Anne-Marie at Glastonbury: delightful and charming, she proves just how family-friendly Glastonbury can be
There are small pockets of shade around the Glastonbury site; next to fences and barriers and under the few trees that adorn the Pyramid Stage field. And, by Saturday afternoon, when Glastonbury was soaked in 31C heat and no really effective clouds in the sky, a stupor had descended upon the hungover, the hungry, and the just plain hot.
Credit due, then, to Anne-Marie, the 28-year-old pop star from Essex who managed to make the tens of thousands lounging in front of Glastonbury’s main stage move.
Anne-Marie, who has chosen to drop her surname of Nicholson, is the kind of wildly successful star that you may have encountered if you have children under the age of 17 or an appetite for chart radio, but could otherwise be happily ignorant of.
But she’s earned four Brit Award nominations. Her debut album, Speak Your Mind, reached number three when it was released last April. Her breakthrough hit, featuring on Clean Bandit-Sean Paul number Rockabye, was the most unseasonal and most tenacious Christmas Number One in recent years.
The pop she brought to the Pyramid Stage was neither complex nor provocative. In many ways, it was songwriting by numbers: a house piano riff here, a “millennial whoop” there, some lyrical imagery that is wildly indebted to that originally sung by Rihanna.
But it also pushed the right buttons. People bobbed around beneath umbrellas with dripping ice creams; delighted children waved their arms, perched on sweaty shoulders. Down the front, teenage best friends glued themselves together to bellow along to the catchy choruses of Alarm, Heavy and Perfect to Me.
There’s a spit-and-sawdust element to Anne-Marie. She nearly tripped over while running across the stage in her tight white mini-dress and jumbo trainers (the footwear of choice for pop stars performing this weekend - Rosalia was sporting a pair yesterday) and her patter was reminiscent of the Sid James gumption that Adele serves up so winningly. When she attempted an admittedly ambitious a capella singalong - of the entirety of the lyrically dextrous Rockabye - and it wildly failed, she did at least style it out. There’s something undeniably charming about her, even as her high-pitched giggles ricocheted through the mic.
As with many female pop stars on the rise these days, Anne-Marie got her first big break as a featured artist, and her voice remains her most intriguing asset. Husky and hefty in equal measure, on the slower numbers you get a whisper of her estuarine accent through the pop polish, and it is lovely.
Will she ever appear as high on the bill again? It’s difficult to imagine so. But then, this set served a much-needed purpose on a brazen afternoon. And while the sight of a load of pre-teens getting nostalgic for music that existed before they did (latest hit 2002) is a surreal one, Anne-Marie’s set - along with those of George Ezra yesterday and Lewis Capaldi, who she warmed up for - proves just how family-friendly Glastonbury can be.
