He first appeared at Coachella in 2022 with a surprise performance at the smaller Do Lab stage. This year, he’s making his official debut at the festival as one of its biggest dubstep acts, headlining the Sahara Tent on Sunday, April 19th. In between his Coachella sets, he’ll also be performing at the Fox Theater in Pomona on Tuesday and at the GV Surf Club in Palm Springs on April 18th.
Let me tell you about Teddy Swims. Honestly, it’s a fantastic stage name – and everyone seems to be talking about him! I’ve been seeing fans from all over – Germany, Holland, Japan, China – and they all know who Teddy Swims is. It’s got a ring to it, doesn’t it? Something memorable… almost like a Greenberg, or maybe a Helfenbein? I don’t know, it just works.
While wind is common at the festival, which typically draws around 125,000 people to the Empire Polo Club each weekend, it’s unusual for the weather to force performers to cancel their sets.
Sombr’s performance on Saturday was incredibly popular, drawing a huge crowd that spread out as far as they could to hear the music, even from the edges of the field.
It was hard to predict what Nine Inch Nails and Boys Noize would deliver at their Saturday performance. They’d recently toured together, with Boys Noize joining Nine Inch Nails for a techno and synth-focused section of their shows. The big question was how that collaborative energy would translate to a full set in the Sahara Tent.
During a performance lasting almost 90 minutes, the pop star performed 17 of his newer songs. He also seemed to be reading and responding to comments from the Coachella YouTube livestream, and at one point, sat down at a laptop onstage.
Justin Bieber, now 32, performed as the headliner at Coachella on Saturday night. For about thirty minutes during his set, he did something unexpected: he played his old music videos and sang along, often in a lower key than the original recordings. He found the songs on YouTube and streamed them through the festival’s sound system.
Karol G closed out Coachella’s final day with a headlining performance, joining a lineup of major artists streamed live on YouTube. Other highlights included Wet Leg and Major Lazer on the Main Stage, Laufey and BigBang at the Outdoor Theatre, and Iggy Pop and FKA Twigs at the Mojave tent, among others.
Key Takeaways:
Strong villains don’t always need complex backstories. Sometimes, a mysterious antagonist, like the Joker, can be even more frightening. Other times, villains can be surprisingly funny, quirky, or even relatable, especially when their reasons for doing bad things feel understandable to the audience.