Minogue sparkles at Glastonbury

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Singer Miley Cyrus performs on the final day of the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, Somerset, England on June 30, 2019. (AP)

Eilish mesmerizes crowd

GLASTONBURY, England, July 1, (RTRS): Kylie Minogue delighted a huge crowd at Glastonbury with hits including “Spinning Around”, “Shocked” and “Better the Devil You Know”, 14 years after illness forced her to cancel a headline performance at the festival.

Kylie, as she is universally known, played all the catchy disco pop hits that the audience had come to hear, from “I Should Be So Lucky”, her breakthrough 1988 worldwide number one, to 2010 release “All the Lovers”.

Minogue was due to headline Glastonbury, the world’s largest greenfield festival, in 2005, but was forced to pull out after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. “I wished things were different but life is what it is,” she said, chocking back tears of emotion. “We’re all here together in this moment.”

She said some of the artists in 2005 had covered her songs, and she welcomed on stage one of them, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, to join her in performing “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”. The gig changed gear midway when the 51-year-old was joined by previous collaborator Nick Cave for the murder-themed ballad “Where the Wild Roses Grow”.

But the serious interlude was brief in a show that featured a blast of rainbow Pride confetti, four costume changes, and mass singalongs from the sun-bathed capacity crowd, including for the “Spinning Around” finale.

Minogue was followed by US singer Miley Cyrus, who opened with “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart”, her collaboration with Mark Ronson, who joined her on stage.

Her father Billy Ray Cyrus also appeared during the show, performing “Old Town Road”, with rapper Lil Nas X.

US rock band Vampire Weekend will play the main Pyramid Stage later on Sunday before British goth rock band the Cure close the festival.

The masses assembled for Billie Eilish’s Glastonbury debut defied categorization. There were teens as well as kids as young as eight years old. You saw babies strapped into Ergo carriers and grandparents well into their seventies. One thing they did have in common? All looked collectively enraptured by Eilish’s inaugural performance at the massive UK festival.

Soulful

What’s the draw to this prodigious 17 year-old? Eilish’s world is one of wariness and precociousness. She takes on issues of loneliness and adolescent suicide in her songs (“Bury a Friend”), the sort of morose subject matter that attracts a particularly soulful mix of fans – in the case of her Sunday early evening set, a crowd that went bonkers (to filch an English phrase) with rapt enthusiasm. NME described Eilish as a “once-in-a-generation star” following her Glasto performance. We’d simply call that hour of music on the Other Stage life-affirming.

Glastonbury draws some 200,000 attendees each year, and about 40,000 of them were at Eilish’s historic performance on June 30. About that same number were at Cyrus’ show, which was playing concurrently over at the Pyramid Stage. Meaning: Eilish was just as big a draw as Cyrus, who, odd as it might sound given Cyrus is only in her 20s, is already an iconic veteran of the music biz.

Joined throughout her set by her co-writer brother, Finneas O’Connell, on keyboards, Eilish opened with “Bad Guy”. The crowd responded with wanton zeal, breaking into euphoric hysterics, jumping and filming video footage with their iPhones and screeching with sheer joy. Despite technical issues, which Eilish noted resulted in her looking “angry as f-k”, she danced her ass off with wild abandon and she endlessly engaged the crowd. At one point, she had the entire audience crouch down low and then pop up toward the sky in a sea of orgasmic fervor.

Toward the end of her set she recalled the first time she played London, for a capacity-sized crowd of some 200 people. The highlight of her career, she said. She then looked out at the sea of faces and commented that it was as if “the entire world was staring” at her, and she wanted them to stare at her “straight in the eye”.

Eilish next asked everyone to put away their phones, because she wanted to be “present”, remarking, “There’s no other time in the history of the world where all of us will have this experience, at this time, at this moment, at this age. We’ll never get this moment back.” Moments later, she launched into her “Ocean Eyes”, a lugubrious yet softer sounding ballad that showcased her impressive vocal range.

“If you absolutely despise yourself, this song is for you,” Eilish followed, introducing “i don’t wanna be you anymore”.

It’s this artistic duality of Eilish – fresh-faced California teen; gloomy depressive – that was so mesmerizing to observe, culminating in set closer, and bonafide pop hit “Bury Your Friend”. Another example of Eilish’s unique duality, it’s a morbid dirge about teenage suicide, but all around, kids as young as nine and ten were singing along gleefully.

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