Fans react to Arctic Monkeys’ Glastonbury 2023 headline set

Fans have reacted to Arctic Monkeys’ headline set at Glastonbury 2023 on Friday (June 23) as they took to the festival’s Pyramid Stage.

During the Sheffield band’s performance, fans took to Twitter to share their reactions in real-time to the “beautiful” set. One fan wrote: “Arctic Monkeys set is so beautiful…. delicately lit and intimately delivered… like some kind of church.”

Another fan responded to tweets suggesting that the band sounded different than usual, specifically when slowing down their hit ‘Mardy Bum’ with, “not people complaining about arctic monkeys not sound like they did 20 YEARS AGO!! when they were teenagers!!”

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Check out more reactions below.

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The set comes after the band cancelled their Dublin show scheduled for June 20 due to frontman Alex Turner dealing with an acute case of laryngitis, with fans then worrying that the singer would not recover for Friday night’s show.

After Eavis said she was “confident” but that the festival had a back-up plan, before it was then confirmed today by Emily herself that the Sheffield band would play Glastonbury tonight as planned. Speaking to Zoe Ball from the site on BBC Radio 2 this morning, she was asked about the worries over Turner’s health.

“Now Arctic Monkeys, we’ve all been concerned about Alex, he’s had laryngitis,” Ball said. “And listeners have been messaging in asking will it happen? If it doesn’t happen, what’s the contingency plan? Someone has spotted a giant mirror ball on its way here.”

“That’s a very good spot,” Eavis responded, before being asked about the status of the performance. “He’s definitely – they’re on,” she said.

Fans were encouraged when a huge mirrorball with ‘MONKEYS’ written on it was being seen wheeled past the Pyramid Stage, and fans heard an instrumental version of ‘AM’ track ‘Snap Out Of It’ being soundchecked this morning at around 10am.

Check out all the latest from Glastonbury 2023 on the NME liveblog here, and see more news, reviews, photos, interviews and more here.