One big, happy party in the desert
Surprise guests and vibrant sets make the fest’s first weekend a celebration of major stars, rising talent
INDIO — The 2024 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival opened Friday at the Empire Polo Club in Indio with Lana Del Rey riding into her headlining set on a motorcycle, Billie Eilish delivering a surprise guest performance and Peso Pluma bringing the party to the main stage.
That all was followed Saturday with Tyler, the Creator, No Doubt and Sublime, among others, including a Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce sighting at the Bleachers set. We’ve pulled together dispatches from The Times’ writers and editors on the ground. Catch their Day 3 reports at latimes.com/coach ella, and look for our best-ofthe-fest report and more photos later this week in Calendar.
FRIDAY
Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish: Ten years after her last visit to the desert, Lana Del Rey headlined Night 1 with an almost radically languid performance that reminded you how singular a figure she is in modern pop music: a slow-mo balladeer with a high, fluttering voice and a deeply bookish lyrical approach. Roaming a stage designed to look like a “Sunset Boulevard”-style mansion in disrepair, Del Rey did a handful of uptempo numbers (including “West Coast” and her version of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time”) but mostly focused on the more atmospheric portions of her catalog, as in a gorgeous 15 minutes or so in which she strung together the first two songs on her latest album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd,” like she was in an enormous open-air piano bar.
Many in the crowd expected her to bring out her gal pal Taylor Swift for a duet, but instead Del Rey invited Jon Batiste and Billie Eilish to join her — the former for a version of “Candy Necklace” that turned into a jazzy improv session and the latter for a two-song love-fest in which Eilish couldn’t stop gazing at Del Rey with admiration. — M.W.
Chappell Roan: Best flex we’re likely to hear all weekend: “This one goes out to my ex because, bitch, I know you’re watching.”
That’s how Chappell Roan — long red hair spilling over a T-shirt reading “EAT ME” — introduced “My Kink Is Karma” near the end of her electrifying set in the Gobi Tent. And she was probably right: This proudly theatrical pop singer is on a serious come-up right now, having just dropped her acclaimed debut album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” and wrapped an opening gig on Olivia Rodrigo’s current tour. — M.W.
Sabrina Carpenter: Earlier in the day, the sun was still up but Carpenter already had put more effort into her set than some past Coachella headliners. She took the stage in front of the facade of a blue roadside motel with one room destroyed by an errant car crash, plus a dozen backup dancers, a full rock band behind them and a platform riser worthy of an arena set denouement. It’s rare an emerging act arrives for a Coachella debut with such composure and poise up there. Songs like “Fast Times” and “Read Your Mind” were pitch-perfect pop delivered with some winks to ’40s noir and Gen Z melodrama. — A.B.
Deftones: Despite starting a few minutes behind, Chino Moreno made up for lost time with a shrill pterodactyl wail that rose above the bombast of the band and reconnected the crowd to KROQ-FM’s alt-rock heyday. Nothing like hearing Zoomers and OG Coachella heads alike shouting the chorus of “Digital Bath” at the top of their lungs as Moreno strummed the chords on a white Gibson SG. With back-to-back bangers “Tempest” and “Swerve City” playing as the wind kicked up, the band reminded us why it still blows us away. — N.J.
Shakira: She may not be headlining Coachella, but judging by the roars for her surprise set with the Argentine DJ Bizarrap in the Sahara Tent, she may as well have been. His churning trap and hard house was already a dance music highlight of the night, but his cut with Shakira — “BZRP Music Sessions Vol. 53,” an all-time torching of her ex, who will never recover — was a phenomenon, and she performed it here with a vengeance deserving of the main stage soon enough. — A.B.
Peso Pluma: With Mexican flags waving throughout the crowd, Peso Pluma brought the music of his country to Coachella’s main stage Friday night, a year after Puerto Rico’s Bad Bunny became the first Spanish-language musician to headline the festival. The sound of Pluma’s set was mostly traditional, with his scratchy voice against the oompah rhythms of his band’s string and wind instruments. Yet the presentation was gritty and modern as the 24-year-old singer from Guadalajara sneered into a roving camera from inside a black face mask and traded moves with a large troupe of dancers on a steeply raked stage. He brought out Becky G and Junior H for guest appearances.
Toward the end of his set, he moved beyond old-fashioned acoustic corridos to draw from thumping reggaeton and muscular Latin rap. But he finished the show with a kind of historical primer, celebrating the names and faces of some of Mexican music’s greats — among them Chalino Sánchez, Joan Sebastian and Ariel Camacho — in front of Coachella’s massive audience. — M.W.
SATURDAY
Tyler, the Creator: What did one of the wildest live performers of his era do for his headlining set Saturday night? How about fighting with a giant sheep puppet, getting ripped across the stage in a fake windstorm and delivering A-list guest performers for a careerspanning set that proved his singular place in L.A. music history.
Donald Glover, formerly a Tyler nemesis, came out for “Running out of Time.” Another foe turned bud, ASAP Rocky, looked thrilled to be backup on “Potato Salad” and “Who Dat Boy,” and the ageless Charlie Wilson sidled up for a piano-crooning “Earfquake.” This Coachella set mostly reaffirmed what L.A. rap fans have known for ages: He’s still one of the most fearless, ambitious and entertaining guys walking the Earth. — A.B.
Blur: The Britpop band played a hit-heavy set when it co-headlined the festival in 2013 but used its time Saturday mostly for songs from new album “The Ballad of Darren.” Frontman Damon Albarn stumbled through some songs, including “Girls & Boys,” coming in early with the dance-rock hit’s “oh, oh, ohs.” However, there were a couple of bright spots in the set, including a performance from the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Bird Singers, who joined the band for “Death of a Party” and setcloser “Tender.” — V.F.
Vampire Weekend: The band’s performance was announced just days before Coachella began. Wearing a green-and-white-striped Pogues sweatshirt, frontman Ezra Koenig told the crowd at the Outdoor Theatre that he’d been sitting on a piece of land sipping ranch water in Texas last week when his band got the call to join the bill. The band’s set mixed crisp VW oldies and a few knottier new tunes from its just-released fifth album, “Only God Was Above Us.” An unlikely guest appearance during the set: Paris Hilton, who popped out to play a round of cornhole as the veteran indie-rock band did a countrified take on its “Married in a Gold Rush.” — M.W.
Bleachers: Taylor Swift turned up — not as a performer but as a fan — to take in a set by her longtime producer Jack Antonoff ’s band. The pop superstar and her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, were standing (and singing and clapping) at the side of the stage in the Mojave Tent as Bleachers ran through a characteristically exuberant set of its post-Springsteen rock. — M.W.
The Aquabats: Its turn in the Sonora Tent just may rank as one of the most fun in the festival’s history. The costumed ska-punk band kicked things off with “Pool Party,” complete with beach balls thrown into the crowd. Then the creatures of “Yo Gabba Gabba” showed up. (The Aquabats’ frontman, MC Bat Commander, a.k.a. Christian Jacobs, is the co-creator of the Nickelodeon show.)
By song No. 3, “Frankenstein,” a giant cat and the abominable snowman were onstage. The tent quickly filled to capacity, a notable feat for early afternoon at the Sonora. With hits like “Karate Body!” and “Cat With 2 Heads!” the entire set was one big dance party. And when you thought it couldn’t get any wilder, the band, which formed 30 years ago, played “Pizza Day” and at least four giant pizza slice pool floats were tossed into the crowd. Coachella, put the Aquabats on the bill every year. — V.F.
Jon Batiste: The singer’s set harked to the early days of Coachella, before it was experienced as a series of Instagram moments — when it was more about just letting ourselves be moved by music. Batiste morphed the grade-school chant “If You’re Happy and You Know It” into “When the Saints Go Marching In,” then brought hip-hop legend Juvenile onstage for “Back That Azz Up.” Batiste also debuted a new song with Willow Smith, a fun, breezy, Afrobeats-tinged single that shows off Smith’s youthful soprano ahead of the release of her just-announced “Empathogen” project. — D.D.