Glastonbury Sets: Glastonbury Festival 2017

Welcome to our Top 7 Glastonbury Sets! Glastonbury Festival, arguably the UK’s biggest and most famous music festival, will be upon us in a matter of days.

To mark this year’s Festival, we at Rockhaq HQ have compiled a list of our Top 7 Glastonbury Sets of all time. Check it out and see why Glastonbury Festival remains both legendary and legend-making. If you think we missed anything out of our Top 7 Glastonbury Sets list then let us know in our comments. For those about to attend Glastonbury Festival 2017, we salute you.

2014: Metallica

There was consternation amongst the hippy pop crowd when the Eavis clan booked Metallica as festival headliners. There was a primitive fear that Glastonbury was not the place for a hard metal act. However, Lars Ulrich & co collectively slayed the crowd with hits such as Enter Sandman, Nothing Else Matters and an extended version of Master of Puppets. Coming off stage, Ulrich described the headlining experience as “sensational”. For showing their mettle, we congratulate them.

2011: Beyonce

Although there was not a huge fuss at Beyonce’s headline appearance, her show in 2011 proved to doubters that the modern day R’n’B queen can take on any crowd, anywhere, even at a traditional British rock festival. She was also secretly pregnant with Blue Ivy at the time. Paying tribute to Destiny’s Child with a medley of their hits and closing with the crowd-pleasing Halo, her set was grand, blingy uber-pop. Awesome.

2008: Jay Z

The daddy of all controversies ensued when Jay Z was announced as the 2008 headliner. Noel Gallagher branded the move “wrong” because of Glastonbury’s “tradition of guitar music.” Well Noel and several million others ate their words as Jay Z covered Oasis’ hit single Wonderwall and Amy Winehouse’s Rehab as part of a mind blowing, era-defining Festival set. After this he announced: “For those that didn’t get the memo my name is Jay-Z and I’m pretty f***ing awesome.” Damn right, bruddah. We also want to mention Amy Winehouse, who preceded Jay Z and rounded off her set by punching a festival-goer. Sad times.

1997: Radiohead

Glastonbury 1997 is most famous for one thing – the mudbath. The entire site turned into a swamp thanks to constant thunderstorms all weekend.This provided a depressing backdrop to Radiohead‘s now legendary headline set on the Pyramid stage, a month after their third album OK Computer was released. Their set is now seen as a defining moment in both the history of Glastonbury and Radiohead. Isn’t it amazing when a plan comes together?

1995: Pulp

A crowd of baying Stone Roses fans probably weren’t expecting to be won over by a gang of quirky Britpop saviours fronted by a 40-something in a velvet suit. But this is exactly what went down at Glastonbury in 1995. The Stone Roses were booked to headline after 5 years away from the limelight. With only a week to go until the Festival, they pulled out. Pulp replaced them and yet again, both the band and the Festival enjoyed a surge of success as a result. Pulp closed a storming set with Common People, which became an anthem of the Britpop movement.

1994: Johnny Cash & Orbital

Two surprises came out of Glastonbury in 1994. The first was Johnny Cash, who was effectively the Sunday night headline support. People poo-poohed the decision to position the ageing Cash so high up on the bill, but he proved to be one of the Festival’s biggest highlights. This sparked a huge interest in his work again, introducing him to a completely new, younger audience. The second surprise was Orbital, who played such a blinding headline set on the NME stage, that this led to the creation of the Festival’s Dance Tent the following year. It was the first year the BBC broadcast the event live, so Orbital also reached a huge new audience, and deservedly so. Their set has gone down in history as one of the best Glastonbury shows of all time.

1984: The Smiths

1984 marked the first year that the Festival decided to book a mainstream ‘popular’ music act to play. There were grave doubts about this move among the hippy crowd, but festival founder Michael Eavis believes the gamble firmly paid off. Morrissey was his typical flamboyant self and their set ended with fans storming the stage to grab a piece of their hero. It has become one of the Festival’s best ever performances and is in Michael Eavis’ top 5 best Glastonbury sets.

What do you think of our Top 7 Glastonbury Sets to mark Glastonbury Festival 2017? Do you agree or not? Let us know in our comments section below!