V Festival review: A little like Love Island the Musical, but plenty of fun

Those in search of stone circles need not apply. But for fans of pop music, the only way was Essex on Sunday, as V Fest came to Hylands Park, Chelmsford.

Dismissed in snobbier circles as “the music festival for people who don’t like music”, V nonetheless continues to attract some of the biggest names in the business. Yesterday was no different, with Jay-Z headlining and Rihanna watching him from the side of the stage.

If he had 99 problems before, Jay-Z recently added another to that pile, following an alleged infidelity, and his new album 4:44 feels like an extended mea culpa to wife Beyoncé.

It’s a brilliant, complex record but not, in truth, the kind of music that unites sozzled, sleep-deprived revellers late on a Sunday night. So it was the big hits such as Empire State of Mind that met with the biggest reactions.

If Jay-Z is the king of rap, Stormzy is making his own bid for the position in the UK. Announcing early on that he wasn’t “here to play games”, the London grime star seized his moment, sending the crowd into delirium with summer anthem Big For Your Boots. With rock music largely absent from Sunday's roster, Ellie Goulding offered surprisingly muscular versions of songs that can sound anaemic on record. Figure 8 arrived with crunching guitars and the feeling that Goulding should do this kind of thing more often.

To concentrate purely on the music at V is, of course, to miss the point. Part catwalk, part aspiring nudist colony, it occasionally felt like wandering onto the set of Love Island: The Musical.

There’s nothing subtle about it. But there’s fun to be had and, in Jay-Z, Sunday at V finished with the kind of tip-top hip-hop that would grace any festival.