Glastonbury 2016, Saturday review: Adele seizes her big moment as Worthy Farm bellows out her soaring choruses

The 1975, The Last Shadow Puppets, Wolf Alice and Cat's Eyes also performed

Adele headlines the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury for the first time (Getty Images)

“Oh my Gawd!” Adele exclaims four songs into her Saturday night Pyramid Stage headline slot. “This is the best moment of my whole f****** life”! Biggest star in the country, meet the world’s biggest festival. Yet despite having won Oscars, Brit Awards, Grammys and being one of the very few artists whose records people actually pay for (remember that?), Adele admits she was “too scared” to previously take the plunge. Quite why is difficult to fathom: perhaps the nature of her multi-million selling material - emotive ballads and upbeat(ish) soul that is the equivalent of a drunken 3am text to your ex is, admittedly, hardly hands-in-the-air festival euphoric - but when she describes her songs as “miserable” onstage she underestimates their communal nature.

That is proved within seconds of opener “Hello”, whose soaring chorus is bellowed back in unison by a heaving field. Audience immediately onside, she disproves the old adage that the best Glastonbury headline sets tend to contain the element of spectacle: by contrast to Muse’s ostentatiousness last night, Adele is austere, with black and white visuals. It means the set relies predominantly on the very things that have propelled her to superstardom: her songs and that voice. When the latter takes flight, it is truly something to behold. Commanding yet never overdone in that flashy post-Mariah Carey way so beloved of TV talent show contestants, she is note perfect, always pitched right. The songs tread a similar path, and there are times when a break from the tried and tested formula would be welcome, an injection of Adele’s personality - within minutes she’s pulling young girls out of the crowd to chat and swearing like a trooper, flagrantly disregarding the BBC’s warning about her “potty mouth” (“I bet Muse didn’t get that”). But the likes of “Skyfall” and “Rolling in the Deep” show exactly why she’s attained her status. Adele seized her big moment.

The 1975 are so big their second album knocked Adele off the top of the charts, yet it’s hard to think of a more divisive band at present: too pop for the indie kids, arguments over authenticity, that most sacred of rock n roll notions, still abound. But the “indie boyband” tag seems irrelevant when, as they prove on The Other Stage, they possess pop tunes that are not only sugar sweet, but tackle deceptively gritty subjects (drug abuse, adultery, working class Macclesfield life). The 80’s gloss and jolty guitar lines occasionally give way to electronic fuzzes of noise but tunes like “She’s American” lodge in the brain. In frontman Matthew Healy, all good looks, hair and white suit, they have a star: his impassioned anti-Brexit address strikes a chord.

The sunny early evening Pyramid stage is the setting for Last Shadow Puppets, the work of Alex Turner, Arctic Monkeys frontman and one of this generation’s most important rock stars, and Miles Kane, friend of Alex Turner. As ever with Turner, there are stunning moments, especially the ones that take Scott Walker’s early work as a reference point. Yet enjoyment depends largely on how much you buy into Turner’s behaviour - he gyrates, gesticulates and puckers affectedly like the ghost of Elvis past - or how unedifying it seems that two men singing about male lust and sexual exploits have been called out for inappropriate behaviour (as Kane was by a female journalist). Not that Turner cares: his “Give a Damn” t-shirt says all about his current mindset.

Wolf Alice frontwoman Ellie Rowsell admits halfway through the London four-piece’s set that they once failed an audition for a Glastonbury Emerging Talent contest. What a difference five years makes: making their Pyramid Stage debut, the Mercury Prize nominated act ratchet up their dual 90’s influences - grunge and shoegaze - in an explosive performance that veers between poise and power.

Up at The Park Cat’s Eyes - aka Faris Badwan of The Horrors and Canadian/Italian composer Rachel Zeffira - ease people from their hangovers with a midday take on 60’s girl groups in a ramshackle but endearing set that concludes with a charmingly sweet cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”.