From A-list pop names such as SZA and Dua Lipa to rising stars and leftfield oddities, here’s who to try and catch at this year’s festival

There have been the usual Facebook-comment grumbles about how there’s too much bloody pop, but at the very top of Glastonbury’s Pyramid this year is a formidable trio: high-production dance from Dua Lipa (Fri, 22.00), quintessential flag-waving whoa-oh-oh-alongs from Coldplay (Sat, 21.45) and a new flavour for a Pyramid headliner: atmospheric, emotionally intelligent R&B from SZA (Sun, 21.30). Elsewhere, there are ample party-starters in Jessie Ware (West Holts, Sat, 22.15), Jamie xx (Woodsies, Fri, 22.30) teasing his long-awaited new album, LCD Soundsystem (Pyramid stage, Fri, 19.45) and Confidence Man (Other stage, Fri, 15.45). PJ Harvey (Pyramid stage, Fri, 18.00), Little Simz (Pyramid stage, Sat, 19.45), Brittany Howard (West Holts, Sun, 18.30), Corinne Bailey Rae (West Holts, Sat, 16.00) and Kim Gordon (Woodsies, Sun, 18.30) offer various shades of provocation; and Danny Brown (West Holts, Fri, 18.30) and the National (Other stage, Sun, 21.45) essay middle age from fairly polarised perspectives. And after the reformed, original Sugababes (West Holts, Fri, 16.55) packed the Avalon field to bursting in 2022, it seems as though Avril Lavigne (Other stage, Sun, 18.00) will be this year’s hottest nostalgia ticket for the festival’s millennial core. Laura Snapes

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© Composite: PR

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© Composite: PR

In 1980 what appeared to be a formulaic, phoning-it-in album of contemporary radio punk and new wave music done in the style of Alvin in the Chipmunks was released, named Chipmunk Punk. The album garnered no particular critical or commercial success, and was quickly forgotten as merely one in a long line of kitchy, vaguely topical music under the Alvin and the Chipmunks brand. It turns out that it was instead a hidden monument of sludge rock.