Billie Eilish confirmed as Glastonbury Festival 2022's headline act

19-year-old Billie Eilish will headline Glastonbury festival 2022 after the pandemic led to the cancellation of the 2020 and 2021 events

The Happier Than Ever sensation will be the youngest solo artist ever to headline Glastonbury festival when she plays the Pyramid Stage on Friday night next year.

The Grammy winning artist teased the news on her Instagram, posting a photograph of herself grinning in a Glastonbury hoodie, captioned '2022'.

Festival co-organiser Emily Eavis said she “couldn’t be happier” to confirm the news: “This feels like the perfect way for us to return and I cannot wait!”

Eilish made her Glastonbury debut in 2019, performing to a jam-packed Other stage on the Sunday afternoon after her set was upgraded from a slot on the John Peel stage.

Earlier this year Eilish released her second album, Happier Than Ever, to widespread acclaim. Exploring the difficulties of fame and trust within romantic relationships, her sophomore outing emphasised a softer, more classic sound indebted to Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra than her edgier debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? - released in 2019.

"That ferociously enigmatic quality persists with her long-awaited second album," Ed Power of Hot Press wrote in his review of the work. "Together with her producer and brother Finneas O’Connell, Eilish has crafted a thrillingly introverted, irresistibly stark and profoundly woozy collection. Her voice is often just an intense whisper, threatening to drift out of earshot. Arranged around it are grooves that go off like hallucinatory depth charges, imbuing the music with a ghostly and fever-dream quality. The subject matter – as it so often is with second records – is the dark side of fame. Becoming a public figure at age 16 is not, the LP warns us, an experience to be wished on anyone. Eilish, we learn, feels objectified, taken for granted and caricatured."

Eilish will be 20 years and six months old when she headlines the festival. The youngest performer ever to headline Glastonbury was Mark Hamilton of Northern Irish band Ash, who was approximately 20 years and three months old when the group replaced Steve Winwood as headliner in 1997. Ash frontman Tim Wheeler was 20 years and five months.

Eilish is the first headliner to be announced for the 2022 festival – which Glastonbury organisers are counting on being a successful comeback after Covid led to the cancellation of the 2020 and 2021 events. Equinox, a mooted one-day event for September 2020, was also pulled. The festival instead chose to run a family campsite on Worthy Farm.

Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney and Kendrick Lamar were due to headline in 2020, with festival co-founder Michael Eavis stating that he was confident some of the top billed acts would return in 2022.

The festival remains sold out, with 2020 tickets rolled over to the next viable event.