Coachella: Hip-hop, rock, global sounds
Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott, Frank Ocean are fest headliners
For its 21st year, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival is featuring a major reunion and a lot of returning favorites. A reunited Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean will headline festival when it returns to the Empire Polo Club in Indio for twin weekends April 10-12 and April 1719, organizers announced. Weekend 1 passes sold out in the advance sale over the summer but tickets for Coachella 2020 Weekend 2 went on sale Monday, with first dibs for fans who registered in advance. Other notable artists in the lineup include film composer and former Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman, rap duo Run the Jewels, Lana Del Rey, FKA Twigs, psych rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and producer and musician Fatboy Slim. Rage Against the Machine headlined the first Coachella fest in October 1999 and reunited to headline again in April 2007. The Los Angeles-based group, made up of singer Zack de la Rocha, guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk, leaked a handful of tour dates on social media on Oct. 31. The band’s final appearance together was at the L.A. Rising concert at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 2011. General admission passes are $429 for the weekend and went up to $504 for the
inclusion of a shuttle pass. A VIP pass is $999 and preferred parking is $140. Regular car camping and tent camping are $102 and preferred camping is $266. Luxury camping started at $2,284 during the presale. Those prices do not include fees, or in the case of camping, the occupancy tax from the city of Indio. Tickets are on sale via coachella.com, which is also where fans can register. Here are five takeaways from the announced lineup.
1 Hip-hop is huge: Coachella has headed this way for a few years, but this time the lineup feels even more tilted toward the hiphop side of the pop music spectrum. Scott and Ocean,
though they’re different kinds of artists, both fit under the hip-hop umbrella, but the 2020 lineup overflows with rap and hip-hop, including big names such as Run the Jewels, Brockhampton, 21 Savage and Lil Uzi Vert. There’s no Drake, but how awesome would it be if Ocean brought him out onstage with him? Lots of smaller but strong hip-hop acts are scattered lower on the bill, too, from Princess Nokia and Denzel Curry to Freddie Gibbs & Madlib.
2 Rock’s steady: A year ago, Tame Impala held down the fort for rock as a headliner, and this year Rage Against the Machine will be even more of a traditional
hard rock act in that role. But look around the lineup and you’ll find other artists working with guitars, basses and drums. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard represents the psychedelic side of things. Idles, Fontaines DC and Sleaford Mods serve a harder punky vibe. Indie rock gets its share of time on stages, too, with Thom Yorke of Radiohead doing his electronic solo work on Saturday, singersongwriter Lana Del Rey with a top spot on Sunday, and dance pop showing up on different days via performers such as Carly Rae Jepsen, Hot Chip, Charli XCX and Marina. There’s also Black Pumas, a soulrock duo from Austin.
3 It really is a small world, after all: Coachella has long planted its flag as a festival that represents artists from around the world and that eclectic flavor continues this year. The K-pop boy band Big Bang, just back together after its four members completed their mandatory South Korean military service, had fans on Twitter fired up after its rapper T.O.P. gave a big hint that the band would be in the desert. Super kawaii J-pop is represented by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, while Mongolian heavy metal gets served via the Hu. Aya Nakamura is not from Japan — she took her name from a character on the NBC sci-fi series “Heroes” — but is French by way
of Mali. Annita is Brazilian. Banda MS is a Mexican band from Mazatlán in Sinaloa.
4 It’s a hitmaker playground: There’s a lot of chart success in the lineup as well, with Lil Nas X, the hip-hop/country singer whose hit “Old Town Road” topped the Billboard 100 for 19 weeks from April to August. Scott hit No. 1 for one week with “Highest IN The Room,” and Lewis Capaldi doubled that with “Someone You Loved.” Megan Thee Stallion had the song of the summer with “Hot Girl Summer,” and Da Baby, Lil Uzi Vert and Swae Lee all made the top 10 during 2019.
5 Coachella still loves oddball acts: Danny Elfman long ago forswore his Oingo Boingo days for film scores, and he could definitely pull a Hans Zimmer, emulating that film composer’s terrific orchestral set at Coachella a few years ago. But Elfman did pull out his guitar to do “Dead Man’s Party” during one of his annual “Nightmare Before Christmas” nights at the Hollywood Bowl in 2015, and if there’s ever a place to do it again it’s Coachella. Lil Nas X would have been here had we not already mentioned him — how many LGBTQ country singers play Coachella after all? Well, two, at least, thanks to the booking of Orville Peck, the always-masked Canadian. Like Lil Nas X, he also is booked for the Stagecoach Festival, which comes to the Empire Polo Club April 2426, the weekend after Coachella concludes.