Saturday at Glastonbury 2023: Lewis Capaldi, Lizzo and the Manics – follow it live!

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Over on the Other stage, Central Cee is ripping it up in front of an audience whose members look, on average, about 17.

Updated at 16.06 EDT

If Macca did want to perform this evening, he could always pop over to the Pyramid at approx 9.30pm for a quick rendition of Live and Let Die with GNR …

Updated at 16.05 EDT

Manic Street Preachers reviewed

Other stage, 6.45pm

Stately swagger … James Dean Bradfield of Manic Street Preachers. Photograph: James Veysey/Shutterstock

As the Manics launch into a barreling Motorcycle Emptiness, the song’s 1992 music video flashes up on the massive screens behind them, showing the then four piece with jutting cheekbones, skinny waists and a youthful air of snarling rebelliousness about them. The contrast with the three smartly dressed, grey-templed gentlemen below that video is striking. Time has marched stubbornly on. It’s nearly 30 years since the disappearance of Richey Edwards, an event that both still haunts and shapes the trio: naturally Nicky Wire nods to their fourth member here.

This, then, is an evening for looking back, with most of the Manics’ recent output left on the sidelines: nothing more recent than 2014’s Walk Me to the Bridge gets an airing. Mostly it’s a stacked setlist of their 90s imperial era. The Strychnine-laced riffs of Holy Bible rattlers Faster and Die in the Summertime, the glam pout of You Love Us, the stately swagger of Everything Must Go and A Design for Life, the unfairly maligned “Mondeo man” era of You Stole the Sun From Our Heart and If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next.

James Dean Bradfield, still able to blast out those booming top notes, appears solo for a surprisingly pretty acoustic version of La Tristesse Durera, and the band are joined by fellow Welsh person the Anchoress for Your Love Alone Is Not Enough and This Is Yesterday, The Holy Bible’s lone concession to beauty amid an album full of such bracing ugliness.

‘We had a blast’ … Nicky Wire. Photograph: James Veysey/Shutterstock

It’s a crowd-pleasing set for a band who, at their outset, were so keen to kick out at such expressions of sentiment. But here it’s a completely merited victory lap, a celebration of the long journey the Manics have been on. “We had a blast,” says Wire of those wild early days, after paying tribute to Edwards. “Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, but God it was fun.” Clearly it still very much is.

Updated at 15.57 EDT

Blanchett, Swinton, Macca … the Park stage has been the place to be for megastars this weekend. Bet the other stages are well jealous. Top that, Croissant Neuf!

Macca does make an appearance … to give the crowd a small thumbs up, and then he’s off again!

Meanwhile, lurking on the side of the stage at the Pretenders is … Paul McCartney! Will he make an appearance?

Updated at 15.47 EDT

Dave Grohl and Johnny Marr join the Pretenders!

Over on the Park stage, the Pretenders are ripping through their not very secret secret set and have been joined by some special guests: Johnny Marr and Dave Grohl. Grohl is absolutely punishing the kit on a very lively Tattooed Love Boys.

Updated at 15.41 EDT

Blossoms and Rick Astley reviewed

Jenessa Williams

Not so miserable now … Rick Astley playing with the Blossoms on the Woodsies stage at Glastonbury 2023. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

It’s a big five stars from Jenessa Williams for Blossoms and Rick Astley’s strangely satisfying set of Smiths covers:

This show is glorified karaoke but, tonight, by granting a big field full of 6 Music dads and Mancunian lasses the permission to revel once again in these songs that so strongly feel like the soundtracks to their lives, Blossoms and Rick Astley get to themselves revel in the joy of being everyone’s unproblematic faves; a guilty pleasure without the guilt.

Read the full review here:

Gwilym here, taking the reins as Glasto readies itself for a big night. We’ve got Guns N’ Roses, Lana Del Rey, Christine and the Queens and much more to come. Don’t touch that dial, or whatever the internet equivalent of that is.

Updated at 15.33 EDT

Lizzo’s flute is piercingly wafting on the evening air now. Here are some pics of that first stage outfit:

Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian

Updated at 16.00 EDT

I look away to edit our Blossoms and Rick Astley review – rapturous, incoming shortly – and turn back to find yet another Lizzo costume change: now a Tina Turner-worthy dress of thigh-skimming golden strands. She segues from an I’m Every Woman cover into Everybody’s Gay, and the cheers from the Pyramid are fairly gushing in our portacabin window – this rivals Lionel Richie’s legends set for the sound of pure giddy crowd joy.

Tinariwen reviewed

Park stage, 6.15pm

Tuareg rockers Tinariwen have spent the past 44 years honing their own blend of blues and Saharan desert folk, all unified by a distinctly intricate, finger-picking style of electric guitar playing. Theirs is a hypnotic, cyclical melody that envelops in its percussive rounds – drawing in heatstroked crowds from the punishing sunshine to the cool shadows cast by the Park stage on Saturday evening.

Dressed in the airy, silken shapes of their trademark robes, founding member Ibrahim Ag Alhabib delivers a rousing hour-long set with his five-piece band. Opening in a mid-tempo with an acoustic 12-string guitar, Alhabib soon picks up the pace, wielding his electric guitar and getting the crowd bouncing along to the swirling eddies of their polyrhythms by the second number. The pace builds gently throughout the set; between entreaties of “Hi, is it ok?” from band members, the crowd sway faster and faster, eventually reaching a euphoric mini-mosh pit on the hand-clapped rhythm of Chaghaybou.

This may be music rooted in Tuareg tradition but it also includes everything from the shades of bluegrass in their frenetic chromaticism to Jimi Hendrix-esque distortion on the chugging Tamatant Tilay, and even a brief foray into disco courtesy of a solo by bass player Eyadou Ag Leche. Whatever the musical elements, Tinariwen are a joyous experience, one that keeps the all-ages crowd smiling. This is exactly the type of set that Glastonbury, and the Park stage in particular, were built for: people celebrating and welcoming a musical heritage they would never otherwise experience.

Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian Photograph: Jonny Weeks/The Guardian

Updated at 15.46 EDT

Lizzo has already changed costume. She is now in a baby-pink boiler suit – bet this was mood-boarded for a much rainier festival – to perform Grrrls, appropriately backed by her all-female band and dancers.

Updated at 14.51 EDT

Lewis Capaldi reviewed

Laura has published her four-star review of Lewis Capaldi’s highly emotional performance on the Pyramid stage. A brief flavour:

“Capaldi doesn’t mention his recent mental ill health until the end of the set, but it very quickly becomes obvious that the audience are keenly aware of his situation and determined to buoy him at every possible opportunity … it’s palpable how much the crowd want him to know that he’s OK, it’s all OK, he is loved.”

Jazz-funkers Ezra Collective, currently on West Holts, have just brought on a massive children’s brass band, Kinetika Bloco, for an uplifting Afrobeat number with Joe Armon-Jones’s keys vamping away in the background. Between them and Lizzo the dial is spinning out of control on the positive vibes-ometer.

Updated at 15.19 EDT

“Unbelievably good” and “utterly transcendent” have been some of the descriptors gabbled at me by people returning from Blossoms and Rick Astley. We’ll have a full review up in not too long.

Meanwhile Lizzo has kicked off on the Pyramid stage, wearing a BDSM-friendly ballgown and in typically barnstorming voice as she fires Cuz I Love You roughly five postcodes to the east.

Updated at 14.33 EDT