Until Jay-Z finally took to the stage on Saturday night, it had been a three-way split as to what the big story of Glastonbury 2008 was going to be: Amy Winehouse, the mud or the possibility of Jay-Z being the first headline act to be bottled off stage.

In the event, Jay-Z at Glastonbury 2008 proved to be the most thrilling headline act for more than a decade. We should have known that the artist, who retired briefly from making music in 2003 because there was nothing new left to achieve, would relish this sort of challenge.

A video montage chronicling the furore that had led up to this most controversial of bookings began with Noel Gallagher piously proclaiming: “Sorry, but Jay-Z, I'm not f***ing having him at Glastonbury.” Then came Jay-Z, contemptuously miming Wonderwall while strumming a guitar. Finally, an explosion of hip-hop beats heralded 99 Problems. With his biggest hit behind him, he declared: “My name is Jay-Z and I'm pretty f***ing awesome.” He made light work of proving it with the elastic funk of I Know What Girls Like.

Flanked by a live band, Jay-Z expanded Blue Magic to include a verse about the Bush Administration's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. The “f*** Bush” line elicited a seismic cheer, as did the image of Barack Obama that followed. For a second you could have sworn that the world had changed a little bit, just like it did after Bob Dylan went electric at Newport in 1965. Yes, it was really that thrilling. And, truth to tell, it's not as if we weren't warned by people in the know. “That man's got the b******s to come here,” Amy Winehouse had declared, halfway through her Saturday set, in customarily forthright fashion.

Winehouse's much-anticipated arrival — as much for us to check that she was still alive as for her music — was another news event, as she shared her delight that her husband would soon be out of prison. “I'm beyond happy,” she screamed, under a beehive so large that she could have smuggled him out inside it. She certainly knew how to protect the most famous hair in pop: when a fan tried to touch it during a walkabout she bypassed security to clout him.

As ever, her band conjured up slick accompaniments to the songs that, over the past two years, have just about kept her closer to fame than infamy: Back to Black, I'm No Good and a reggae version of Cupid, all of which, given the richer musical pickings elsewhere at the festival, wanted for some urgency.

Hours earlier similar consternation in the ranks of security men was caused by, of all people, Crowded House. Goading the line of security people between stage and audience, frontman Neil Finn addressed them by the numbers on their tops — “168! Turn and face the stage!” — and improvised a section of Don't Dream It's Over just for them: “Specialised Security/ They build a wall between us/ We won't let them win.”

Perhaps the one thing all the most memorable acts at Glastonbury this year had in common was the facility for audience interaction. On Friday Beth Ditto from the Gossip went on a kleptomaniacal spree, randomly “borrowing” hats, sunglasses and garlands from the crowd during an incendiary version of Your Mangled Heart. Those ultraslick popticians the Feeling divided the audience into “teams”, all the better to create a widescreen, singalong version of Never Be Lonely. And when the Californian hobo bluesman Seasick Steve pulled a woman out of the audience, just to look into her eyes as he played his one-string, home-made guitar, the crowd misted.

By now it seemed inconceivable that this was the festival that many had speculated was in decline. And that it should be a hip-hop tycoon from Brooklyn, of all people, who reinvigorated it is a plot twist that no-one — save maybe a Somerset dairy farmer and his daughter — could have foreseen. But, as the frontman Guy Garvey said during Elbow's elegiac set: “Those Eavises — they know what they're doing.”

Clearly, Noel Gallagher must never be allowed to run a music festival.

ROCK REPORT

Highs

Jay-Z
The high-risk, high-profile booking that paid off and sealed Glastonbury's immediate future

Elbow
Beautifully judged dusk set. They deserve a proper headline billing next year

Seasick Steve
No one can play an electrified, one-stringed plank as thrillingly as the bearded Californian bluesman

The Raconteurs
They rocked with raw power like a steamship in a gale

Lows

Ting Tings
Bewilderingly popular given their sonic proximity to Transvision Vamp

Editors
Eerily similar to the set that they played last year

Shakin' Stevens
Tour de force of perverse ingratitude. Determined to show us that he had “moved on”. No!

James Blunt
Displaying the confidence of the posh military class, he covered Slade's Coz I Luv You - in a reggae style

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of 2009
• The 100 Worst Movies of 2009
• The 100 Best Films of the Decade