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Andrea just got back from Coachella, so it’s time for our annual report where we use the festival as a crystal ball for talking about where contemporary culture is going. And this year was particularly interesting — not just because of Justin Bieber and his laptop, but also because of Coachella’s marked transformation into a mass televisual couch spectator event.
Joining us for the debrief is Billboard editor Andrew Unterberger, who was in the trenches with Andrea for Weekend 1 and hosts the Greatest Pop Stars podcast. (He also moonlights as a basketball guy) We talk about how Coachella is actually three festivals now — Weekend 1, Weekend 2, and the livestream — and how the latter is transforming everything from the festival’s booking strategy, the performances, to what the experience feels like on the ground.
We also get into an overall aesthetic shift from influencer polish to rawness and imperfection, how the Bieber’s set functioned as a metacommentary on how YouTube is TV now, and how the Strokes’ performance visuals on Weekend 2 — which featured imagery of the wars in Gaza and Iran — touched a third rail in what was otherwise a surprisingly apolitical scene. Listen to the end for Andrea’s dispatch on this year’s style highs and lows, including the fate of the infamous boho circle belt.
Follow Andrew on Bluesky
Listen to his Coachella episode of Greatest Pop Stars
Read Andrea’s L.A. Times column “Inside Coachella’s fractured world: Weekend 1, Weekend 2 and the livestream that changed everything”
Read Andrea’s L.A. Times story about how people are affording Coachella
Check out Andrea’s full style report over at Biz Sherbert’s American Style
