Coachella trend report 2026: Let's watch YouTube together

26:36Like it was a different crowd. It was a more relaxed, like less influencey crowd, I'd say. But it did feel like I think a lot of people got FOMO from the live stream and ended up getting tickets, including like people that I was like interviewing in the crowd for some LA Times stuff. And it felt a little more crowded. But that in tandem with more surprise guests, more surprise stuff in general coming out. I don't know. I'm curious as to like maybe why you guys think that is because I'm still chewing that one over. My gut reaction is just if everything is going to be streamed, then why not trickle out the surprises, spread out the surprises to keep Coachella in the news?

27:12That seems obvious. It's a key audience capture online. I bet I'd be really curious to see the number of live stream drop-offs in past years after Weekend 1. I think this year, yeah, I think that's totally it, Emily. I think maybe this year like kind of reestablished Weekend 2 as its own thing worth watching and going to yeah there was a kind of built-in suspense for weekend two anyway a because there was this anima thing about like okay what we didn't get to see that weekend one what's what's going to look like when he comes back weekend two and b because bieber was so raw coming off that first big headline appearance in like a pretty long time that it seemed like maybe he was gonna have more to offer weekend two anyway and it would also seem like he probably wasn't going to do that entire youtube replay thing the same way again so there might have been a more natural sort of oh, well, we can't check out at Weekend 2.

27:58And also the Sabrina thing, there were so many issues with her Weekend 1 performance that people had, and it felt like it was sort of missing that big wow moment. We definitely were sort of talking about it at Billboard, like, oh, okay, maybe she's just saving it for Weekend 2. I don't remember having those conversations in the past years, so I do feel like maybe there were just sort of more naturally built-in things this year that kept people coming back for Weekend 2, and maybe other artists sort of followed the lead there and said, okay, well, if people are actually going to be paying attention to Weekend 2 this year, maybe I'll save my really cool thing for that weekend anyway.

28:28If you like what you're hearing on this episode, there's a place where you can join the conversation. It's called Cujoplex, and it's a private online hangout zone on Discord where smart, cool weirdos just like you, you know, people who like talking about the evolving state of independent culture, can congregate, share links, and talk about the news of the day. We've had some great conversations lately about creative economies, media theory, AI, politics, the future of journalism, and even the records and TV shows we've been obsessing over this year. Some of our chats have even inspired episode ideas.

29:04You can get access to Cujoplex along with our monthly bonus episodes by signing up for a paid subscription over at our Substack. That's theculturejournalist.substack.com. In the broader sense, sort of zooming out beyond what was going on on the ground itself, to what extent is the live stream, in your opinion, potentially redefining what Coachella is? Did you feel that it was more in the zeitgeist overall this year as a result or not? Andrea had some thoughts on that, I know. Yeah, there's a few different things that have made the live stream like feel more relevant and that in turn have made Coachella feel more relevant.

29:44I think one is what you pointed out to me, Emily, when we were talking about this a little before we can too, was, you know, like YouTube is TV now in a way that it's been crawling towards for a while. But for like a lot of people, especially like younger people, you know, they're going to watch the NBA finals on YouTube and then maybe they'll like switch over to the Coachella live stream. Right. I think people are more aware of the fact that there's a live stream. I think there's a big appeal to Coachella because like it's hard out there in this economy and like people, yeah, Coachella is really expensive.

30:13It did completely sell out in record time this year. That also means that even more people who wanted to go probably couldn't go. I think, again, pulling this from something that you said in that same conversation, I do feel like Coachella is the Super Bowl now. It's not just a music festival. I don't even necessarily see it as part of quote-unquote festival culture. I mean, I think festival culture has now, that tide has receded to festival culture at large being more of sort of like a niche thing. Touring is bigger than ever, I think, or like is at least financially propping up the music industry more than ever.

30:43But, you know, as far as festivals go, Coachella is now like post-festival. Like it's its own brand, represents so many different trajectories culturally. And I did feel like it was more in the chatter, you know, Magnitude Media's substack, which is called What's Resonating, like there literally was data in this post that the two most talked about things online that had the most engagement right after Weekend One or in the week following weekend one was Artemis 2 Returns to Earth and Coachella. It's not just anecdotal. It's like, this is like what was resonating. And I think it's very telling that this is what was resonating online and on social media.

31:19It's not just like how my feed happened to appear. It's somehow more in the zeitgeist than ever. And I think a lot of that, yeah, has to do with the sort of normalization and familiarity with the live stream. I think the live stream was extremely high quality this year. Like the camera work was excellent. Like sometimes I'd be close to the state. And I was like watching the band, but then I'd sort of get distracted by what the cameras were filming and what was getting fed to the live stream on the screens because it was just like looked so good and so cool. I think Coachella is the only music festival that's also a spectator sport.

31:50There are other festivals that have good lineups and sometimes they have headline making moments. A lot of them, they sort of come up organically because you have something like, well, maybe you booked Chapel Rhone in October of the year prior. And then in February, she blows up and then your festival is happening in May and you booked her without really realizing that was going to happen. And you can get a lot of attention for something like that. But Coachella is the only one that kind of generates that interest in and of itself. It's the only one that people care about almost regardless of who's playing.

32:15That being said, it helps when you have headliners that really are difference makers. And I'm not sure they totally had that last year. Love Green Day. I've loved them for 30 years. I don't necessarily need to tune in to see what Green Day is doing in 2025 on a Coachella live stream. But Sabrina Carpenter, sure. I mean, she called her shot two years ago. That's certainly interesting. and she's coming off this incredible two-year run of pop mega success. You want to see how she's going to advance the story next. And obviously Justin Bieber we saw in record amounts. I mean, when you mentioned the Super Bowl in conjunction with Coachella, it's worth pointing out here, like, I'm sorry to keep harping on the streaming stats, what he is doing this year is absolutely unprecedented in Coachella history.

32:52We have never seen an artist have this kind of bump where it's not just, oh, okay, you know, they're up like 20%, 30%. That happens. Up 200-something percent, you only see that one other place and it's at the Super Bowl. He is getting a bump from this headlining appearance like he would if he was headlining America's Game. Like that is the only thing to compare it to. And that shows you, I mean, certainly not as many millions of people around the world are probably watching Coachella's watch the Super Bowl. But it's not a totally different universe anymore. And the fact that there is the live stream and that gets disseminated over TikTok and all these other social media platforms means that it kind of can live forever.

33:27And it's not a one day bump. It's a two week bump. It's a one-week bump that turns into a second-week bump after his second weekend is as big as his first weekend. And it could last for a month. It could last longer. It could be a difference maker in his entire career. And that is something we've never seen before, even at the big headline moments of Coachella Pass, even with Beachella, even with Gaga last year. It's been a bump in exposure. It has been a bump in maybe overall Q rating. It has maybe been a bump in ticket sales for their upcoming tours. But we've never seen their numbers just skyrocket overnight.

33:56And I think that sort of shows you the increased power of Coachella as a cultural happening and of the last year in particular. Is Coachella like the New York Times of festivals where like, you know, all major papers are kind of like struggling and contracting and they just keep getting bigger and bigger? Yeah, I mean, sort of. Like, look at who's headlining Bonnaroo this year. I guarantee you it's not Sabrina Carpenter and Justin Bieber. it's you know role model and kesha who are good artists with big followings but role model has one hit kind of and kesha hasn't had a really big hit in about a decade she'll put on a great show i'm sure and he's you know he's pretty good at what he does but those are not the kind of artists you want headlining your major festival in 2026 do you want them like second or third line down and they would be at coachella but coachella really does kind of set the bar and they are the only one that's kind of maintained their sort of cultural currency while everyone else is sort of struggling with the stuff that andrew was talking about oversaturation and artists who don't necessarily want to deviate from their own tour plans to play a one-off festival when they can make similar money just out of stadium date and everyone else is a potential victim of those kind of industry whims except for coachella coachella is the only one that really sort of stands alone i remember like just up until recently we do this podcast every year about coachella and for the last few years the conversation had been about coachella having trouble selling tickets, potentially seeming like it was falling out of relevance to a degree.

35:18But as you said, this year, both weekends sold out pretty much immediately. I'm curious why you think that happened. Is it some kind of testament on the state of festival culture or live music culture writ large? Obviously, it's a complicated picture because other festivals don't seem to be hitting the same level of prominence. Or did Coachella figure out some just very clever way to turn things around. I think they just got better headliners, to be honest. I think last year they had good headliners, but they didn't have anyone who was going to be the sort of artist that you travel halfway around the world to see because they're all active touring artists.

35:54They've all reached a certain commercial level of their career where they're not necessarily hitting totally new heights at this point. They're sort of established at this point. So I don't know if there was one artist that was really driving excitement last year. And this year we had two, arguably three. I mean, Carol G has a huge, huge following, even though we haven't really talked about her as much as Sabrina or Justin Bieber. It's a global following. And people are excited just to get to see her on a stage like this because there was a long time where that probably seemed unthinkable. And she talked about this at the festival, that she's the first Latina female headliner that they've ever had at Coachella.

36:26And she was kind of calling them out for it, being like, hey, it took you way too long to get to this. But she was really ready to meet the moment. And I think a lot of people were excited to see that. And obviously, it had been a while for Bieber. Sabrina Carpenter is like a top five pop star right now. So you have those three headliners. That's a pretty good start. And I think that, you know, just based on the amount of merch we saw over the course of the first weekend, people were there to see those three artists specifically. And they might have been there to see other artists as well. But it wasn't like people were necessarily there just to see the Coachella brand and those were the artists who happened in the headline.

36:57Those three artists were driving a lot of the specific interest in this year's festival. So, you know, I talk about Coachella not being susceptible to the whims of the industry. They are to a certain extent. And I don't think they are the way that Lollapalooza or Bonnaroo or any of these other festivals are. They're not impervious. So it does help to have three like legitimate A-lists, at least one and a half, arguably A-plus list pop stars top in the thing. That's always going to make your job a lot easier. Yeah. And I was telling Emily, too, when we were prepping our questions for this, you know, I really feel like this incredibly strong slate of headliners also, each of them speaks to the three big trajectories that I see that define pop music right now as well.

37:35There wasn't like a nostalgia act or like they weren't doing it by genre anymore. It felt like they were doing it by audience, like the audiences that are really defining the biggest acts in the world. And you have, you know, Sabrina that speaks to like kind of classical, like polished, high production value, streamlined pop. Entertainer pop. Entertainer pop. Exactly. You have Justin Bieber, kind of a legacy act, but still in the zeitgeist. someone who has stakes. He almost represented this sort of like, for lack of a better term, this kind of iconoclast streak that I see emerging in pop where it's like, I'm going to do something a little bit against the grain, a little bit unexpected.

38:10I think there was a lot of like, is this going to be his comeback or is he going to like pull a Frank Ocean? You know, he's famously like loves the Frank Ocean Coachella performance. And he's also like flouting the sort of, you know, he doesn't officially have a manager right now. He's had this semi like fraught career, like in the public eye in recent years. He represents kind of the like lo-fi flouting the industry and tradition kind of streak in pop music, which I think we're seeing both aesthetically and sonically. And then you have Carol G, who I think represents the fact that pop music has become much more international in recent years and those audiences really matter and are valuable.

38:42And she also represents a certain kind of like, I think, really powerhouse like show don't tell kind of pop storyteller that whereas every single detail was pre-planned and accounted for more or less. And Sabrina's show, hers was much more about, I mean, it also was entertainment, but I don't know. Do you get what I'm trying to say, Andrew? Yeah. Well, I think certainly I felt like the Carol G performance had like a certain purposefulness to it that maybe wasn't in the Sabrina Carpenter one where it felt like she was kind of speaking to history and to larger themes and to, yeah, a sort of collective identity that gave it kind of a rootability inherently that maybe like Sabrina Carpenter feels a little bit too polished for at this point in her career.

39:24Yeah. Maybe it reached not to like the past, present and future of pop music. Yeah, a little bit. I also want to say that with the Justin Bieber thing, it was almost like the charm of kind of bucking the trends of the rest of everything else that was going on. And I don't know, it had almost like a Kanye, like a non-problematic Kanye energy to me. Totally. Yeah. I mean, the thing that I keep coming back to with the Bieber set is that I do think it was probably the weakest performance of the three. I mean, just when you kind of compare this, not just the spectacle, but the sort of neatness of the other two and the fact that they really played almost perfect sets.

40:00There weren't a lot of things that you could call them out as having flaws in, aside from the interludes and the Sabrina Carpenter thing, which was super weird. But the performance was great. The Bieber performance was not always great, but he understood the number one rule of Coachella, which is to do at least one thing that everyone's going to be talking about the next day. And Carol G sort of understood that. Sabrina Carver, I don't think, quite understood that. Maybe a little bit better on Weekend 2. But Bieber knew that what he was going to do was going to get a ton of attention. And people would be saying good things about it.

40:27People would be saying not so good things about it, but they'd be talking about it. And that is goal number one with a headlining Coachella set is you want people fucking talking about you the next day. and certainly, you know, mission accomplished there. I love how at the Grammys he did almost like a noise set or something. Like he was like using a loop machine himself. I guess he upped the ante. He's really good at coming up with these ideas. I love it. He's getting better, certainly. Yeah, yeah. And again, you know, when I was talking about it, I think people are sort of like a little bit, I mean, Carol G, like I think she took a big gamble and successfully so, but made it like, I want everybody to be talking about my whole performance the next day.

41:09It's like the one thing, you know? Yeah. And people were, and I've seen a lot of people being like, yeah, like now I'm a Carol G fan. I didn't know about her before. Now I know. So it didn't quite have the same like nostalgic pull of the Bieber one, obviously, because Bieber's been in our lives for 15 plus years at this point. Right. But she won a lot of new fans that night, for sure. And she had a different mission. I think that was part of her mission in a way that like it didn't have to be for Bieber. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about the strokes. This was like one of the big weekend to viral moments that was actually, I guess, controversial or where the strokes, I guess they like waited till their second set to to make this sort of like hitting the third rail political statement.

41:56And like the end of the second set, too. Right. yeah yeah what was it and it was like imagery of uh gaza the was it the iran war i don't have a full list of everything martin luther king some people the cia is rumored to have maybe disappeared all the yeah all the international leaders at the cia and then the video yeah yeah and then the video was like cut short we don't know exactly under what circumstances but it was it definitely had echoes of like the Super Bowl two years ago when one of the performers in Kendrick Lamar I talk about this all the time one of the performers in Kendrick Lamar's performance went rogue and was carrying a Palestinian flag and you kind of and it kind of gets disappeared and you don't know what happened did this feel like well sorry obviously there's a lot of crazy horrible stuff going on in the world right now.

42:53Did it feel like artists at Coachella or the crowd were engaging with that or was the Strokes set kind of an anomaly?

43:03I would say it was an anomaly. I mean, and the crazy thing to me is that it was the fucking Strokes who I don't remember making a single statement about anything over the course of 25 years. They feel like the political band. Yeah, I would never have guessed. So, I mean, shout out to them for a late developing social conscience, I guess. but I certainly did not expect to see that. I mean, I didn't see it, period, because I wasn't there at Weekend 2, and I missed their set Weekend 1, but obviously I've seen the clips about it since. I mean, good for them. I think it was definitely pointed that they waited till Weekend 2 and the very end of the set.

43:35I think they were sort of hedging their bets that they weren't going to get yanked off in the middle of it, but they did what not a lot of other artists were doing. It was not a big weekend for statement making. I did see Wednesday saying something about, you know, fuck Palestine. or sorry, fuck ice and free Palestine. Fuck Palestine would have been a much more controversial statement. And bands like that who are playing in the sort of lower, you know, earlier in the day in the sort of lower capacity stages, they were maybe making some comments like that. But certainly you weren't seeing Addison Rae making, you know, huge pronouncements from her 30 person, 30 ,000 person set or whatever.

44:12Right. Whereas like last year you had, God, what's her name? Claro brought up Bernie Sanders, remember? That's right. wow yeah last year it felt very very political um if in the message you know if in just like literally like speech only but i mean it's like just off the top of my head it's like you had claro do that you know green day obvious was very you know very you know change the american idiot lyrics to be about trump um you know you had um like kneecap i think you said yeah kneecap was a big thing uh amal and the sniffers spoke out uh dark side spoke out um uh spoke out against what bob villain um trump against trump and free palestine yeah like you know and that's just that's just like what's off the top of my head whereas like this year like i mean katie and i were talking about it weekend one and that's why this thing about like it's like little this this coda from the strokes um has really struck me because we were just like this year feels so much less political also last year like kids were wearing like luigi mangioni like luigi hats and stuff and uh you know i kind of i thought i've been seeing at shows of like all different genres just in la like a lot of people wearing like fuck ice t-shirts and i didn't see a single one that's not to say people weren't wearing them.

45:39There's 125 ,000 people there. But yeah, I mean, we didn't, we were talking about this at the house too, weekend one, I think, Andrew. Like we were like, we can only do something, but like there just wasn't that. And yeah, Katie and I were wondering like, we're like, are people just trying to dissociate at this point? You know? Yeah, you were saying that there was like a little bit of like a nihilistic energy in the air between all like the people smoking and - Smoking cigarettes. Yeah, smoking cigarettes specifically. and just a sort of lack of any sort of communal purposefulness in terms of here's what we're all here to be and do and represent.

46:17It didn't really feel like there was any of that this year. Did a political impulse get expressed in other ways or any indirect ways where you saw it coming through? I think Carol G's, I found Carol G's set to be inherently political the same way that Bad Bunny's set was inherently political. you know there wasn't like necessarily any messaging like literal messaging or like towels being waved around or anything on stage um but you know there's an ICE detention center not too far from the Coachella site um and I think you know I this I really respected this about her performance that it was like I think a real again show don't tell of you know her heritage of Latin American culture, South American culture, you know, Colombian pride, all the different like sort of facets of that.

47:07And, you know, people waving flags, you know, Colombian flags or Mexican flags and just in the crowd, you know, and it was sort of just like, it was like, it was like, it was like, you know, like, like politics and joy and celebration in that sense. And I thought that was cool. And I think the fact that she just got, she was like booked as the headliner is a statement unto itself. I don't know. I don't, I'm not going to like go so far as to say like that was exactly like Golden Voice's intention, but they couldn't like not be thinking about that. And she did sort of vaguely address it in the same portion of the set I was talking about where she talked about being the first female Latina headliner.

47:46She said that she was offering solidarity to her people who are like going through tough times right now. And she didn't get the specifics there. and she's given interviews where she's talked about how she's kind of afraid to go into specifics because she doesn't want to get deported, which is a shockingly real fear at this point. But it did feel, and especially like it came towards the end of the performance. It was one of the only times during her set that she spoke in English and she really wanted to address the crowd and make sure that everybody understood what she was saying. And it did feel pretty weighty given the context of the moment in a way that I was not prepared for necessarily.

48:20And it did kind of, It did feel like a statement of some sort, even though she was very vague in her words and she didn't really say anything particularly specific. I think everybody there kind of knew what she was saying anyway. Yep, exactly. And then, of course, you had Devo. Devo's always like overtly political. That's like their whole raison d 'etre. So, yeah. Can I say something about Devo real quick and about their sort of bans of their ilk? So I saw Devo for the first time. Incredible performance. you were sort of giving me the heads up about it, Andrew, because they're one of your favorite bands.

48:53I've never been a huge fan, but I thought that they fucking rocked. That said, they had like 500 people in like a 12 ,000 to 15 ,000 person tent. And this was sort of endemic of a lot of the kind of retro rock acts. Towards the end, it was close to five. I mean, I didn't specifically either count heads. Everybody ran up to go see Sombra, yeah. Well, they also made the mistake of playing Whip It like five songs into their set. So obviously a lot of people vacated after that. But I think in the future, I understand what Coachella is doing, booking acts like Devo and Black Flag and suicidal tendencies.

49:25They're trying to kind of create a historical continuum. They're trying to let the people know they haven't forgotten about their roots. They may be pandering to the parents of some of the kids that are being, that are, you know, chaperoning these kids to see Cat's Eye or whatever. Get one or two of them. Don't get five or six of them. And maybe put them on earlier in the day and maybe don't put them in the bigger stages. This is no shade to any of those acts specifically. I saw Iggy Pop. He was fantastic. Black Flag is a new female lead singer. I thought that was super cool. But it's just not doing these artists any favors when you put them on early evening in these big tents and all but the first three rows are totally vacant.

50:01It just makes it more of a bummer than it should be when you're trying to celebrate these legacy acts. Put them in a venue, in a space that's commiserate to their audience at this point. be honest about how many 20-somethings want to see 65-year-old Greg Ginn shouting about whatever, playing the guitar. You just got to be realistic about these things. And I love these bands, and I'm glad that they get a showcase moment like this, but I wish it was a showcase moment more tailored to the realities of their 2026s. Sorry about that. Maybe they need to do an underplay. Drew wrote a piece recently about the rise of the underplay in music.

50:36Maybe you need to do some, you know, put them in a smaller space than they can, sorry, in a space that is too small rather than too small. And then it's exciting. I know. I was like, it would have been tight to see Devo in the Sonora. Like, can you imagine? Sure. Why not? I get that maybe there's, you know, a disconnect with the legacy acts playing smaller stages. I get that too. But this is not the way. I just don't think that this is what anybody wants with these bands. So, yeah. That's my opinion. What was like the state of commerce at Coachella? Which I mean, like, obviously, to put this very, very cynically, a festival is like kind of a, you know, it's like real estate that you sell ads against and you sell the ads to the people who are there.

51:22Andra, you had a really nice metaphor where you were like walking between the stages of Coachella is like, you know, traveling down a feed to, you know, this artist and this artist and this artist. And then along the way, your experience is rudely interrupted by the presence of brands. Yeah. Yeah. I kept making the joke that I was like, instead of like scrolling my feed, I was strolling my feed. That's a bar. I like that. and you know which again like i want to be very clear i'm not saying this like with judgment i think it's like boring and short-sighted and not taking in the late capitalist realities of like trying to put on a production to the scale of coachella but it must also be that if just as coachella is sort of a preview of culture to come that this is also a space for brands to be sort of rolling out their you know with their current strategy oh yeah i mean it's like massive audience capture for people like if what they're just trying to get is like eyeballs on their logo yeah make a tent that has air conditioning and phone chargers in it and you're gonna thousands of people are gonna like stare at the Amex logo for like half an hour you know what I mean um it's smart or like Neutrogena put up a they just had this like freestanding like four-sided mirror tower thing sort of in the center of the festival it wasn't like huge or like garish or anything and at first I was like ew gross selfie culture and I was you know a few hours in when I I was like sweaty and like could feel my mess.

52:44I was like, this is Neutrogena, please save me. I know. I was like, this is so smart that Neutrogena just like has a mirror where you can just go like check your face for a second. But I remember that it's Neutrogena that did it. Right. Right. Right. But yeah, it was really interesting that the festival has very much like sort of internalized the logic of the internet or of social media feeds in ways good and bad where it was telling Katie, I was like, it kind of feels like, you know, like I have Spotify or something on shuffle in the background while i'm scrolling instagram and so it's going from like it is cool at coachella that i can go from seeing like geese to i don't know a latin artist to a k-pop act to a pop act you know in a matter of two hours and like and or discover like a really sick japanese hip-hop act shout out creepy nuts that was an amazing discovery and you can actually still happen upon and organically discover bands at coachella i do love that about it and you know So it's like having that going on in the background and you're really going from like scene to scene, too, because the crowds really change with all of them, which is really fun.

53:45And like the way people dress changes with all of them and the energy changes. Yeah. And you're like looking at cool art. So like, let's say I'm like scrolling my Instagram feed and I'm like looking at some cool art or like videos or something. And then all of a sudden, like, again, like, sorry, Neutrogena, but like Neutrogena, Electrolite, Aperol, Amex, like all this. And it's just in your line of sight, like while you're trying to. So you want to pay the premium price to get no ads on your Coachella feed? You mean that should be an option moving forward? Yeah. Is that what the VIP is? It's not at all.

54:17No, I'm just kidding. In fact, you're probably more coveted by brands. Yeah, the VIP garden. I took this really funny quasi-dystopian picture. Some kind of Google Gemini activation in the VIP garden. I didn't go in it, so I didn't know what was in it. But they had a big sign that was like, free Wi-Fi here. you just saw like a circle of people like standing outside the like Google Gemini pod all looking down at their phones so they could like text their friends and tell them where they are. It was like Wi-Fi, phone chargers, Google Gemini, you know, VIP. But you know, it's kind of an aeroburus, a reverse aeroburus, like a snake, like adding to its own tail as it goes along.

54:56I don't know. I'm going to, sorry about that. I'm going to stop that metaphor. There's tons of, if you like look it up, there's just like tons of like research and articles out there about like Like what an enormous value capture something to scale of Coachella is for four brands, both on the ground and I think increasingly commercials on the live stream for sure. And, you know, if brands can make themselves useful to people, that's great to say nothing of like the whole influencer economy that's there as well. So did you say it felt less influencer-y though this year? Just visually, like I felt like I saw like fewer people where like I could look at them and clock them as an influencer.

55:32And I think that's more of like a style aesthetic thing. Like it felt a little cringed when you like looked at someone who's like every detail like dialed in. Like they had a team do them up. Like this is the year of anything like recession indicator or something. But this is the year that started to feel a little cringe. Again, this is just anecdotal. But I feel like people were maybe a little more like clandestine about it. Which isn't to say it didn't have. Of course, there was all that whole kerfuffle about the Hollywood Reporter reported this. But like a lot of influencers were like having their brand sponsored trips canceled for some reason.

56:01And then there's some debate about that being exaggerated. I don't know. It just felt a little bit less, at least overtly, visibly, annoyingly, influencer-y, which is not to say that they weren't there. So you two are, you are writers, you are editors, you are journalists who, I assume, Andrew, you as well, your primary medium is the written word as opposed to other stuff. Sure. What did it feel like to be a print journalist covering the festival this year? How has your job changed there over the years? Well, I would say the primary evolution of it is a part that I'm not necessarily helping along that well yet.

56:44But now it's okay. Go there. See everyone you can. Get good notes and write about it later. But also get video. And make sure you capture video. Make sure you're doing it in certain 1080p or whatever. make sure that you have your phone, you know, in portrait and not in landscape and other sort of very specific instructions about how to best capture video for social. And usually in past years, we'd have one designated social person and they would go do that stuff and the rest of us would write. These days, it's more like everybody's got to be that person. And some of us are obviously a lot better at it than others.

57:17I took a handful of videos that were not deemed up to snuff by our social team. Sorry about that, Abby. But clearly that is going to be a shifting priority as we go forward. And I had, I do my own podcast called the greatest pop stars podcast, where I had a friend of ours named Steven J Horowitz, who was there for variety. He was basically the only person that variety had there. And he didn't, as far as I can tell, he didn't necessarily even write that much. He did a recap at the end of the weekend of, you know, the, whatever the six best things that he saw, but what he was mostly there for was to capture video.

57:49And he's a really good writer. He's a really accomplished writer, but that's not necessarily what we need these days what we need is video to go up on social channels and that's the thing that you get if you're there that you can't necessarily get off of the live stream you can get something a little bit closer get something that feels a little bit more tangible maybe uh so that's that i would say is the big evolution i'm still mostly just writing but hopefully someday i'll be able to capture video confidently as well yeah it was interesting for me because i felt like and correct me if i'm wrong but i felt like there were maybe actually like as many if not more people that were in the billboard has for social or video than there were writers.

58:26I would say there are probably still more writers, but the lines are getting a little bit blurrier because all of our social people write and all that. Yeah, exactly. And we all have to sort of be trusted to be able to hold our own there. And it's tough. I mean, on one hand, I certainly understand why that's the case and I want to help. On another part, on another hand, I do sort of feel like I'm becoming part of the problem because I don't want to be one of the millions of people there watching through their phones and blocking people in back of me. I'm a tall guy. Nobody necessarily needs me to add another couple inches to my height with a phone.

58:56And just making the experience a lot less pleasurable for everybody there. And I saw this was like a very common complaint, especially weekend two when Sabrina brought out Madonna, that nobody was really reacting to the moment viscerally. Everybody was just whipping out their phones and filming it. And, you know, that's an old person complaint anyway. And that's been true since, I don't know, probably a decade ago, maybe even longer. So it's not like this is a new thing. It's not like it's anything that's going to change course anytime soon, but I just don't want to contribute to it. So it does make it a little bit harder for me to sort of enjoy the festival just as an attendee, to have to be worrying about the video and be blocking the view of people in back of me and maybe just adding to the general visual pollution of a million people having their phones out, kind of not actually experiencing the moment on stage.

59:41Andrew, how has your job changed? I know that you wrote a piece for the LA Times reporting on a Madonna appearance. yeah like it's very interesting too because you don't always get consistent passes as media like even within your own team so that really affects where you're standing and like a social editor might not necessarily get a ga pass which means they're like not going to be able to get like a great shot on their phone or something good luck to them yeah i had i had an artist pass weekend too or both weekends and you know so i was able to like when madonna hit the stage i got like a really really good video and i like ran back awesome and i'm like let's hit the press tent like let's go you know and it was just like firing off this video and he's like shoot it to me you know I like we like tapped our phones I gave him the video he communicated to you know their audience editor like got it up and I'm sitting there I'm just like typing on my like notes pad like just writing writing into like an initial scaffolding I'd built to add to it and um and I ended up doing that for the times like throughout the weekend like and then they like someone got wind that Billy Idol was gonna come out during Sombra so I'm like posted up at Sombra like waiting for him to come out with my phone even though on a personal level there were like other acts I would have much rather seen at that time sure you know and then I'm just like to the press tent again like you know as I happen to be going to the press tent like suddenly Snoop came out like at the end of Givion's set so I was like okay I gotta stop and like get this too you know and like I guess I felt a little bit like existentially like dizzy about that this year because it did feel kind of more acute what felt acute look the the very fast turnaround and the need to get social video for like a surprising moment i did that in the past for kcrw as well too but it just felt like this became the kind of a main form or like an equally important form of content this year or like it really crystallized as that so but also like a lot of people aren't watching the feed live they might wake up the next morning and be like oh sabrina carpenter brought out madonna i want to Go watch that.

1:01:33And the Coachella official video, maybe they give it to you, but maybe they don't. Or maybe they give it to you a week from now or a month from now or a year from now. And if you want to actually watch it the morning after, which I certainly did, you got to look up some of these fan shot or media shot videos. And so we actually are providing some degree of service for these people in certain circumstances. But it does get me a little existential too when it's like, okay, I'm there. I'm specifically assigned to cover Giesa's set. 20 minutes into Geese's set, they do a 45 second long snippet cover of Justin Bieber's baby.

1:02:07Okay, well, that's interesting. I film video of it. I can't get on the internet in the tent. I can't get in the internet on the internet, like outside the tent. So I got to completely relocate just to very, very slowly upload this video to our Slack. And then eventually they decided the video isn't really necessarily a needle mover anyway, and it doesn't get posted. And it's like, I missed half of Geese's set trying to take and upload and share this video. Was I there more for that or should I just stay and watch the whole set? I don't know. It's a decision that is going to become, I think, increasingly frequent in my live coverage.

1:02:42Exactly. In years moving forward. Yeah. It's just sort of the way things are now. And I don't hold our team responsible or accountable. I don't hold it against them at all. They're doing what they have to do and they understand the realities of media coverage of 2026. But it can be kind of a bummer as somebody who would rather just stay and watch and then write about these sets later. Yeah. If we're talking about what Coachella tells us about culture this year, what does covering Coachella tell us about the future of music media in general or what we can expect? More videos? Yeah. I mean, I don't want to sound too down about it because, hey, we still get to go and not a lot of people do.

1:03:18So we are privileged in that sense and we are lucky to get to go there. And even though there's at least one moment a day that I think to myself, what the fuck am I doing here with all these kids? Like, get me out of here. I'll just watch my couch next year. I do still also have at least one moment a day where I'm like, this is incredible. I can't believe I get to do this for a living. I will do this for as long as I am permitted to do so. So I don't want to sound too doomer-y about it. But yeah, I think that is definitely the evolution. And I think people do still want to read about the festival and they want to get context from people that were there.

1:03:51and maybe that's not necessarily reading. Maybe it's listening to podcasts like this one. Maybe it's TikTok videos. But I think people do want actual cultural commentary from the people whose opinions they trust who are actually there at the festival because you know you can't get everything off the live stream and you only know so many people who are there. So I do think that there will still be some sort of value in the things that Andrea and I are doing, video aside, but it might take different forms. It might evolve mediums. We're going to have to stay flexible. yeah so so both insight context commentary is a value that we can still provide i hope so and also accuracy like trustworthy yes yes yes another one where like everyone is kind of able to capture the moment who is there but we know that it's been vetted yeah and i know when i when i'm not there i'm waking up the next morning looking for video but also looking for a recap i want to know what happened with my own eyes and i also want to have it contextualized properly yeah i think i agree with that i think we're just seeing like that the purpose of it just kind of shift mediums like you're seeing more people do takes on tiktok i think it's interesting that i feel like there's a whole like new subset of like festival reviewing that's happening just from people like from tiktok influencers that are watching the live stream which is like that's cool like but i mean i mean there's a lot to like unpack with even like just saying that i think it's not to say that people can't have like critical opinions from watching the live feed they certainly can and they might be very different from sabrina carpenter as an example like uh very different from what it felt like on the ground and i think both of those things are valid i predict that it's going to shore up i think the value of like trusted critics actually like interviewing talking about like the experience of festival goers on the ground and like talking to them is something you can't get on the live feed but it's actually like really important for audiences and i think is part of our responsibility as journalists but yeah it's just like you have to just be so fast constantly and you have to be up to late turning stuff around like to catch the wave of audience demand for these things that it is like incredibly physically and mentally taxing yeah more so than ever are we sadly going to probably see more journalists just stay home and write things based on the live stream i think yeah i mean yeah yeah it's sort of unavoidable i mean the sort of cost benefit analysis of actually sending reporters out there versus having just one guy watch on a laptop screen is maybe not even on a laptop screen.

1:06:14It's sort of undeniable. And for a lot of publications, that's going to be the way and understandably so. There is still something to being there. And especially if you're capturing video, if you're interviewing artists, which I didn't do so much of, but some of my co-writers did. And if you're really trying to kind of do stuff on the ground there, there is still value to it for sure. But it's sort of a fine distinction at this point. And 80 % of what you could get being there, maybe not 80%, but certainly more than half you could get off the live stream. And so if you don't have the budget to spend thousands of dollars in transit and hotels and, you know, per diems and all that, yeah, sure.

1:06:49Watch from your couch. There's really not much reason not to at this point. What is like one thing maybe that you haven't mentioned already or just something that you want to emphasize that you expect to see more in culture as a whole this year based on what you saw at Coachella? I think one is just I think live music performances, high quality live music performances, like the streamed concert is just going to be I think we're just going to be seeing more of it. I mean, more podcasts are having live musical guest performances. I think live performance video is now like its own piece of music content.

1:07:28And it's not necessarily an offshoot of the live music industry. I think this is now being seen as a thing that generates a lot of audience capture. It's a really high value ticket in the attention lottery. It's great for social media, keeps people on YouTube, and it's good for bands too. And also, I should mention, or one point that comes up a lot is that late night is sort of generally scaling back or scaling back itself is generally itself being scaled back, but is often scaling back musical performances. So we might be seeing this more on YouTube versions of this. Yeah, I think that what we're seeing is that fewer live events are needle movers than ever before.

1:08:13But those handful of remaining live events are super, super impactful in ways they haven't been in past years and that they're only going to get more impactful. And it might just be a sort of five or six things on the calendar a year sort of thing where it's, you know, It's the Super Bowl, it's the Grammys, it's the Met Gala, it's Coachella, and it's like one or two other things. But those five or six things can kind of shift the culture overnight. And maybe that means that certain award shows don't matter so much. Maybe it means that certain festivals don't matter so much. Maybe it means that certain kind of mid-level live events and event events don't necessarily have the same impact that they might have five or ten years ago.

1:08:51but those sort of tentpole events are going to be game changers every single time and then maybe simultaneously you'll see those who are look interested in more alternative culture than going to smaller yeah yes boutique kind of like sustain release or something you know in electronic music for example and i think we want more we want more humans we want more authenticity whatever that means in the broadest sense and we want more like analog in our live music performances or our live content you know i think this is like that's partially a parasocial thing but i think people want more justin bieber on the laptop i think i think people want a little bit more imperfection in their entertainment i agree i agree with that i think friction is going to kind of friction a priority on live performances yeah no because especially in an ai era and an era where everything can be kind of made perfect if you want it to be, there will be a certain thrill in sensing that something is a little bit not as it should be.

1:09:53And not in like an uncanny way, but in a way where just there's a little bit more room for failure, I do think. That was one of the things that made the Bieber set so exciting, even as it was incredibly flawed. Exactly, yeah. Final question. Coolest fashion trend you saw and worst fashion trend you saw? This is lightning round, so we're going to just go really quickly. Andrew you can use yourself if you want Can I just make my one fashion related observation Because I don't really speak fashion This is not a forte of mine By any stretch of the imagination When I would go in the 2010s The default young male uniform Was the NBA throwback jersey It's gone It is no longer a thing of Coachella There's still a handful here and there I saw at least one person Wearing the Bugs Toon Squad jersey from Space Jam And let me tell you When you go to Coachella And you don't see that jersey at least once That is the downfall of American society.

1:10:45That means we totally lost the plot. So at least we hit that baseline, but it is not the wave anymore. It used to be like you'd see one out of every 15 dudes was wearing one of these jerseys. Now it's like one out of every 150. It's definitely become a distinct minority. Are those dudes just staying home to watch the finals? It's possible. I think more likely they've either moved on to soccer or baseball. Like basketball in general just isn't as popular as it was 10 years ago. and I don't know, maybe they're wearing Strokes t-shirts now. I couldn't tell you what has replaced the basketball jersey as the thing.

1:11:20All I can tell you is that the basketball jersey is no longer the thing. That's a really great fashion observation. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Andrea, best and worst. Yeah. Hard to say best. I feel like I saw just like a lot fewer like original, truly like fabulous looks at Coachella this year. The one like cool look I really liked, but it's definitely like not original or not something I haven't seen before but it's like the really baggy jorts long baggy jorts with like an extina like thong pulled up above it or like with a bikini top I just think that's like a cool like anybody who wears that you just like look fucking cool like it's simple oh hair like having like nice hair is like big like long flowy healthy natural like is it flowing does she have long hair is it flowing yeah I stuck my fist in would I be able to get it out yeah yeah the worst trend is always going to be the leather circle belt that has become sort of like an icon like of our show of our annual coachella review it was definitely there as much as it ever had been but it did feel uh do you know what i'm talking about andrew did you notice this were we talking about it at the house it's possible yeah it's just like disgusting it's just like the leather circle boho belt i just can't wait for it to go away we dubbed it last year when we had culture critic biz sherbert of american style and nymphed alumni on she dubbed it the boho amnesia belt for because it's like being worn by people that are trying to throw back to an era that they didn't actually like live through um remember it's just awful and it was like still everywhere this year but it is starting to feel a little tired i noticed like i kept seeing it in context of just like outfits that felt very much prefab boxed outfits where people were like, I saw this and this is what you're going to wear to Coachella.

1:13:03So I wore it. So hopefully that's on its way out. Sorry, can I talk about the one shirt that I wore that was particularly well received by the Coachella faithful? So I have a t-shirt that just says on it, let Benson flip, which is a reference to the pop star Benson Boone and his predilection towards flipping off of various things and the unnecessary amount of backlash and hate that he receives for doing so. and Harry Styles fans saying that he has backed his last flip due to Harry Styles' return. And I wore this T-shirt on the Saturday of Coachella. I would say six or seven people asked to take photos of it.

1:13:39Another dozen or so just stopped me to say, hey, man, love your shirt. And I think it's just a message whose time has come. It is, you know, not a lot of people are making statements at Coachella. A lot of people had that shirt. I saw it on a lot of people there, actually. You weren't alone. No, he was a fashion influencer. They saw you in it and then they wore it the next day. Maybe, yeah. It's possible. Actual worst new trend. The boho amnesia belt has now been replaced with the Y2 amnesia ruffled ripped skirt. It's just a short skirt with long tendrils on the side that I'm assuming is supposed to look ripped.

1:14:13I think it's part of a larger trend phenomenon I saw there that I dubbed kind of romanticy core or like yearning core. There was like a lot of ripped bodices. And that's something we've talked a lot about on this show is the yearning romantic. I saw that manifest in fashion. If you want to know more about what I thought of Coachella Style, you can go check out Biz Sherbert's American Style Substack. There's a full report for me on there up now. How many articles would you say you published total across your two weekends, Andrea? Well, like including short video blurby things. Sure. I don't know, like seven.

1:14:44That's a healthy number. Yeah. We'll see. There's still more coming. That's right. Not done yet. The grind never stops. Yeah. Thank you so much, Andrew Unterberger, for coming on the show. This was great. Where can people keep tabs on your work and what you have coming up next? Well, they can, I guess, find my author page on Billboard.com if they're so inclined. Or they could follow me on Blue Sky, the only social media platform that matters, according to some people. At AU Get Off My Gold is my handle. They can listen to your podcast. That's right. They can listen to my podcast, The Greatest Pop Stars Podcast, available on all major streaming services or on Billboard.com.

1:15:24And what about basketball? That's right. The rare Coachella Philadelphia 76ers overlapping audience. I guess maybe more so considering that you're on this podcast, Emily. But yeah, you can find me at the Rice to Ricky Sanchez, which is a sub stack run by Mike Levin and Spike Eskin, who hosts the basketball podcast, also called the Rice to Ricky Sanchez. I'm on there occasionally, but I'm on the sub stack all the time. Find me there if you want to read about the Sixers. likely very short series against the Boston Celtics that they are currently engaged in.

1:16:01This episode of The Culture Journalist was produced and edited by Emily Friedlander and me, Andrea Dominick. To check out more, head to our Substack. That's theculturejournalist.substack.com. And if you like what you're hearing, leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or share us with friends to help support independent journalism.