Coachella Isn’t Just About The Music. And That’s A Good Thing.

There are plenty of reasons why I never imagined attending Coachella. Since first exploring the festival scene as a college freshman in 2015, I’ve made my way through a wide spectrum of events: some massive like Electric Forest and Camp Bisco, some scrappy like Elements Lakewoods, and some unapologetically DIY.  But each was a space where people come together to connect and be immersed in music. 

Coachella, with its 125,000 daily attendees, and headliners raking in upwards of $5 million per weekend, always seemed like something else entirely. Between prohibitively expensive ticket prices (this year, a three-day general admissions pass was $649, and 60% of attendees used a payment plan to finance their tickets), and its reputation as a place where people are more focused on photo ops than dancing, Coachella felt like the antithesis of the intimate, community-driven festivals I love. 

And yet, it doesn’t take a music journalist to see why Coachella holds its place in the modern music zeitgeist: It’s where iconic performances, like the Pixies reunion in 2004 or Daft Punk’s pyramid set in 2006, become part of music history, where guests performers like Queen Latifah and Billie Eilish are casually trotted out on stage, and where you might find yourself dancing next to an A-list actor (like Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner, who tapped into their inner Brat this weekend), if not your favorite reality TV star. So when I was sent to the desert for Weekend 1 in the name of journalism, I expected to report back on the hype from the outside looking in. What I didn’t expect was to feel moved by what I saw — and to leave with a newfound appreciation for the power of large-scale festivals and the way they can hold both spectacle and substance, protest and privilege. 

Like many who call the East Coast home, I’ve always romanticized California. In the Coachella Valley, where the namesake festival takes place, that fantasy sharpened to reality. Surrounded by towering mountains, lush palm trees, and cinematic sunsets, Indio, California is an impossibly beautiful place — and a warm, sun-soaked retreat from NYC’s rainy season.  

Tucked between mountain ranges, the Empire Polo Club — Coachella’s longtime home — might just be the quintessential music festival venue. The grounds are sprawling but flat, carpeted in soft grass lawns that stretch for acres. In my years of raving, I’ve danced on blistering city pavement, hiked up dusty hills to get to my campsite, and tripped over tree roots at forested events. And as a dynamically disabled woman with chronic back pain, I’ve found that terrain can truly make or break an event. Steep inclines and uneven ground can add up and cause my pain to flare, but the Coachella grounds spared me from the worst of it. While the amount of walking required to enter the venue and move between stages is serious, the flat paths are forgiving, the signage is clear, and stages have extensive space to spread out away from the crowd if you need to sit or lay down in the grass. ADA parking lots cut down the distance to the venue for those who need it, motorized mobility devices can be charged on site, and there are dedicated accessibility service hubs throughout the grounds. This should be standard at every festival. But too often, it’s not. 

Coachella’s three-day, 144-artist lineup was overwhelming in theory — but for a listener like me, with a taste that jumps from house and techno to hip-hop and indie pop, it felt like an unusually well-funded fever dream. While I typically gravitate towards events that center smaller, underground acts, my weekend at Coachella offered something distinctly different: a chance to reconnect, as an adult, with the artists who shaped my musical taste in adolescence. 

I danced to Missy Elliott, who I fell in love with at 11 after hearing “Lose Control” on Now That’s What I Call Music! 20. Green Day’s posters covered my childhood bedroom. Lady Gaga’s debut album The Fame defined my middle school years, and German electronic band Kraftwerk pioneered the experimental electronic music that’s carried me into adulthood. Coachella put me face to face with the artists who have scored my life: a particularly precious experience as I prepare to enter my 30s next year. Beyond nostalgia, Weekend 1 was also a clear reminder of who continues to move the culture forward. Sets by Megan Thee Stallion (who brought out Queen Latifah, Victoria Monét, and Ciara), Tyla, and Amaarae were more than just entertainment — they were evidence of the brilliance and dominance of Black women in music and brought an energy that was electric, powerful, and vital. 

It will surprise no one that in 2024, less than 25% of the artists performing at major US music festivals were women, according to the nonprofit Book More Women. This year’s Coachella was no exception: Just 25.39% of the lineup identify as women, while 74.7% are men and 1.3% are nonbinary artists. But despite their underrepresentation overall, women dominated the top of the bill — claiming four of the six headlining spots. It’s a telling split: women may still be outnumbered, but they overwhelmingly claimed the most coveted set times of the weekend. Sets from Charli XCX, who brought out Lorde, Billie Eilish, and Troye Sivan; Lady Gaga, who delivered a cinematic and deeply personal two-hour set titled “The Art Of Personal Chaos”; and Sara Landry, one of the most dominant forces in hard techno, felt like a celebration of feminine energy — and rage — and made for a weekend that was very much for the girls.

Screaming along to “American Idiot” as Green Day took the stage for their Coachella debut was cathartic. The crowd roared when Billie Joe Armstrong swapped the lyrics, “I’m not a part of the redneck agenda,” for, “I’m not part of the MAGA agenda,” and again when he altered a line in “Jesus of Suburbia” to reference “the kids from Palestine.” It was one of several moments where artists used the stage to break the fourth wall and make a political statement, and were embraced by the crowds for it. While Irish hip-hop group Kneecap allege that their pro-Palestine messaging was cut from the Coachella livestream, other artists’ political statements made it to the stream uninterrupted — like when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced Clairo with a speech calling for young people to fight for climate action, abortion access, and an end to the suffering in Gaza. 

"This country faces some very difficult challenges. And the future, what happens to America, is dependent on your generation,” Sanders told the crowd, who erupted in applause throughout his two-minute speech. “But if you do that, you do that at your own peril.” 

Of course, these moments of protest sit in tension with the reality that Coachella is owned by AEG, whose billionaire founder, Philip Anschutz, has donated heavily to Republican candidates and conservative causes. In 2017, Anschutz dismissed reports of anti-LGBTQ donations as “fake news,” but tax filings from the same year showed contributions to groups known to lobby against LGBTQ+ rights — including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the National Christian Foundation. This dissonance is one that Americans are far too familiar with: moments of joy, unity, and freedom of expression often unfold within institutions funded by people whose politics threaten those very values. That tension is especially sharp at music festivals, which have long served as gathering spaces for young queer people, women, people of color, and anyone seeking refuge from the constraints of the everyday. 

While the Coachella Valley is branded as a festival fantasy land, it’s the year-round home of low-income, largely Latine communities — many of whom are immigrants and farmworkers who keep the region, and our country, running. The takeaway? If you’re partying in a place where wealth and poverty sit side by side, it’s worth asking who’s making money off the experience — and how you can support the community that’s hosting you.

There’s a particular kind of power that comes from a stage as big as Coachella’s, and this year, a few artists wielded it well. Coachella is, at its core, a profit-driven commercial event, but the sets that stayed with me were the ones that used its massive stage to disrupt, provoke, and tap into a deeper current of political truth. This past weekend was a reminder of the kind of energy that can erupt when people gather not just to celebrate, but to confront the world as it is and imagine how it could be different. Contradictions don’t dissolve just because we name them, but they become harder to ignore. And that’s a tension I’ll be carrying with me — in a good way.