Friday afternoon at Worthy Farm and the sun is beating down with a ferocity that suggests it is trying to overcompensate for all the preceding years of sodden misery. Sheryl Crow – precisely the kind of slightly-past-their-sell-by-date artist who has led to suggestions that this year’s Glastonbury bill is a little underwhelming – is rousing the wilting crowd at the Pyramid Stage in time-honoured style: by front-loading her set with big hits and making wink-wink, between-song references to unbridled hedonism. It appears to be working: the line in All I Wanna Do about liking a beer early in the morning is met with knowing cheers.

You could also apply the past-her-sell-by label to Lauryn Hill. This is, after all, a woman who has recently been celebrating the 20th anniversary of a debut solo album she never really bothered to follow up. But that doesn’t seem to be reflected in the size of the crowd she draws, nor the curious air of prickly anticipation that attends her performance. She has what you might charitably describe as an erratic live reputation, and accordingly keeps the audience waiting: turning up onstage late, if at all, is very much her thing.

Once there, Hill seems to spend the vast majority of her performance doing battle with the onstage sound. There is a lot of frantic gesticulating in the direction of her microphone, her earpiece and the monitor speakers. It lends everything she does a harassed air: her vocals are weirdly breathless and staccato, her backing singers required to do a lot of the heavy-lifting. The sense that you are watching someone who doesn’t really want to be here only dissipates at the set’s end when she performs The Fugees’ chart-topping cover of Killing Me Softly.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lauryn Hill. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Meanwhile, on The Park stage, Bristolian punks Idles are so overjoyed to be here that several members end their set in tears, following a series of impassioned speeches about the importance of Glastonbury in their lives. It is hard not to be swept along. Their sound is determinedly grimy and atonal, the lyrics bleak – “Michael has got cancer in his nuts and in his brain” – but it is also incredibly potent. The reason they have gone from being, as singer Joe Turner puts it, “told we’re too fat, too old, too ugly and too stupid” to a band with a passionate following.

The notion of Stormzy headlining the Pyramid Stage is an intriguing one. It is not only that he is the first black British male performer to appear in that slot. An artist who has released only one album being elevated to such a rarefied status – up there with Jay-Z, Paul McCartney, U2 and the Rolling Stones – is unprecedented. Meanwhile, a persistent rumour on the site suggests his show has cost more to stage than any other in the festival’s history. That may or may not be one of the myths that annually circulate Worthy Farm (festivalgoers old enough to remember Glastonbury before the internet and its fact-checking powers may recall the bizarre story in the early 90s that Cliff Richard had unexpectedly died). But within seconds of Stormzy’s arrival, it seems pretty plausible: his set opens with the kind of pyrotechnics most artists use to conclude a performance, and it never really lets up.

The sense of all the stops being pulled out is hard to miss. He might begin the set alone, with only his DJ, a Banksy-designed stab-proof vest with a Union Jack on it and an intense light show – complete with a ticker-tape flashing up the names of south London boroughs – for company, but it doesn’t stay that way. There is a ballet interlude, designed to highlight the fact that BAME dancers now have shoes made in colours to match their skin tone. There is a vast gospel choir; there are dancers, complete with a small child busting moves; and there are kids on bikes popping wheelies around him as he performs Vossi Bop. Not for the first or last time over the weekend, there’s an enthusiastic chant of “Fuck Boris”, a cri de coeur that seems to be this year’s equivalent to 2017’s singing “Woah Jeremy Corbyn” to the tune of Seven Nation Army.

There are also special guests. If Ed Sheeran can’t be here in person, Chris Martin of Coldplay can, playing keyboards and harmonising on Blinded By Your Grace Part One. A cynic might suggest that the extravagant presentation represents an attempt to bedazzle anyone who doesn’t think the 25-year-old rapper has yet amassed enough material to fill a headlining set, but his performance doesn’t feature the lulls you might expect from an artist without years of hits to draw on. Bulking his repertoire out with a cover of Shanks and Bigfoot’s old UK garage hit Sweet Like Chocolate, and his remix of Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You, is an inspired move, but his own hits get the biggest response.

For all the eye-popping, larger-than-life visuals, there is something very human and moving at its centre. Stormzy seems genuinely overwhelmed by the sheer size of the crowd he has drawn – he says it is “the greatest night of my life”. When another guest, fellow rapper Dave, congratulates him at length on his achievements, it doesn’t feel like hyperbole. His performance seems not merely a personal triumph but a victory lap for British hip-hop. After decades as US rap’s poor relation, here it is, topping the bill at the world’s biggest music festival, and doing it in considerable style.

Saturday morning arrives bearing the news that everyone from Adele to Jeremy Corbyn is raving about Stormzy on social media. It also brings The Proclaimers, belting out I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) from the Pyramid Stage to general delirium. Anyone in search of a less rousing start to the day could do worse than head up to The Park stage, where the Love Unlimited Synth Orchestra are working their way through Barry White’s back catalogue with the aid of a succession of guest vocalists that range from Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys to deep house pioneer Larry Heard. It is a genuinely delightful performance that obliterates the aura of loverman naffness that still clings to White’s name in some quarters, lovingly exploring the more recherché corners of his oeuvre alongside the big hits, reminding you what an extraordinary writer and producer White was: tense blaxploitation soundtrack material rubbing shoulders with the glorious euphoria of Under the Influence of Love and Love’s Theme.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Slowthai. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

For a demonstration of UK hip-hop’s breadth, you could do worse than compare Stormzy’s set with Slowthai’s arrival on the West Holts stage, wearing only his underpants and a pair of socks and once more offering the crowd the opportunity to shout “Fuck Boris”. It’s a gripping, gleefully chaotic performance that switches from raw-throated menace – his voice goes from Johnny Rotten-esque sneer to a frankly terrifying howl – to hilarious bedlam. The latter reaches a demented peak when he tries to arrange a circle pit in the middle of the audience. The crowd duly oblige, his hypeman climbs down from the stage and stands in its centre, goading fans into moshing: “This is not for the faint-hearted! Do or die! Melee! Melee!” When one duly ensues, his hypeman suddenly changes his tune: “I’ve lost my shoe,” he weakly protests, somewhere beneath a sea of flailing arms.

By contrast, Janet Jackson offers super-slick professionalism. It feels as if she has parachuted in the show she has been performing in Vegas: no one loses a shoe and we are clearly in a “Fuck Boris”-free zone. There’s something so suspiciously perfect about her vocals to suggest they may be emanating from a tape somewhere offstage rather than her mouth – indeed, were she miming any more obviously, she would be dressed as Marcel Marceau and pretending to be trapped in a box. But it is hard to argue with such a bombardment of hits, the frequency of which leaves you reeling: Nasty, What Have You Done For Me Lately, The Best Things in Life Are Free.

It is an imperious performance, but one that faces strong competition from Lizzo back at West Holts. Last time she performed at Glastonbury, she notes, about 20 people turned up to see her. Today, she estimates the vast crowd before her to number “16 million thousand”. Her rise from leftfield hip-hop cult figure to mainstream star has been accompanied by a lot of discussion about the serious issues her music raises: body positivity, self-love. You can understand why – you certainly don’t want for motivational speeches between songs – but the earnest, eat-your-greens tone of the coverage obscures how much fun her music is. Her level of success comes down to tracks such as Juice being irresistible party music. Today, she chugs tequila from the bottle, plays the flute, twerks and leaves the stage to one of the most rapturous receptions of the weekend.

The last time Liam Gallagher played Glastonbury, he was tentatively attempting to kickstart a post-Oasis career that had stalled. It was anything but a foregone conclusion that it would work, but two years and a platinum-selling solo album later, he has clearly succeeded, although he appears more concerned with the change in the weather at Worthy Farm than his fortunes: “I’m up here freezing my bollocks off,” he protests, the sun having finally gone in. People are clearly drawn to him because they know what they’re going to get – his sound and approach remains defiantly unchanged 26 years on from Oasis’s debut single. But it is hard not to spot a certain disparity in the crowd’s response: if he plays an Oasis track, there is singalong rapture; when he delves into his solo oeuvre, things get noticeably more muted. He is good at picking the former, sticking to tracks from Oasis’s first two albums, and a finale of Champagne Supernova, dedicated to the late Keith Flint, is simultaneously euphoric and moving. But it is not quite the triumphant return he might have expected.

Up next are the Killers who, like Stormzy, are subject to the Glastonbury rumour mill. This time, the gossip suggests they were the third choice for the Saturday night headline slot, two big heritage acts having turned it down. Certainly, they play like a band with something to prove. “At the end of this show, I don’t want anyone to say: ‘They got away with it,’” frontman Brandon Flowers offers early on. “I want people to look up at this stage and say: ‘Those are the sons of bitches that did it.’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brandon Flowers and Johnny Marr. Photograph: Rob Loud

Indeed, if Flowers worked any harder to win over the crowd, he would have been down among them applying after-sun lotion and offering to pop to a stall to get Rizlas. Everything becomes an act of audience participation, up to and including counting in a song. He asks anxiously: “Are we on the same page?” He pretends to be overcome with emotion during a pause in Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll, then slyly raises his eyebrows and beckons for more applause.

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It works, aided by the fact that, for a band whose career has theoretically tailed off slightly since their multi-platinum-selling noughties, they have an impressive store of anthemic songs: Spaceman, Somebody Told Me, All These Things That I Have Done. The audience start singing along with the opening Jenny Was a Friend of Mine and forget to stop. By the time they bring out the Pet Shop Boys to perform Always on My Mind, and Johnny Marr to race through a version of the Smiths’ This Charming Man, the deal is sealed. Their performance feels genuinely victorious.

But the sight of Flowers, a noted Pet Shop Boys and Smiths obsessive, living out his dreams on stage provides something else: one of those elusive Glastonbury moments festivalgoers talk about so much, where the atmosphere and what is happening onstage collide to create something it is impossible to imagine happening anywhere else in the world.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Miley Cyus performing on the Pyramid Stage. Photograph: Anthony Harvey/REX/Shutterstock

Sunday afternoon on Glastonbury’s two main stages skews distinctly towards pop. The traditional Sunday “legends” slot is occupied by Kylie Minogue, who cries as she talks about having to pull out of the festival 14 years ago, after being diagnosed with breast cancer, but otherwise concerns herself with a Blitzkrieg of hits so unrelenting it makes Janet Jackson’s performance the previous day look like an artist self-indulgently exploring the dustiest corners of their back catalogue. Nick Cave comes on stage for Where the Wild Roses Grow and they slow-dance together as they sing. She overhauls Slow, interpolating it with a distorted take on David Bowie’s Fashion. Less successful is the appearance of Chris Martin, reducing her most famous song, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, to a slow-paced acoustic ballad. Perhaps the most striking thing about her set is the way she fires out one track after another from her Stock Aitken Waterman days – Shocked, Je Ne Sais Pas Pourquoi, I Should Be So Lucky – which acts as a reminder both how good the singles the reviled trio manufactured for her were and of how improbable Kylie Minogue drawing a potentially record-breaking crowd at Glastonbury would have seemed when they were riding high in the charts. Today it seems like a given, which is testimony to her ability to evolve and transcend the flimsy pop role originally sketched out for her.

Miley Cyrus, meanwhile, brings out her dad, Billy Ray, and Lil Nas X to perform Old Town Road, a highlight of a thrillingly chaotic set, at odds with Kylie’s glittery polish. She crawls around the stage, underlines her Nashville roots by covering godmother Dolly Parton, admits she was scared to perform after seeing the Killers and plays a track sung by the character she played in a recent episode of Black Mirror: it gradually degenerates into a punishing industrial noise cover of Nine Inch Nails. On one level, her performance is all over the place, but that’s its appeal – there is something really gripping about the randomness of her approach to being a pop star. She has sufficient ballsy charisma to ensure it all just about hangs together.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Astonishingly commanding .. Billie Eilish. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters

Meanwhile, over on the Other stage, the size of the crowd assembled to see Billie Eilish offers evidence of how her appeal has spread beyond her core audience of teenage girls. You can see why: coming on stage to a clattering din that sounds more like one of Throbbing Gristle’s more recherche moments than anything to do with pop, clad in a smog mask and an oversized outfit decorated with Blue Meanies from the Beatles film, she is an idiosyncratic figure in a world that tends towards the cookie-cutter – and exceptionally good at what she does.

Eilish, a teenager herself, makes music that obviously speaks to the kids who love her in a completely unmediated way: it sounds the way she looks in photos, glowering and sulky, as if about to start an argument – “duh!” huffs the hook-line of Bad Guy, while even a lambent piano ballad arrives prefaced with the words: “If you absolutely despise yourself, this one’s for you.” But it’s also incredibly well-turned: the glammy stomp of Bury a Friend, the hip-hop by way of industrial grind of You Should See Me in a Crown. And, at 17, she’s already an astonishingly commanding performer: she tells the audience to crouch down in the dust and they just do it.

Click here for Alexis’s review of the Cure’s Sunday headlining set.

