You should pretend you’re at Coachella this weekend
On my conversion to a fan of the cultural behemoth
I’m an avid concertgoer. It’s my most expensive hobby, but I grew up dreaming about seeing my favorite singers, songwriters, bands and their ilk do what they do – I’ve always found meaning in art, so seeing formative material performed by its creator(s) seemed so exciting to me.
And I’m happy to report that nearly 100 shows later, it’s as bombastic as I’d envisioned. I grew up in a churchgoing family, so the ability to have spiritual experiences as part of an audience singing together was probably one of the first neural pathways I was able to form. There’s an ephemeral oneness to be felt in a concert crowd, something divine in which anticipation and catharsis become communal among hundreds or even thousands of attendees. Religious experts seem to be as on board with this comparison as their more secular counterparts.
This is why I’d thought that Coachella’s annual YouTube livestreams were a little silly. Since 2011, fans without tickets to the U.S.’s biggest music festival have been able to tune in to performances as they happen across all eight stages. But I’d found the idea of attending Coachella remotely to be for weenies, or perhaps more forgivingly, a pacifying option for those who can’t attend shows. Even when Maggie Rogers, one of my all-time favorite artists, announced that her 2022 Coachella appearance would be a crucial part of her Harvard master’s degree, I wasn’t compelled to virtually attend.
But a shift started in 2023. Legendarily elusive British pop auteur Jai Paul would be coming out of a decade of hiding to put on his first-ever live show on Coachella’s Mojave stage. It was major news for the Will Gorman world; I made a note of when he’d be performing and made sure to tune into the livestream for the first time.
Ironically, with no prior announcement indicating otherwise, his performance did not appear on the YouTube feed that night. I had to rely on a replay the next day to get my fix, but I’d caught the possible allure of the livestream by then. No, I couldn’t pull together a trip across the country to see Jai Paul, but I sure could access YouTube.
Fast-forward to 2025. In the wee hours of this past Friday night, I was moments from passing out when I realized that Lady Gaga’s headlining set was taking place concurrently with my bedtime routine. So, I did what any sane person would’ve done and stayed up even later to get a glimpse of music history.
“Gagachella” was insane – I’ve always been a fan of high-spectacle pop music performance, it’s why I still watch the Grammys every year – but this was something else.
I’d tuned in just in time for Gaga to wax poetic before launching into “Alejandro”; I fought my oncoming slumber to watch present-day Gaga play a chess match and wage dance-based war against herself (set to “Poker Face,” of course, because why not?). I woke up the next morning to relish in her skeleton cotillion during “Zombieboy” and I got emotional during the “Bad Romance” finale.
I instantly reached out to the friends of mine I knew were in attendance. Everyone was on the same page: this was music history, this was the best concert they’d ever seen. And if I could share similar fervor watching remotely, then maybe there is something to be said for CFH (Coachella from home).
Coachella streams feel like high budget affairs in themselves. They’re more than shaky iPhone feeds – they’re professional-quality multi-camera live broadcasts. The camerawork is excellent, letting viewers see every detail up-close and personally (check any of these highlights for examples). So as the dancers, crew and Gaga herself took their final bows at the end of the Gagachella spectacle, I realized I’d been completely converted to the CFH experience and also that this might define my weekend.
I sat down for Charli xcx’s guest-filled rave on Saturday night as well as Clairo’s Bernie Sanders-assisted performance. I’d seen both of these artists live in concert last fall, so the stakes for tuning in were much lower than they were when experiencing the theatrical epic known as Gagachella. But I still had so much fun! I let out a little yell when Charli and Lorde “walk[ed] like a bitch” together; I got up and grooved to the scintillating live arrangement of Clairo’s “Amoeba.” And it blew my mind that I was having this much fun alone at home watching TV!
It must be noted that we wouldn’t have 2025’s Gagachella without 2018’s Beychella. The buzz surrounding Beyoncé’s landmark Coachella headlining set a few years back is what put me onto Beyoncé as a whole, and the live Homecoming album & accompanying documentary sealed the deal. The festival had been streaming for years at that point, but 2018 was the first time I’d heard of anyone making appointments to watch. Countless masterful choices made for that show set new, astronomical standards for headlining the country’s biggest festival.
So thanks, Bey, for paving the way and doing it flawlessly, and thanks, Gaga, for matching her freak. And thank you, Goldenvoice, for buying into Coachella’s celebrity status so deeply that you’ve made it so accessible in such a spectacular way. I still want to attend Coachella in-person by the time I’m 35, don’t get me wrong, but 27 was the year I realized I could settle for the feeds.
I’ve never been anti-concert footage as a whole – I’m known to put on a festival set or Tiny Desk as a backdrop to catching up with friends – but this silly livestream is a new level I’m happily ascending to. And with weekend two of Coachella on the horizon and such a wealth of performances to tune into, I’ll at least be watching something (I personally missed Megan Thee Stallion’s set last weekend, so best believe that’s penciled into my upcoming Sunday). If literally anything on the schedule interests you, then you should, too.