Coachella 2023: Frank Ocean, Blackpink and Bad Bunny to headline
Bad Bunny, Blackpink and Frank Ocean will headline the 22nd Coachella music festival in April, organizers announced on Tuesday.
Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican singer and rapper born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, will be the first Latino artist and first Spanish-language performer to ever headline North America’s largest music festival, while Blackpink, the K-pop supergroup, will be the first Korean act and first all-female group to headline. The band became the first Korean all-female group to play the festival in 2019.
Ocean returns to headline Coachella after many delays to his performance. The 35-year-old American singer was originally set to headline the 2020 festival, which Covid delayed several times, before rescheduling to 2023.
Travis Scott, Ocean’s planned coheadliner for 2020, was removed from the lineup for the rescheduled April 2022 festival after the Astroworld concert tragedy in November 2021, in which overcrowding at the rapper’s Houston festival killed 10 people. He was replaced by Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who dropped out a week before the festival following weeks of erratic behavior and public turmoil, including harassment of his exwife, Kim Kardashian.
The Weeknd and electronic act Swedish House Mafia stepped in for Ye. They co-headlined the 2022 festival with Harry Styles and Billie Eilish, who was the youngest headline act to date.
Other top-bill acts for 2023 include Gorillaz, Rosalía, Björk, Kali Uchis and, “returning to the desert”, DJ Calvin Harris.
The Coachella Music and Arts festival will take place on the weekends of 14-16 April and 21-23 April at its usual location, the Empire Polo Ground in Indio, California.