And that’s it for our live Glastonbury coverage this year – the bacchanalian post-Covid festival, the first in three years, the long-delayed 50th birthday celebration. As ever we’ve had some of the biggest and most enduring stars of musical history play for us here, alongside emerging talent and a huge side-helping of joyful nonsense. I hope you’ve enjoyed our running commentary on this most festival of festivals – an event that I’ve always seen as a coming-together of all the best bits of British culture. It’s been so great to be back. There’ll be a gallery of photos at 6am tomorrow and the next Politics Weekly podcast will be a Glastonbury special. We’re off into the night to ride the last waves of serotonin out here. Until next year! …and Alexis Petridis’s review of Kendrick’s concluding headliner set is in: “Whatever else he may be, he certainly isn’t one of those performers who keeps beaming at the Glastonbury audience, shaking his head in disbelief and telling you how grateful he is to be here – although towards the end of the set he spends a surprisingly lengthy period of time just walking backwards and forwards across the stage in silence, staring at the crowd and nodding his head as if taking its sheer size in. But he sounds amazing: as technically gifted a rapper as has emerged in recent years. Live, he delivers his astonishing flows with a kind of HD clarity.” Pet Shop Boys reviewed Other stage, 9.40pm Much has been made of the advanced age of some of this year’s Glastonbury stage headliners, as if this represented some kind of lack of imagination on behalf of the bookers. But that limited mindset discounts the massive contributions that these venerable artists have made to pop history, not to mention the continued pertinence of the most vital among them. Arguably – and I would argue it to the death – that is Pet Shop Boys, who draw one of the vastest (and most euphoric) crowds on the Other stage all weekend for a victory lap of their greatest hits, most of which still bite fiercely hard today. Although it’s basically the same set they’ve been touring in arenas recently, there’s not a shred of complacency here: opener Suburbia stings with Neil Tennant’s imperious sneer; Can You Forgive Her has a haughty strut; Tennant, having removed his Daft Punk-style glittery, horned helmet, sounds lacerating and scabrous on Opportunities. Oddly, it takes a while for Chris Lowe to appear on stage. “The other one will reveal himself shortly,” Tennant says before their mash-up of U2’s The Streets Have No Name and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, though it still takes a while for his fabulously petulant foil to appear. There’s no explanation for his absence other than a “technical hitch”. Regardless, Tennant’s evident delight at the euphoria they’re greeted with makes up for Lowe’s initial absence. Personally, I think the PSBs remain underrated, a lesser-celebrated act of their era; I’m 33 and I didn’t really grow up hearing their songs. Tonight feels like a national reclamation of the synth-pop heroes, which Tennant seems to recognise. They are such masters of duality: Left to My Own Devices switches between frenzy and dreaminess; Domino Dancing is intermittently warm and sad; Losing My Mind (originally sung by Liza Minelli) is at once uninhibitedly sexy and entirely possessed. I think I’ve been to Glastonbury about seven times, and this the best set I’ve ever seen. I genuinely can’t imagine being any happier than in this moment. There are rumours that they’re going to bring Kylie Minogue on, though the only guest we ultimately get is Olly Alexander of Years and Years for Dreamland, one of their better latter-day songs. (Sadly, The Pop Kids, a gem from their 2016 album Super, is absent from this tour’s setlist.) His voice is a little insipid next to Tennant’s worldly brogue, which reels with disgust during the sardonic It’s a Sin, and purrs during the fabulous Shep Pettibone remix of West End Girls (the greatest song of all time, if you ask me). It imbues their set with both experience and tenderness, a sense of hope juxtaposed with thwarted reality. And none more so than their final song. “Tonight, we dedicate our set to the victims of the appalling crime at Oslo Pride,” Tennant says before a serene, graceful, utterly gorgeous rendition of Being Boring. “I never dreamt that I would get to be the creature that I always meant to be,” he sings, his awe at hard-won self-fulfilment profoundly intact. Bicep reviewed West Holts - 9.45pm And the award for the loudest set of the weekend goes to Bicep, dead keen not to let Kendrick blow them out of the water. You can hear it all the way from the edges of the Pyramid stage, and they want to blow everyone’s tiny minds with their airy ambient-rave and visual extravaganza. Alas, this also means that you can hear when the bass is very out of sync. It’s a disappointing start for a duo who have popped off in the past year and can now fill festival fields. They’re the next in a lineage of massive chompy electronic live acts such as Leftfield, Orbital, Chemical Brothers and Underworld, laying on the lasers for the part-time ravers. Compared to those 90s titans, however, their euphoric spangle-dance does sound fairly lightweight. Bicep are two Irish disco-heads who started off as DJs with a blog dedicated to Italo, and have now struck upon a formula that’s rejuvenated veteran ravers and inspired the part-time millennial ones. They pare their tracks back and coast along on a slow-building crescendo, heavy on choral cooing that sounds a bit like the Headspace app’s gone off at 4am in your tent. The buildup goes on long but finally climaxes with concrete-blasting drums and abstracted, souped-up trance, plus genuinely excellent trippy-by-numbers visuals that must have looked incredible for all the sofa ravers at home. Their Jon Hopkins-alike bouncy blooper Opal, off their eponymous 2017 album, gets big cheers from the bucket-hatted masses – who keep on pouring in, doing a halfy-halfy with Kendrick. A slightly reworked version of breakbeat-heavy Glue, meanwhile, is a juddering homage to acid-house. It’s an epic set, even if you can’t shake the impression that, deep down, Bicep are making My First Rave Music (you can tell because much of the audience is just having a nice chat). Still, you can’t knock accessibility: maybe Bicep will prove the gateway drug into a heady, more diverse world of house. For now, they’ve more than proved themselves to be the next Orbital. While all that best-in-class rap was going on at the Pyramid, we had house/electronic duo Bicep at West Holts, Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett up at the Park, and Charli XCX at John Peel. The late-night areas of the festival are gearing up for one last night of debauchery before everyone hauls their camping equipment (and the empty shells of their bodies) homewards. Some photos to recap that astonishing Kendrick set. Our review from Alexis Petridis is coming soon. That was easily one of the best sets I’ve ever seen on the Pyramid, and one that I can’t wait to see again on a small screen to be able to pore over all the detail. It felt like a production by Ivo Van Hove or Crystal Pite – something between contemporary dance and avant garde theatre, with such rich, deep, symbolic human movement. The biggest thrill though was just hearing that flow up close and in the air: every consonant so supernaturally crisp, as if he’s telling you something you absolutely have to understand. He makes you feel like the stakes are very high indeed – and, of course, they are. His call for women’s rights at the climax was electrifying and an appropriate ending to a festival where plenty of artists have decried the Supreme Court’s dreadful decision. The Pet Shop Boys on the Other Stage dedicated their Aids crisis song Being Boring to the victims of the shooting in Oslo before the city’s planned Pride celebrations. It was by all accounts an amazing set over there as well – what a closing night! Apparently nobody in the crowd thought the set had ended – I also wasn’t ready for the end of one of the most theatrical Glastonbury performances ever, to be quite honest. It’s a sombre and powerful ending. Kendrick is not shy about his faith - it is rare to have Christian faith mentioned in such passionate and evangelistic terms on this stage. Lamar’s crown of barbed wire thorns is not blasphemous, but an attempt to remind the audience of the violence committed against (and the sacrifice of) Jesus. So much to unpack here! The female dancers are back and they are the total opposite of their graceful former selves, now violently punching the air - just as men were before. Motifs of frustration and anger return. “They judge you they judge Christ, godspeed for women’s rights!” He shouts this over and over to a furious peak. He can barely open his eyes because of all the blood from his crown. The words “your saviour I am not” are emblazoned across the background. An incredible piece of theatre from Kendrick just then. “I was locked up in LA during the pandemic. You feel like family... I see so many faces. Different creed, different colours... Imperfection is beautiful, no matter what they going through. I’m wearing this crown. They judge you, they judge Christ. We’re going to do our best to follow in his image.” And blood pours down from his crown and into his white shirt. Surely not a controversial opinion at this point to say that this beats Kanye’s headline set from 2015, if we’re playing superstar-US-rapper Top Trumps. Riz Ahmed reviewed Shaad D"Souza Lonely Hearts Club, 7.45pm Watching Riz Ahmed take to Glastonbury’s Lonely Hearts Club stage you can’t help but wonder: how on earth does he have the time? The English-Pakistani actor has an academy award and an Emmy under his belt and also somehow has the capacity to maintain a side career as a rapper. Known for both his solo project and his group with Heems, the Swet Shop Boys, Ahmed uses his music to air his frustrations with a world that is increasingly racist and Islamophobic, his latest record, The Long Goodbye, being a dense, heartbroken reckoning with the UK’s relationship with the South Asian diaspora. Still, acting is Ahmed’s day job for a reason: although he’s got plenty to say and possesses seemingly boundless charm, his Sunday night set confirms that, musically, he’s still caught in the vortex of 2010s blog rap, his lyrics filled with clumsy jokes and awkward turns of phrase. His set’s most potent moments arrive during songs such as Deal With It, a ferocious track set to a warped, blown-out Bollywood sample, or Karma, when he jumps into the crowd, surrounding himself with fans. Even in these moments, though, Ahmed has to compete with the sound of Years & Years, playing a few hundred yards away. Although he shines on screen, on stage Ahmed can’t help but fade away. Laura Snapes in the Pet Shop Boys crowd, meanwhile, says it’s the best she’s been in all weekend - and West End Girls has just started! The Pyramid stage has just been graced by Lamar’s performance of Humble under raining red fireworks, after a contemporary dance interlude in which the male dancers walked impassively as the women gracefully turned away. The energy is back up in the crowd, with everyone back to shouting lyrics back at the stage, and the inevitable flares are going up. “I’m so sick and tired of the Photoshop! Show me somethin’ natural like afro on Richard Pryor! Show me somethin’ natural like ass with some stretch marks!” - just a sample of some favourite lines there. Charli XCX reviewed John Peel stage, 9.30pm For those feeling faded on Sunday night at Glastonbury, Charli XCX on the John Peel tent is a shot in the arm, bringing her full-throttle pop firepower to the stage. As she points out, though, she too has been partying and “is hanging on by a thread”. I have seen Charli XCX play three times in the past few months, and somehow she gets better every time. This is a performer at the peak of her powers, polished, poised and with crowdpleasing yet enduringly personal pop. Part of Charli’s appeal is her take-no-prisoners approach to performing – she doesn’t lure you in, as Lorde did on the Pyramid stage, so much as step on your neck and demand that you take notice. There are a few concessions for her headline slot audience tonight, notably the inclusion of her effervescent collaboration with Icona Pop, I Love It – excluded from earlier sets – and party 4 u, dedicated to her day-one fans. Anyone who had heard the rumours and hoped Caroline Polacheck and Chris of Christine and the Queens might join her on stage will have been disappointed – but any time spent with Charli is guaranteed to be a good one.