Coachella is now in the business of holding up a mirror to pop culture, and guiding to whatever is happening next.
We’re only three days into 2019 and already one of music’s biggest annual talking points has arrived. Go on social media and you’ll see countless takes about how Coachella’s 2019 is its worst ever or its best, with even a few rare evenhanded approaches that paint the latest docket as neither inherently good nor evil. The reality is that your opinion of the Coachella lineup largely depends on your opinion on the state of music in 2019. As is its power and prerogative, Coachella holds up a giant mirror to the cultural zeitgeist every year, reflecting the trends and interests back. If you don’t like what you see, it isn’t the fault of Coachella, it’s more that the music trends of the time aren’t resonating with you.
Few, if any, other festivals can do this because few have Coachella’s reach and vision. Sure, virtually any festival would love to book Lady Gaga following the Super Bowl or LCD Soundsystem’s first large-scale reunion shows or a Beyonce set that felt like it stopped the world from spinning for a couple hours. But no one else can do this, in major part because of the cultural cachet that the festival was worked so hard to build. This year will be the 20th Coachella and no other music event in the world matters in quite the same way. You don’t get there by trying to please everyone, you get there by constantly pushing forward and evolving as unapologetically as the music world at large does.
So while this list of artists that will descend on the gorgeous Southern California desert in April might just look like a list of names, we can break down what it means for the state of music as a whole, starting with a pop star who owned last year thanks to her artistry, her savviness, and a narrative that showed her to be one of the bravest and most resilient public figures to emerge in ages.
