There are prosaic career benefits to a big Pyramid stage slot at Glastonbury: the crowds of 100,000 people or more contain everyone from sixtysomethings on folding chairs to glitter-strewn millennials and surly teenagers, massively broadening your fanbase. But whether it stems from leylines or macrodosed cider, there’s also an intangible, unquantifiable magic in this setting that can elevate an artist to another plane.
And so it proves for Sam Fender, the Tyneside singer-songwriter who occupies a slot once pencilled in for US rapper Doja Cat, who pulled out due to tonsil surgery. He seizes it so hard the meteorology changes around him: it’s a Glastonbury cliche to say that an artist brought the sun out but Fender really seems to do so, spiriting away squalls of rain to leave the Pyramid stage attractively backlit.
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