As a pre-confirmed Emeli Fandé (who says guitarleaves isn’t a funny platform…) I was beyond eager to watch her perform again. Every time I have seen her play live in the past was sensational, and I think her biggest talent (of the many she possesses) is being able to unite an audience through the raw emotion in her music. As I knew would happen, I can proudly say I was not disappointed. She opened with “Heaven” and the crowd went wild. The rest was an ecstatic blur of glittering stage lights and shimmering fireworks dripping liquid amber from a great height. If anyone knows how to get a crowd going it is Emeli Sandé, and she made each track accessible, even the more modern ones such as “Hurts” and “Highs and Lows” which perhaps weren’t as well known to the average attendee were met with riotous encore and a quickly-learned chorus singalong. It was a stunning performance which included in my opinion the most poignant moment of the weekend: after paying a heartfelt tribute to Manchester the screen behind her was illuminated with a Manchester loveheart and she sang “Read All About It, Pt. III” with the voices of twenty-five thousand behind her. Music really is a universal language and it is a moment that will stay with me forever.
*Spoiler alert: Lorde stole the entire weekend.*
Festival season, regardless of which form it takes, is complete without good music. The weather may vary and the toilets will probably overflow; but nothing can dampen our spirits when there is an auditory electricity blaring blaring from the speakers – and so you can imagine the excitable anticipation when staple band Imagine Dragons were announced as part of the line-up. Entering the stage with a bang and only pausing for breath when they later ran offstage to momentous applause the four-piece led the crowd through a selection of hits, including “Radioactive” and their recent single, “Thunder”. They may not be dragons but their set was certainly on fire.
For me, the most wonderful thing about festivals is that the vast line-up allows you to go and try new things and explore artists for whom you wouldn’t normally venture to see a gig. Rag’n’Bone Man exemplified this, and in the space of his half-hour set managed to completely blow me away. Of course I was no stranger to the enormous success of “Human” and “Skin” although I wasn’t aware of just how soulful he was as an artist. In his set especially I noticed just how much of a special attachment he felt through his music, and this was especially true during his rendition of “Bitter End”. Managing to simultaneously silence and somehow heal a huge throng of festival-goers is no easy feat, but I suppose even an overflowing tent of screaming fans proved no match for the might of his vocal chords.
I am delighted to announce that guitarleaves will be providing full coverage of BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend Hull 2017. Come rain or shine we will be there on the 27th and 28th May, posting a wealth of reviews, new tracks and exciting artists we think you should know about. All content will be posted here under the tag r1bigweekend2017. 
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