George Ezra was the weekend’s final headliner, after Pulp and Paolo Nutini
By Mark Savage
BBC Music Correspondent
As he headlines the Latitude Festival, George Ezra offers some redundant instructions.
“Halfway through this song,” he tells the audience, “I’m going to introduce you to some words and we’re going to sing them together.”
The audience don’t need asking. They already know the drill. They’ve been singing at the top of their lungs all day.
By luck or design, festival organisers have planned a whole day of singalongs. A Radio 2 playlist of golden oldies and modern classics.
Ezra is at the top of the bill, playing the last show of his 18-month world tour.
But 12 hours earlier, the main stage in Suffolk opened with Manchester indie band James, celebrating their 40th anniversary by reworking their back catalogue with an orchestra and a gospel choir.
They start with an ace – a hushed version of Sit Down that blows away any campsite cobwebs in the audience.
“We came on at this time, where there wouldn’t be any noise pollution, so we could do some of our more quiet songs,” says frontman Tim Booth.
Frustratingly, they almost squander the goodwill, continuing the set with the 2010 album track Dust Motes and an obscure b-side, The Lake. Even Booth admits these tracks will test the audience’s “concentration and patience”, which makes you wonder why they bothered.
But when they turn to the hits – Tomorrow, Born Of Frustration, Laid – everything comes to life. Then an audience member screams, “Play Say Something!” and, to his surprise, the band agree.
“Don’t tell anyone we took a request,” asks Booth. “It’d be terrible if this caught on.”
The highlight is Sometimes, which ends with a long, lingering chorus that alternates between the choir and the crowd. The band line up at the front of the stage to take it in, clearly moved at the response.
The stage manager feels the same – and gifts them an extra 10 minutes to keep the magic flowing.
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Sophie Ellis-Bextor was a huge favourite with the audience
After Ireland’s Picture This deliver some high-energy pop kicks, The Bootleg Beatles take the stage, boasting the rather unfair luxury of the world’s best song catalogue to construct their setlist from.
Thankfully, they avoid Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and open with the mop top classics – Can’t Buy Me Love, Twist and Shout, Help – before swerving into the post-Pepper era with I’ve Got A Feeling, Get Back and Come Together.
They illustrate the two halves with era-appropriate costume changes, transforming from clean-cut youngsters to shaggy-haired iconoclasts.
“It’s amazing what LSD can do for your hair,” quips the Bootleg John Lennon.
The set ends with Hey Jude (what else?) which produces more na-nas than Fyffes.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor covers Madonna’s Like A Prayer, but she’s more like a Ray of Light – high kicking and shimmying around the stage, saying hello to everyone in the audience while streamers flail from her epaulettes.
Complying with proper festival etiquette, she completely ignores her new album to play a Kitchen Disco set that interspersed her hits with covers of Moloko’s Sing It Back and Mojo’s Lady (Hear Me Tonight).
But the emotional high point comes when she introduces her mum, former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis, who was watching from the side of the stage.
“This is her first ever festival,” Sophie announces. “It’s taken me 25 years to get her to come to a field… It’s a bit like seeing the Queen.”
As she plays Young Blood – written about the enduring love between her mum and step-dad John Leach, who died in 2020 – the camera pans to Ellis, wiping tears from her eyes.
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The Proclaimers throwback rock and roll set included Letter From America, I’m Gonna Be and Then I Met You
After a brief reset, Scottish rockers The Proclaimers take the reins, attracting a massive crowd who just want to belt out (I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles.
Newcomer Mimi Webb has a smaller, younger, but no less enthusiastic audience, chanting her name and sitting on parent’s shoulders to scream the words to Red Flags and House On Fire.
Webb’s parents also make an appearance – staging a stage invasion to present her with a 23rd birthday cake and lead everyone in an impromptu chorus of Happy Birthday.
The singer later confesses her birthday wish in 2022 had been to play Latitude.
“That was my goal for this year [and] I am so, so stoked to be here.”
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Mimi Webb was the first act to play the main stage on Sunday who’d had a top 20 hit in the last decade
Ezra gets the biggest crowd of the entire weekend, and a young one too – toting glow sticks, bubble guns and Pokemon hats as they dance around to his effortlessly sunny pop songs.
It would take a hard heart not to warm to tracks like Anyone For You, Budapest, and Paradise, all of which hold the tantalising promise of escape (a dream everyone is trying desperately to hold onto, as the festival ends and they face the quagmire of the carpark).
When he switches to the romantic beauty of Hold My Girl, you can hear a pin drop; and when he plays the ebullient Green Green Grass – “a celebration of life” – the party spills out beyond the Obelisk arena, with kids and parents dancing around the food stalls.
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Ezra said Latitude was the final date of his extended world tour
Ezra’s job seems simple – but writing life-affirming pop songs is much harder than moping around being edgy. The audience embrace him not because he’s cool, but because there’s a mountain top we’re all dreaming of.
The BBC Sounds tent caters to the audience who want something more visceral, with a noisy, jolting set from Black Midi; and a rare chance to see Siouxsie Sioux, playing only her second UK gig in 10 years.
She twists bewitchingly across the stage in a silver jumpsuit, punching out the beats of goth-punk anthems like Spellbound, Happy House and Hong Kong Garden.
Her still-loyal fans are so eager to get close that she has to admonish them.
“You’re all packed in like sardines,” she declares before launching into Kiss Them For Me. “You need some room to dance”.
Back on the main stage, Ezra is about to wrap up.
“We’ve been on tour playing these songs for 18 months and this is our last show,” he declares.
“It has been an absolute pleasure to share it with you.”
Then he launches into Shotgun, his biggest, singalongiest number, augmented by fireworks and confetti and arms being punched in the air.
But, as if to prove a point, Latitude didn’t let their headliner have the last word.
As the audience file away, the speakers start playing Matthew Wilder’s 1980s oddity Break My Stride.
And that, for no apparent reason, becomes the closing chorus of Singalong Sunday.
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