HELLO GLASTONBERRY

You may notice that we had a particularly tough time selecting a small number of photos from Beyoncé's headlining set at Glastonbury Festival last night, so we've chucked them all in. If for some absolutely bizarre reason you weren't a) at the festival itself, b) watching the performance on television or c) Beyoncé, we suggest you make your way over here pronto and settle down for the next ninety minutes. For what you are about to see may just be some of the finest live performing from a popstar - ever. Now we've never been a blog to shy away from hyperbole, so it's entirely understandable if you choose to believe we're doing our normal trick of exaggerating with this one, but the only way to convince you otherwise is if you watch the show yourself.

For most of the year, we happen to be 'average' Beyoncé fans. She's an incredible popstar, we know this. Amazing tunes, amazing dancer, amazing singer, amazing imagery. However it is when we see her live that it all comes flooding back - the irrational adoration, the shaking and crying, the jaw-ache-inducing awe. Like we've said, she's not our favourite artist by far but she is the world's finest performer right now. She has that immeasurable, impossible to distill star quality that 95% of pop stars dream of one day harnessing. She doesn't write her own songs, she's unoriginal, she's a thief - but she's a mind-blowing commander of stage and audience and one hundred per cent deserved the honour of closing the world's finest festival.

While it's atrocious in the first place that she was the first female headliner of Glastonbury ever (personally we think this honour should've been given to Madonna a long time ago), it's an incredible achievement to have a black female solo performer close a festival dominated by white male straight rock bands, and to have them crying at her feet afterward. Some people like to portray Beyoncé's stature as somehow intimidating or threatening to men (the oldest trick in the book), but she's about as far from man-hating as you can get. She's an incredibly gracious, appreciative and humble person and the fact that she takes an all-female band around with her is not a slight towards males but a way of giving opportunities to women in an industry so bare of them.






Queen Bey, long may you reign.