Sunday June 30, Pyramid Stage: the R&B artist is on impassioned form in a set that sees her use her strength and stamina to transcend questions around her place on the bill Looking resplendent in a sea-green dress and iridescent fairy wings, SZA rolls her shoulders back and exhales, as though she’s finally about to speak after an hour of being on the Pyramid Stage. Instead, we are met with a small, bashful smile. For a minute, she is a shy half-presence, averting her gaze from the spotlight.
Yet this blink-and-you-miss-it moment is revealing in a way that it shouldn’t have to be: a sign of palpable nerves, perhaps accentuated by the outside noise surrounding this very performance. When the avant-garde R&B artist (born Solána Imani Rowe) was confirmed as a Glastonbury headliner earlier this year – the first Black woman to top the bill since Beyoncé in 2011 – the announcement was met with undue criticism across social media. There is certainly an argument to be made that much of her success is concentrated in the US, given that she broke stateside chart records aplenty with landmark 2022 album ‘SOS’.
Yet four sold-out O2 Arena shows last summer, plus a Wireless headline slot the year prior, would suggest she has also made a firm commercial impact in the UK. Crucially, her streaming stats show that she has an overwhelmingly Gen Z audience – the same followers who may be largely priced out of attendance at an event like this. SZA performing on the Pyramid Stage .
