REVIEW: Jess Glynne at the IMEP Music Festival Accrington

Add in a DJ set from a member of one of recent history’s most popular girl groups, and you’ve got what the East Lancashire town treated its residents to on Saturday night.

Jess Glynne, with more than 11m monthly Spotify listeners (for context that’s more listeners than Rick Astley, Duran Duran, and Lionel Ritche get) was headlining the town’s IMEP Music Festival, which also featured the Pussycat Dolls’ Kimberley Wyatt and some lesser-known emerging talents.

Superstar fever had clearly swept the town – I took a walk down Broadway, Accrington’s main street, at around 11am to find an enthusiastic rendition of Robbie Williams' "Angels" from a busker, with the lyrics swapped to "I’m loving Accrington instead".

Fast forward to 8.30pm and Kimberley Wyatt was following suit, changing the lyrics to "Don’t Cha", which was number one in the UK for three weeks in 2005, to instead be heard as “Don’t cha Accrington”.

(Image: NQ) If I’m honest it was a little surreal seeing a place where I’d spend many afternoons as a child playing or watching amateur cricket become a proper music venue all of a sudden.

I’d arrived in the full swing of things and the atmosphere was fantastic in fairness, I got the impression most of the music-goers were local to the area, as oppose to Jess Glynne fans travelling to watch their idol.

I was grateful for that to be honest – it had the proper "celeb comes to town" vibe.

If anything I was a little disappointed I hadn’t turned up earlier for a few of the supports.

Jess came on stage at around 9.20pm fairly quickly after Kimberley left - her DJ set was solid and she interacted with the crowd well - there was no messing about, or an announcement. She and her band pretty much just hit the ground running.

Jess singing 'Silly Me' (Image: NQ) It wasn’t until her third song, "I’ll Be There", the first of her number ones she played on the night, that the crowd got going, people sitting on shoulders sort of thing and people belting lyrics out.

The atmosphere remained good after that, "Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself" was probably the biggest hit with the crowd.

I went into it knowing only her big hits, but was pleasantly surprised with some of her less-popular songs- "Silly Me" was probably a standout.

Music-wise, it was really solid and I’m glad, it’s great for the town.

The music could be heard clearly from nearby streets with plenty of people stood on porches (Image: NQ) Unfortunately, there were some issues.

I’ll put it down to teething issues with a new music venue but the toilet situation looked horrific, people were complaining of hour-long queues just to use the loos!

The queue for the bar didn’t look any better, I’d guess that was of a similar length.

The queue for drinks (Image: NQ) It’s a shame really as experiences like that can really dampen an otherwise fantastic event.

It would be brilliant if IMEP can continue to host names of Jess’ calibre in the future, and potentially make this a yearly thing, or perhaps even better.

Queues aside, it was a good do and placed "Accy" firmly on the map!