Latest news with #KeithFlint
The Independent
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The Prodigy praised for moving moment during Glastonbury Festival set
The Prodigy delivered a highly praised performance on Glastonbury Festival's closing night. The band paid a heartfelt tribute to their late frontman Keith Flint, who died in 2019, by remixing "Firestarter" with his voice. This marked The Prodigy's first appearance at the Worthy Farm festival since 2009, having first performed there in 1995. Led by Maxim, the group stunned audiences with a high-energy set featuring decades of hits and received overwhelming praise from fans. Maxim dedicated the performance to Keith Flint, emphasising his enduring legacy and impact on the band.
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Prodigy receive rave reviews for ‘electrifying' Glastonbury performance dedicated to Keith Flint
The Prodigy have received overwhelming praise for their set on Glastonbury Festival's closing night. On Sunday (29 June), the group paid a heartfelt tribute to frontman and founder Keith Flint, who died in 2019, with a special edition of their hit 'Firestarter' remixed with Flint's voice. It marked the first time the band has performed at the Worthy Farm music festival since 2009, having first performed there in 1995 at the peak of their commercial success. Performing on the festival's Other stage, The Prodigy, led by Maxim (Keith Andrew Palmer) alongside musicians Liam Howlett, Rob Holliday and Leo Crabtree, stunned viewers and festivalgoers with their high-energy set covering decades of hits including 'Omen', 'Light Up the Sky', and the controversial 'Smack My B***'. 'The Prodigy. One of the most electrifying, unhinged and incredible bands I've ever seen live,' wrote one fan on X/Twitter. 'This return to Glastonbury is off the charts. That's what a festival headliner looks like.' 'If you've never seen Prodigy live, you can only begin to imagine the raw energy they bring,' commented another. 'Pure rave, meets punk, meets electronic music, bringing it all together. Paying tribute to Keith, holding his energy. Is there anything even close to them?' 'The Prodigy are actually insane,' said one impressed viewer. 'Possibly the best thing all weekend at Glastonbury. Absolutely incredible!' Fans praised Maxim as one person posted: 'Maxim of The Prodigy is 58 years old and currently smashing the sh*t out of Glastonbury!' The singer told the crowd: 'This is the fourth time we have played this festival. There are supposed to be five of us, but six years ago, we lost our brother. This show tonight is dedicated to Mr F***ing Flint. This is his night!' 'Ridiculous to think that this burning ball of fury and energy has been extinguished,' wrote one fan alongside a picture of Flint. 'Keith Flint lit a fire under British dance music that burns long after he's gone. His brothers up on stage at Glastonbury doing the great man justice.' Flint died in 2019, aged 49. The vocalist, musician and dancer was found dead at his home in Dunmow, Essex. At the time the electronic group confirmed the death in a statement, reading: "It is with deepest shock and sadness that we can confirm the death of our brother and best friend Keith Flint. A true pioneer, innovator and legend. He will be forever missed. We thank you for respecting the privacy of all concerned at this time."
Daily Mail
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
The Prodigy fans praise their 'absolutely insane' Glastonbury set as they perform on The Other Stage before paying an emotional tribute to late member Keith Flint
The Prodigy fans have heaped praise on the band's 'absolutely insane' Glastonbury set as they took to The Other Stage on the final day of the festival on Sunday. During their performance, the iconic electric band paid an emotional tribute to late member Keith Flint, as they made their first appearance at Worthy Farm since the death of the singer. They had been due to play at the annual festival back in 2019, but were forced to cancel amid the passing of the founding member, who died on March 4 2019, aged 49. And The Prodigy's remaining members ensured they performed a set Keith would be proud of, thrilling fans with rip-roaring opener Voodoo People before vocalist Maxim, 58, said some words about the late star. He told the crowd: 'This is the fourth time we have played this festival. There are supposed to be five of us, but six years ago, we lost our brother. This show tonight is dedicated to Mr. F**king Flint. This is his night!' Maxim, alongside Liam Howlett, Rob Holliday and Leo Crabtree ripped through some of the band's biggest hits during their set including Firestarter, Omen, Light Up The Sky, Smack My B***h Up and Breathe. They had been due to play at the annual festival back in 2019, but were forced to cancel amid the passing of the founding member, who died on March 4 2019, aged 49 [Keith Flint pictured] Watching the performance, fans were quick to take to X to heap praise on the band, with one remarking it gave them 'chills', while another branded them the 'best of the weekend.' They penned: 'The Prodigy look & sound absolutely awesome at #Glastonbury always would've loved to see scenes like that 'That prodigy set gave me chills!!! you feel a high just watching it.. i've seen them live already and would 100% see them again. that sort of energy is genuinely infectious. rest in peace to the greatest, keith flint.' 'Prodigy is the final boss of #Glastonbury' 'The Prodigy's set was absolutely insane. Still untouchable. RIP Keith.' 'The Prodigy were unreal!!' 'I can't get over that Prodigy set. Absolutely smashed it out the park. That is a proper headline set. No f**king about. Just, Bang. Here you go. Have the hits.' 'Prodigy easily the best band of the weekend...' In 2024, Liam Howlett opened up about the decision to return to performing live without Keith. He told NME: 'After losing Keith we couldn't even think or talk about the band. I think it was two years after his death that me and Maxim started bringing it up. "Could we play live again? Did we even want to? Why? How?' All that s**t".' 'We realised the only possible real way to know how we would feel was to do it: get back on stage and do a bunch of gigs. 'It was so hard to walk onto that stage without our brother, but we really felt the crowd with us. Those gigs were highly emotionally-charged but we came out the other end with our answer.' Over on The Other Stage, thousands of people hugged their best friends and chanted 'me and you' as Wolf Alice played friendship anthem Bros Elsewhere, Glastonbury returned to Worthy Farm, in Somerset, this year with The 1975, Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts and Olivia Rodrigo headlining. Taking to the stage on Sunday for the final day of the festival included the likes of Wolf Alice, Brandi Carlile and Noah Kahan. Meanwhile St. Vincent, real name Annie Clark, brought her All Born Screaming tour to the Woodsies Stage. 'I would like to thank you for hanging in all the way to day four of this festival,' she said to the crowd. 'I'm not sure what kind of trip you're on but I want to be on it too, baby.' Over on The Other Stage, thousands of people hugged their best friends and chanted 'me and you' as Wolf Alice played friendship anthem Bros. Pete Doherty also returned to the festival as The Libertines took to the Pyramid Stage for the two o'clock slot, playing Up the Bracket, the title track from their 2002 debut album. Sir Rod was joined by a trio of veteran superstars during a rousing performance which saw him perform alongside his former Faces bandmate Ronnie Wood, Simply Red's Mick Hucknall and Scottish singer Lulu. He was also
The Independent
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The Prodigy's emotional tribute to Keith Flint as they close Glastonbury 2025
The Prodigy made an emotional tribute to original band member Keith Flint during their headline performance on the Other Stage for Glastonbury 's closing night. 'This show tonight is dedicated to Mr Flint,' shouted Liam Howlett, the band's musical mastermind, as the group returned to the festival for the first time since Flint's death in 2019. 'This is his night!' 'Firestarter' remixed with snippets of Flint's voice played as an animation of him appeared on the screens. The Prodigy first played the festival in 1995 and last took to its stage in 2009.
The Guardian
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Glastonbury 2025: Sunday with Olivia Rodrigo's headline set plus the Prodigy, Rod Stewart and more
Update: Date: 2025-06-30T00:28:15.000Z Title: Woodsies', ' Content: The festival reached its final day with standout sets from Wolf Alice, Turnstile, Joy Crookes and more Ben Beaumont-Thomas (now); Shaad D'Souza and Elle Hunt (earlier) Mon 30 Jun 2025 01.04 BST First published on Sun 29 Jun 2025 12.13 BST 1.04am BST 01:04 Ben Beaumont-Thomas Alexis was rightly and totally blown away by Olivia Rodrigo, calling her set the best big one of the festival. Here's his five-star rave: That is everything for tonight, and indeed this year – thanks so much for following all of our nonsense here. Devastated to report that it's a fallow year next year, so we'll see you in 2027? Updated at 1.28am BST 11.58pm BST 23:58 Gwilym Mumford This is the Prodigy's fourth appearance at Glastonbury, but as Maxim says in a brief respite from the pummelling blast beats of Voodoo People, it should be their fifth. On the eve of their 2019 booking Keith Flint was found dead at his home in Essex. 'Six years ago we lost our brother. This is his night,' Maxim declares. Flint looms large at this year's festival – head over to Joe Rush's Carhenge and you'll see his menacing grin adorning the bonnet of an upturned muscle car. But in tonight's set he is positioned as a very visible absence: a silhouette, instantly recognisable by the two devilish points above the temples, is pinned to the giant screens by green lasers. On a reimagined Firestarter his vocals are winnowed down to a single repeated 'I'm a firestarter', Flint haunting the track rather than dominating it as he once did. And on Breathe his vocals in the chorus are omitted, with the crowd stepping in instead. Flint's absence is counterbalanced by a whole lot more Maxim, here playing the role of MC, compere and chief cajoler, shepherding crowds through the different eras of the band's 35 year career, from the saucer-eyed hardcore techno of Jilted Generation to the rocky EDM of Invaders Must Die. A word for the Other stage. It has received a glow up this year, with giant hi-def screens added, as well as a new lighting rig. It now is probably the best place to watch music at Glastonbury: every performance I've seen here has felt immersive and massive. That's particularly true for the Prodigy and their retina-singing light show, with meandering lasers and walls of glitching graphics. The spectacle seems to filter down to the audiences too, who have seemed up for it – bordering on unhinged – all weekend. There's a sprit of the bacchanal tonight. Weed fug and pyro smoke hovers above the crowd of, as Maxim calls them 'Prodigy warriors': loud, unruly, boozy (and the rest). As the crowd skanks and sways to the boinging central refrain from Out of Space, Maxim surveys the scene and declares: 'I think Mr Flint would have have been proud of you.' Updated at 1.12am BST 11.44pm BST 23:44 David Levene going full Andreas Gursky with this shot of the boomer hordes for Rod Stewart. Bravo! 11.33pm BST 23:33 Jason Okundaye WoodsiesJorja Smith is welcomed on with an orchestral flourish – rhythmic percussion and escalating strings as the visuals conjure a stage on fire. Last month, the singer began her first UK tour since 2018. Back then she was 21, and riding high off her debut album's Brit awards gong, Mercury nomination and Grammy nomination for best new artist. But she has switched down the gears towards a slower pace of life, moving from London back to her birthplace Walsall in 2023. Here, at one of the last sets of Glastonbury, she can flex how she's developed and progressed away from the flashing lights. Smith has won fans for a smoky, honeyed voice that has remained agile, elegant and restrained – though sometimes that restraint is to a fault. On the opening number, Try Me, she is drowned out by her band and, with a vocal style that is often legato, it can be hard to hear what she's saying. There is a fine line, after all, between vocal elegance and repression. Yet this issue quickly melts away, particularly when the familiar hits come out – Blue Lights and Addicted are such phenomenal tracks, sexy and subtle and bringing out gorgeous moments of vocal layering with her backing singer which provide more lyrical clarity and a fitting sense of ensemble. Her male backing singer comes out for a duet on Feelings – Smith is so adoring of him and they sound fantastic together, but it also feels like a humble and mature embrace of how introducing different, distinct vocal tones can accentuate a performance. Initially, you do wonder if this set might become dull, and how she can maintain the audience for an hour and 15 minutes of slower, mellow tones that might not be the vibe for a Sunday late-night billing. Yet Smith is adaptable. Go Go Go reaches for Afropop, while Popcaan collaboration Come Over embraces dancehall. This scope is complemented by her band who are truly fantastic – her bassist can provide mellow moments of cool R&B, but equally they can ascend into rollicking crescendos and grundy indie rock type segments. This set really reaches its peak during the more fun, funky and decidedly unrelaxed segments. She brings out AJ Tracey for both a cover of his hit Ladbroke Grove and their recent collaboration, Crush. I have to say, Tracey performs much better here than he had just two hours ago on the same stage. Perhaps this is because there is no backing track to rely on, and there is a wonderful, almost sibling-like fondness between the two artists. But it's when the basslines and syncopated rhythms of UK garage emerge that you really see Smith as a national darling, one equally capable of jumping on new sounds while resurrecting past genres with finesse; of course, funky electronic garage track Little Things, which reintroduced Smith to the world in 2023, plays that part. But there is also The Way I Love You and Preditah collaboration On My Mind, which feel more befitting of the dark Woodsies stage and the late-night billing. You could imagine it going off at Glastonbury's various nightlife venues; hopefully I'll hear some of this set, the pitch faders mixing up the arrangement at Block9 later. Updated at 11.45pm BST 11.15pm BST 23:15 Safi Bugel At one point, the Maccabees had a generation of people in a chokehold. The London indie band were so prolific they can't even remember exactly how many times they've played at Glastonbury before. But after 14 years and four albums, they announced their hiatus in 2016, with a farewell tour the following year. Back in October, they teased their comeback; tonight's show is one of their first public performances in eight years. It's a high-energy, emotion-heavy experience on both sides of the barrier as they shuttle back through time via all of their best hits. At one point, the band acknowledge that they – and likely most of tonight's audience – are now a decade older, so they ask them to jump along, but only if they want to. Of course, they do. The boisterous excitement from the crowd of thirtysomethings doesn't waver, through the urgent, full-bodied end of their discography (Latchmere, X-Ray, Marks to Prove It, etc) to the more quaint moments, like the sweetheart ditty Toothpaste Kisses, which is met with a rapturous singalong. As with any reunion, it's a shamelessly indulgent trip down memory lane – to the band's heyday, yes, but also to a significant time in British indie music more generally. Special guest Florence Welch joins them on stage for Love You Better and a rowdy performance of Dog Days Are Over. After closing with the punchy fan favourite Pelican, the band hug one another on stage. When they say that this show means the world to them, you can tell they mean it. Updated at 11.33pm BST 11.03pm BST 23:03 Ben Beaumont-Thomas To court us a little more, Olivia's cracked out her Union Jack pants for – paradoxically – All-American Bitch. She's also done the Flaming Lips thing of chucking out loads of massive white balls into the audience. Then it's into the second-best Olivia song: Good 4 U. This song features such a good actorly performance: the proper bunny boiler pressing her face against the double glazing to tell her ex about how she's really totally fine about their breakup. It's cartoonishly heightened and silly – but also there's real venom, and this is a definitely a story with two sides: what's this guy done? Then it's Get Him Back! and a ton of fireworks crackling over a wonderfully overwrought guitar solo. 'This is a dream come true,' she tells this jubilant crowd. 'Goodnight!' But it's not goodnight from us just yet – stick around for a load more reviews, pics and more. Updated at 11.13pm BST 11.00pm BST 23:00 Our photographer Alicia Canter has been down in the pit for Olivia Rodrigo and come back with some killer shots. 10.55pm BST 22:55 Ben Beaumont-Thomas Ooh, it's my fave Olivia song, Deja Vu. It sits right in the heart of the Venn diagram of her songwriting – bit of bruised heartbreak, bit of guitar bite, bit of dream-pop – and it's about such a specific horrifying situation: seeing your ex playing through the same cute things you did together, this time with a new partner. Which has the effect of retroactively cancelling them out for you and making you think: wait, who had they already done them with before me? And it's a dilemma that you might not have come across pre social media, but now romances are played out in public, these new weird horrors seep into culture. It's an example of how Rodrigo, not even out of her teens when she recorded this, is so perceptive about affairs of the heart. Updated at 10.56pm BST 10.47pm BST 22:47 Ben Beaumont-Thomas Jorja Smith is raving up a storm and doing some oo-a oo-a's, while Overmono have hit a relatively lower tempo zone, running through some tech-y reggaeton. And the Prodigy are keeping everything 100. 'We are the noise makers,' Maxim promises. 'Anyone brings as much noise as this? I'll retire … We're waking up the whole of England!' They build up Smack My Bitch Up from its constituent parts, adding gigantic cock-rock riffs on the way to that gleefully obnoxious vocal hook – demurely covered over for the BBC but with the crowd emphatically filling in. More pics from our Jonny here: Updated at 10.49pm BST 10.41pm BST 22:41 Ben Beaumont-Thomas Like Noah Kahan before her, Olivia is doing some shameless courting of us Brits. 'I love England so fucking much,' she says. 'It's bands like the Cure that first got me acquainted with England … I have so many things I love about England, I love pop culture, I love how nobody judges you for having a pint at noon, it's the best. I love English sweets, all the sweets from M&S, Colin the Caterpillar specifically.' Invoking Colin genuinely makes English people giddy. Pray continue. 'True story: I have had three sticky toffee puddings since coming to Glastonbury. And as luck would have it, I love English boys.' It's all teeing up So American, made from the inside jokes she had with an English lover. Updated at 10.45pm BST 10.29pm BST 22:29 Ben Beaumont-Thomas The special guests are coming out. With the Maccabees up on the Park – which I'm basically ignoring because life is too short – it's Florence Welch. AJ Tracey has come back out to join Jorja Smith. And with Olivia Rodrigo, it's Robert Smith from the Cure. 'He is perhaps the best songwriter to come out of England, he is a Glastonbury legend and a personal hero of mine,' she says. They launch into a sweet-natured and extra-melancholy duet of Friday I'm in Love, trading lines back and forth. Then they join together in a wonderful pairing for the climactic chorus, their voices so totally different and yet chiming together. 'The dads chaperoning 13 year old daughters properly doing their nut near us hahahaha', Alexis Petridis texts to me. Robert sticks around for another one: Just Like Heaven, in which he takes the lead on verse one, with Olivia taking verse two – she's more doleful and wary than the more romantic and caution-throwing Robert. The way they bring out new and different shades to these songs is one of the greatest treats of this year's festival. Updated at 10.37pm BST 10.28pm BST 22:28 Ben Beaumont-Thomas Olivia Rodrigo is just 22 years old, by the way – which puts her way up the league table of youngest headliners. Billie Eilish was just 20 when she did her own set in 2022, though as Ash reminded us during their set this weekend, actually it was them who were the very youngest when they were drafted in to replace Steve Winwood in 1997. Updated at 10.48pm BST
