The Cure brought the 2019 Glastonbury Festival to an emotional close on Sunday (June 30) evening with frontman Robert Smith putting his “pop head” on for a stirring journey through the group’s greatest hits. Headlining the famous fest for a record-equaling fourth time – level with Coldplay – the British group condensed their regular three hour-long set into a stream-lined 120 minutes, placing the emphasis on their best-known songs starting with an imperious “Plainsong”
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“Pictures Of You,” “A Night Like This,” “Lovesong” and “Last Dance” followed as the sun set on the Glastonbury site for a final time in 2019.
Never the most garrulous of frontmen, Smith – dressed all in black and wearing his trademark eyeliner, lipstick and back combed bouffant hair — spoke little and when he eventually did joked that he was “going for the award for the person that says [the] less ever at Glastonbury.”
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A majestic “Disintegration” brought the main body of their set to a powerful close, after which Smith exited the stage explaining that he needed to take “two minutes to put my pop head back on.”
“I’ve been here over the weekend,” he said upon his return. “It’s like hot and fucking excellent. It’s just weird to be part of it… What we do on stage it’s difficult to translate into this. Hang on it isn’t so difficult. The next half-hour is Glastonbury.”
From there, the band cantered through a majestic seven-song encore of “Lullaby,” “The Caterpillar,” “The Walk,” “Friday I’m In Love,” “Close To Me” and “Why Can’t I Be You.”
“This is us saying goodnight,” Smith told the crowd before playing the opening notes of a climatic “Boys Don’t Cry,” which the audience transformed into a mass singalong.
Preceding The Cure on the Pyramid Stage were Vampire Weekend and Miley Cyrus, with the latter joined by Mark Ronson for a set-opening performance of “Nothing Breaks Like A Heart” from Ronson’s recent album Late Night Feelings, which segued into a passionate rendition of Amy Winehouse’s “Back To Black.”
There were also covers of Dolly Parton‘s “Jolene” and Metallica‘s “Nothing Else Matters” in the expletive-laden, playfully risqué set, which, at one point, saw Cyrus don a purple wig and adopt her Black Mirror alter ego Ashley O to perform “On A Roll” from the Netflix show.
The singer’s father, Billy Ray Cyrus, and rapper Lil Nas X joined the 26-year-old singer – dressed in PVC leather trousers and a white crop top — onstage for a well-received run through X’s unstoppable summer smash “Old Town Road.”
“I ask the universe every day, ‘Give me something that scares the fuck out of me,” Cyrus told the crowd. “Today that is mother fucking Glastonbury.”
Earlier in the afternoon, Kylie Minogue performed to what was without doubt the biggest crowd of the weekend when she played the famous ‘legends’ Sunday afternoon slot, 14 years after she had to pull out of headlining Glastonbury to undergo treatment for cancer.
At one point she appeared to break into tears as she recalled the “circumstances” that led to her having to cancel her 2005 performance. A decade and half later, the singer more than made up for it with a heart-warming greatest hits set that saw her joined by Coldplay’s Chris Martin for “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” and “the one and only” Nick Cave for a seductive, sexually charged performance of “Where the Wild Roses Grow.”
Minogue, who was born in Australia, but has been a national institution in the U.K. for nearly three decades, later paid tribute to David Bowie by splicing the riff from “Fashion” with her own “Slow.”
“I’m thankful for very good eyesight right now. This is absolutely incredible. What a privilege it is to be here,” the visibly moved singer told the sun-kissed crowd, who returned her affections by enthusiastically singing along with every moment of her nostalgia-heavy set.
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A few hours earlier, over on the West Holts Stage, Hollywood star Jeff Goldblum and his band The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra entertained the masses with a crowd pleasing mix of languid jazz and laconic banter that saw the actor and pianist quiz audience members on famous movie quotes. Sunday also saw performances from Christine and the Queens, Billie Eilish, British rapper Dave, Stefflon Don and Janelle Monáe.
Glastonbury returns in 2020, when the famous festival celebrates its 50th anniversary.
