MARINA's Coachella set affected me greatly
How nostalgia and a livestream helped me look forward
By age 27, I’ve been able to see the majority of my favorite musicians thus far live in concert, which has been a privilege I’ve worked for and enjoyed. But over the years, for myriad reasons, I’ve never been able to catch my own glimpse of one specific artist, a real cornerstone of my teenage experience: Marina Diamandis, formerly known as Marina and the Diamonds, now mononymously known in all-caps as MARINA, has evaded me for the last 12 years.
She was my favorite singer as a teenager, rocking my perception of pop music to its core when the shapeshifting halls of the internet led me to the “Hollywood” music video in 2012. But I’ve had a complex relationship with Marina’s music in adulthood – her first three albums were so sacred to me that I now tend to get nervous once she gears up to release newer work. Her 2019 offering “LOVE + FEAR” fell harshly flat with both me as a fan and as a critic; I found it a hollow mess that singlehandedly toppled her down from my musical Mount Rushmore.
But after she took the Coachella main stage just six hours before Gaga each Friday, I was assured Marina still has it going on. Then I started reckoning with my past, present and future.
Marina’s oldest work is my favorite stuff she’s put out. I love, love, love to go back and listen to the music of hers I obsessed over in high school; if (for some reason) you want a glimpse into what went through 15-year-old Will’s head every day, “The Family Jewels” is a great place to start. But her later work has both hit me and missed me, as recently and mercurially as the singles she’s rolled out for her upcoming sixth album. I wasn’t expecting to hear much of her pre-2019 oeuvre during her 50-minute Coachella performance.
However, what I didn’t realize until seeing it in practice is that thanks to TikTok, many of the Marina and the Diamonds songs I’d been obsessed with remain among MARINA’s most popular. I’d initially started watching her set from weekend one as a cooldown after Gagachella. But when the opening bass riff of 2015’s “Froot” smacked me in the face two songs into the show – and the audience rapturously cheered – I realized this could be a treat.
I was overcome with sentimentality watching her sing the first verse of 2010’s “Are You Satisfied?” to a 2025 festival crowd and I couldn’t stop smiling when 2012’s “Bubblegum Bitch” closed the show. Neither of these songs were singles from their respective albums, neither song had accompanying music videos – but after trending on TikTok, both are among her most-streamed tracks on Spotify, with “Bubblegum Bitch” taking the number-one position.
I loved these songs and still do. “Are You Satisfied?” is such an incredibly engaging song, both lyrically and sonically, and getting into it marked one of the first times I’d ever heard meaningful introspection in a pop song – meanwhile, I tried to make my high school crew team work out to “Bubblegum Bitch” one time in the spring of 2013 and was and was comically shut down after the second verse. I’m not saying that was a good call by me, but I was truly zealous for this woman.
I’m usually quick to blame TikTok for social trends I don’t like (I still don’t have an account on the app and never have) or agree with those who do the same. But I might be shedding my change-resistant skin if it means Marina Diamandis is closing her Coachella set with “Bubblegum Bitch” in the 2020s to a festival crowd that sings along. My “Teen Idle” is still nailing it long after I graduated Marina cum laude.
This wasn’t the most high-spectacle pop show, but it didn’t need to be. When her music’s energy reaches its peak, Marina doesn’t need to break into choreo. She can draw a crowd’s energy with a powerful strut, and that’s absolutely fine. She was practically just opening for Gaga here, so it’s alright if she just has song-correspondent backdrops and stunning outfits as opposed to an entire opera house. Weekend one saw Marina Antoinette battle the heat, weekend two saw her best Lisan al Gaib couture with some big sunglasses battling the wind.
She bravely weathered both conditions. And I think I can weather the changes in my own life just a little bit more easily now that MARINA’s sung the line “I'm Miss Sugar Pink, liquor, liquor lips” at Coachella.
So I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank you, TikTok, for keeping these Marina and the Diamonds songs commercially relevant to MARINA’s career. Those Coachella sets stoked an old fire within me that hadn’t been seriously tended to in years. I usually try to avoid buying into media that manipulates nostalgia, but in this case, the (relatively) new and young social media app embracing what I used to love is most likely my stop to hop off its hate train.