It’s all become a bit much. Local cops rancorously patrolling two-lane highways traffic coned down to single-file gridlocked lanes, producing hours-long waits to access the car parks, even with preferred parking passes. Patrol officers and volunteers screaming misinformation at festival-goers attempting to navigate the grounds by foot or bike. It’s clear that the desert infrastructure isn't aptly set up to withstand the roughly 125,000 people that descended into Indio for the first of its two, three-day weekend-long events otherwise known as the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, now in its twenty-fifth year.
And that’s before one even steps through the festival gates onto the 78-acre Empire Polo Club. Traversing the seven stages, not to mention the DoLab and Heineken House, has become a near-impossible mission. The joy of discovering an unknown act rendered unmanageable; the time it takes and the distance, as well as plotting a course through the sheer number of festival-goers, is rough.
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Colloquially known as the Influencer Olympics, Coachella has fully embraced onsite branded experiences: Aperol, American Express, Google Pixel, Coca Cola, Caseify, Adidas, Absolut, Neutrogena and Kim Crawford each created their own social media-ready spaces last year. Indeed, in recent years influencers have fallen under scrutiny for party-hopping in the desert but skipping the festival itself (remember ‘No Chella’?), an option made possible thanks to the impressive amount of offsite sponsored parties, complete with featured musicians and hefty promotional product giveaways, as well as daytime brand activations that host and promote social media stars.
Perhaps because of that, celebrities largely toned their Coachella presence down last year. Gone are the days of flower crowns, space buns and metallic angel wings. Rather than a see-and-be-seen moment, Hailey Bieber, Camila Morrone and Alessandra Ambrosio, to name a few, opted instead for low key tanks, denim or baseball caps. The same was seen at the first weekend of the festival last week with Bieber opting for a relaxed oversized leather jacket paired white socks and matte leather boots on one day and a leopard-print scarf and cap on another, while model Amelia Gray wore a pair of understated denim shorts and a white tank top with black brogues and white socks.
But what about the music, man?
Make no mistake, Coachella’s relevance and power remains world-renowned. Throughout the three decades since it was originally founded, Coachella has developed into a marketing machine – a brand that not only can sell itself, but routinely attracts not only top-tier musicians, but taste-makers, celebrities and European royals. Performing on any one of the stages at Coachella can still make or catapult a musician’s career. It informs, and some will say, even steers, popular culture taste and trends.
Musicians compromise when it comes to Coachella. Last year, a surprise Blink-182 set reunited the band for the first time in almost a decade. On the Sunday night, R&B headliner Frank Ocean took to the stage after a six-year hiatus. According to Trapital, a research group focused on music, media, and entertainment, 'in recent years, the headliners get $4 million per weekend (but I heard from a source that Bad Bunny got $5 million). The artist on the second row got $750,000 per weekend. That’s a great payday, even for an artist selling out arenas.'
For the first time in festival history, Coachella’s three top billed artists were nonwhite: Bad Bunny, the first Latin American artist to headline the festival, Blackpink, the first K-pop artists to ever headline, and the aforementioned Ocean.
But when it came to the execution and infrastructure, Coachella floundered.
Since 2013, the city of Indio and Coachella owners, Golden Voice, have maintained an agreed curfew each night. Breaking curfew by five minutes results in a daily fine of $20,000, with each minute after that costing $1,000 per minute. For weekend one, Coachella was fined $117,000. Ocean went over by roughly 25 minutes past midnight on Sunday night, with Bad Bunny on Friday and Calvin Harris on Saturday disregarding their end times by 25 minutes and 22 minutes, respectively.
For the first time in this reporter’s near decade-long Coachella tenure, sound issues echoed across the polo fields.
Puerto Rico’s Bad Bunny (aka Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) brought out surprise guest Post Malone, acoustic guitar in hand. They began to play 'La Canción' and within the first minute, Post Malone’s guitar sounded choppy and off; his microphone seemed to be failing. Bad Bunny attempted to hold two mics, one for Malone’s guitar and another to sing with, but that didn’t work. Similarly, Calvin Harris and Elderbrook both had technical issues during their performances, with songs pausing and randomly skipping sections.
On the Sunday, after an hour-long delay and a massive stage rebuilding (there was a catwalk with a circular platform at the end), Ocean emerged, singing primarily perched atop a stool with his back to the audience. According to Ocean’s rep, 'after suffering an injury to his leg on festival grounds in the week leading up to weekend 1, Frank Ocean was unable to perform the intended show but was still intent on performing, and in 72 hours, the show was reworked out of necessity.' He had two fractures and a sprain in his left leg and would be replaced by Blink-182 for Weekend 2.
But elsewhere, there were glimmers of innovation. Björk, the eccentric Icelandic singer who twice headlined Coachella, brought a 30-person Hollywood string ensemble conducted by Bjarni Frimann. Singing an operatic-style progression of songs, she certainly remained true to form with her avant-garde outfits, but chose to accent the performance with an 864-drone show in the air left of the stage.
Eric Prydz presents HOLO was billed as more of a show than a performance. A visually striking production, the Swedish DJ and producer uses revolutionary technology to create three-dimensional holographic images that seem to hover in the air. Several critics have pointed out that it was more noise, less concert, with impressive, video-game-esque graphics.
Fast forward to this year and the sound issues prevail. During the first weekend of gthe festival, Grimes' DJ set was plagued by technical issues, with some of her songs playing at double speed. The artist was heard screaming in frustration on-stage, explaining to festivalgoers: 'All my tracks are double tempo and I can’t do the math. They’re borderline un-mixable, so the rest of my set won’t be mixes but it’ll still be fun.' Then there was Blur's Damon Albarn who complained to the Coachella crowd about their lacklustre support. During the band's set on Saturday April 13, Albarn attempted to lead the crowd in a singalong of the 1994 song 'Girls & Boys', but was met with silence – more than once. 'You're never seeing us again so you might as well f***ing sing it. Know what I'm saying?' he said.
Then again, the highlights were aplenty, with surprise appearances from the likes of No Doubt with Olivia Rodrigo, Will Smith's Men In Black appearance with J Balvin, and Lauryn Hill And Wyclef Jean's mini Fugees reunion.
Without question, Coachella continues to evolve, and its fans too. Could this be the new interpretation of the art portion of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival?
Last year, festival organisers commissioned large sculptural art works by Kumkum Fernando, Vincent Leroy, Güvenç Özel, and Maggie West. They join UK-based art and design studio NEWSUBSTANCE, returned to the festival for the fourth year with the circular rainbow, Spectra. Robert Bose’s Balloon Chain continued dotting the sky, a beloved stalwart akin to the ferris wheel.
‘Of course it would be great for people to go through the whole experience as intended and know the background and read the poems but that’s not really the case,’ said Fernando of his three towering figures, each 22 meters tall called ‘The Messengers.’ ‘Everyone has a different take on it,’ he added, ‘I’m just glad people are interacting with them. Being here at Coachella, it’s overwhelming. Good, mostly – but it’s a lot.’
And for 2024, artists were invited to 'to create environments that provoke thought, evoke emotion, and encourage a shared experience among all attendees', according to Raffi Lehrer, the founder of Public Art Company and Curatorial Advisor for Coachella's art program. This includes work such as Monarchs: A House in Six Parts by HANNAH, Dancing in the Sky by Morag Myerscough and Babylon by Nebbia.
The lesson from Coachella of years gone by? To continue to thrive, Coachella must rethink its methodology for attendees and performers alike.
This feature has been updated since it was first published in April 2023.
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