Billed as a "refined unwind", Magic Loungeabout offered an expensive, posh pop-festival experience. For an extra fee, it included VIP tents with waiter service and upmarket restaurant. The crowd, sitting around and sipping champagne, was hardly massive. They were perhaps wondering why they had paid so much money to lounge about in the grounds of a stately home.

With few acts, lengthy gaps and not enough to do, it didn't feel like a music festival. Howard Marks regaled a packed tent with his well-worn tales of drug-dealing, prompting one wag to ask: "Howard, if you can smuggle 30,000lbs of dope, how would you smuggle six cans of lager into this festival?"

After the Human League-headlined electronic Saturday, ex-Beta Band electro firebrand Steve Mason seemed an unusual choice for the acoustic Sunday. However, he revelled in the incongruity, accompanying exquisitely melancholy tunes with quips about Pimm's and "fascist" prime ministers. "That's actually ma house, so if anyone's tent gets messed up later on, just give us a knock," he chortled, nodding towards the nearby pile.

Ginger-haired Halifax teenager Ed Sheeran proved the day's big draw: his chart-friendly songs mix the sound of Paolo Nutini and James Blunt with lyrics packed with buzzwords and drug references. Then he started rapping, and it was hard to decide whether he was an appalling cynic or an audacious genius, as lines such as "I make shit happen, call me a laxative" prompted guffaws and applause.

Badly Drawn Boy has had ups and downs, from his 2000 Mercury win to a recent on-stage meltdown, but his black humour and beautiful songs captured something under the moonlight. When his sublime version of Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road – dedicated to the late Clarence Clemons – brought a sprinkle of raindrops from the sky like holy water, it finally felt as if the magic he promised us had arrived.