Avril Lavigne played Glastonbury Festival over the weekend (June 30), and, by all accounts, the Greatest Hits set was so ram-jammed that Lavigne over-filled the side stage she was playing on and completely overshadowed Janelle Monáe's concurrent main-stage appearance.
According to the Independent, Lavigne was "plonked on far too small a stage," leading to crowds of people "stuffed at the back of the crowd, near the food vendors and the toilets." The publication added that this led to Monáe playing to a "barely-there crowd" at the Pyramid Stage; The Guardian similarly called Monáe's audience "sparse."
The Guardian wrote that the crowd was "so big that they're not letting anyone else into the field from our backstage zone, a real crowd-control rarity."
As for Avril, fan-shot photos and footage show that the audience for her set spilled outside of the lawn in front of the stage, with onlookers forced to watch from among the tents at the nearby campsite. See images of the beyond-capacity set below. This was Lavigne's first performance at Glastonbury.
And let this be a lesson for festival programmers: nostalgia sells!
