Huge acts entertain at V Festival

V Festival (Chelmsford) 2017

Saturday 19th to Sunday 20th August 2017
Hylands Park, Chelmsford, Essex, CM2 8WQ, England MAP
weekend with camping: £189; weekend no camping: £165; days £89

Daily capacity: 90,000

V festival has always been the choice of the young festival attendee. The shiny young people are ready to party, covered in glitter, dressed in scant festival gear and ready to let their let their hair down.

Having attended the festival the last three years, it is evident that site and stages have been set closer together. Unfortunately, this results in a backdraft of sound from each stage. i.e if you are watching the main stage you can hear elements of the MTV stage.

The general spread of artists is very samey to other festivals. In fact, one could argue that the booking of Craig David, Pink and Jay-z is what has ‘saved’ it.

Madness

madness

An unusual booking for V festival it’s quite nice to have a veteran act, not forgetting that this band graced the main stage of Glasto of last year. Their new material is received well but it’s the magic of the classics such as Baggy trousers, our house, house of fun and of course the mighty One step beyond that really get the crowd going. Suggs stage zest is clearly contagious.

Craig David

This was one performance I was looking forwarding to. Having seen Craig David during his ‘Born to do it’ hay day I wondered if he still had the same charisma. I was not disappointed. His new hugely popular material was spliced in which such R n B classic’s as 7 days and the amazing Fill me in. I wondered if his early hits would be lost on the young audience, some of whom would have not have been born when they were released. I was very wrong and it was wonderful seeing them singing along to the hits I loved at a similar age.

Pink

pink

The booking of Pink was a very clever one as she has not toured the UK for a long time. She certainty knows how to make an entrance. She graces the stage atop a crane and bungee drops from it. The first song is Get the party started and she does that beautifully. What follows is a competent run through new songs and her strong back catalogue. You forget what a prestigious pop artist she is but there are some lovely heartful moments in there for good measure.

Emeli Sande

emelisande

I was looking forward to seeing Emeli live having never done so before. She is a very classy performer with a great vocal ability. She is just as good as Adele if not better and it’s a really shame she has not achieved the same commercial success as it is just as deserved. She puts in an amazing set but unfortunately it is lost on the young festival goer but appreciated by the few and far between older crowd.

Jay-Z

The booking of Jay-Z was the main reason for me attending the festival. Having been a fan since the early days of Don’t knock the Hustle I have only had the pleasure of seeing the Jigga man once. He goes down very well with the young festival goers. The majority of his new material is debuted at the beginning so a few of his more known hits would have been nice more spread out. When Ni**as in Paris is broken out the crowd the crowd go ballistic. The end of the set is all of the classic hits reminding us just what a heavy weight he is in the rap industry.

All in all a competent year for the shiny young festival. In the future they would be wise to concentrate on getting a more varied range of artists and checking sound quality of the stages.

review by: Kristina Clark

photos by: Jason Richardson