In the middle of their Coachella set, Slayyyter unleashed a death growl on “YES GODDD” that reverberated through the thousand-strong crowd. And when a drone footage showed how far the crowd of headbanging bodies reached beyond the Mojave tent, a few incredulous astonishers walked along through the crowd. Slayyyter had no primetime slot and no lavish budget for an elaborate production. She performed at 3 p.m. in the scorching heat, wearing an outfit she made herself. That didn’t matter to her or anyone else there. She delivered one of the most impressive sets of the entire first weekend, joining the strong line-up of women who dominated the festival debates this year.
At the other end of the pop spectrum, far from the screams of metal and the electric pull of “CRANK,” shone the lights of Sabrina Carpenter’s Hollywood dream. The pop star’s headlining set was a manifestation that took two years to become a reality. At Coachella 2024, she promised to take the most coveted spot in the lineup next time. Carpenter filled her performance this year with movie references, from “Dirty Dancing” and “Cabaret” to “Psycho” and “The Rocky Horror Show.” Call it Sabrinawood: Some say it’s the place where dreams come true—which is especially true for pop fans who love the spectacle as much as the women on this year’s lineup.
FKA Twigs has never been known for holding back on stage – but what Coachella witnessed on the final night of its first weekend was a revelation. During “Cellophane,” so much emotion poured out of her as she choked out the words while crying, that the moment was just as gripping as watching a group of ballroom dancers perform on stage. That was performance at the highest level. Even Twigs’ costume changes were so seamless that they were barely noticeable. This level of stage presence is often taken for granted by women in pop. But anyone who watched all the other women who delivered standout sets at Coachella this year never felt overwhelmed by this expectation. They enter the stage – and at that moment it is immediately clear to everyone watching: This is where they belong.
Historical moments on stage
Coachella has always had its greatest moments with women defining, disrupting and dominating pop. This was true for Beyoncé, who immortalized her appearance as the festival’s first black headliner in the Netflix documentary “Homecoming” in 2018. (This performance also popularized the portmanteau of stage name and festival name – keyword: Beychella.) This also applied to Blackpink, who were the first K-pop girl group to perform at Coachella in 2019 and were the first K-pop group ever to headline in 2023. Katseye cited both performances as major influences for her first festival performance.
This year, the baton was passed to Karol G: the first Latina to headline Coachella. The Colombian pop star delivered the greatest performance of her career with the weight of history on her shoulders. She hosted the set introduction in Spanish while English translations were projected on the screens, telling the story of a young woman who finds her voice by overcoming the boundaries that have been drawn around her. “We’re not doing this because we want to push everyone out, we’re doing it to make everyone feel welcome in our culture, in our music,” she said later in the set. “I want everyone to be proud of their heritage. Please don’t be afraid, be proud. Raise your flag.”
BINI followed suit as the first Filipino group to ever perform at the festival. The eight-member group introduced the desert to P-pop, performing in Filipino, Tagalog and English. These historic moments often come long overdue – in a way that inadvertently reveals how far behind the curve the festival was at any given time and, to some extent, still is. This year marked the 25th edition of Coachella since the festival’s launch in 1999. Before 2017, when Lady Gaga headlined, no woman had headlined the festival in a decade – since Björk became the first female headliner ever in 2007.
Timing as an underestimated factor
Timing is an often underestimated factor when evaluating what makes a great Coachella lineup. Just take Justin Bieber’s headlining set this year. Criticism of his performance was primarily directed at the “swag”-heavy setlist and the pared-down stage design, which primarily included the laptop he used to scroll through YouTube – a nod to the early days of his career. But no one who has really followed him in recent years would have expected more or less. The last time Bieber would have plausibly taken that stage with full-blown choreography and the career-spanning setlist that people seemed to expect this year would have been in 2017 — after “Purpose” and at the height of “Despacito.” Pop moves fast. It’s not always easy to keep up – although women are mercilessly expected to do it without exception.
When Kanye West pulled out of the festival in 2022, the most obvious solution seemed to be to move Doja Cat into the headliner slot. She was directly below him on the same stage in the lineup and had basically already planned a performance on a similar scale. Festival organizers ultimately brought in Swedish House Mafia and The Weeknd to replace West, but booked Doja for the 2024 headlining slot. Her rise to the top of the lineup was a first for women in rap. It matched “Scarlet,” the pop-denouncing album she released as a follow-up to “Planet Her” — one of 2021’s defining albums that sealed her breakthrough as a pop star — which made up the bulk of the setlist. But it was hard to shake the feeling that the set had somehow missed the moment.
Carpenter similarly used her set as a key moment between two album eras. Since first playing “Espresso” at the festival in 2024, she has completed two legs of an arena tour in support of the accompanying album “Short n’ Sweet.” So Coachella was an opportunity to change gears. More than half of their setlist came from their most recent album, last year’s “Man’s Best Friend.” The rest were earlier releases – but only those that seamlessly bridged the gap between then and now, such as “Sugar Talking” as a transition to “Don’t Smile”. Coachella has become a place where artists squeeze years of hits into barely two-hour sets. It’s easy to get stuck in the past. With so many eyes watching, why not put on a show that shows why they should follow you into the future?
Women define the moment
One reason women are dominating the Coachella debates this year is because they’re the ones driving the current moment define. Hardly anyone in pop has as much of a feel for the pulse of the times as PinkPantheress. Her remix album “Fancy Some More?” expanded her mixtape “Fancy That” to include collaborations with Kaytranada, Ravyn Lenae, Jade and more. Most notable is her collaboration with Zara Larsson on “Stateside,” currently at number nine on the Hot 100, which opened her Saturday night set. The nearly hour-long performance – the most elaborate and elaborate of her career – featured appearances by Thundercat, Tyriq Withers, the Dare and other guests.
Larsson had a gig in Texas during the festival’s first weekend, but perhaps the second weekend will have better luck. If you really want to make Coachella pop next year, make sure “Midnight Sun” gets its moment in the desert. A clean, distinctive aesthetic – like the beach-ready rhinestone looks Larsson relies on or the plaid, quintessentially British outfits PinkPantheress built around the Fancy records – creates undeniable buzz: not just about which songs end up on the setlist, but also what the set itself will look like. This was one of the key ways women in pop broke through the noise in the 2020s. Their influence was even felt in the audience’s outfits.
Since returning from its pandemic-induced two-year hiatus, Coachella has only scratched the surface when it comes to booking its new pop guard – with Addison Rae’s spot in this year’s lineup showing that promoters may be looking to place their bets ever earlier. Dua Lipa and Olivia Rodrigo have appeared as guests on other artists’ sets at the festival, but have never performed their own sets. (The same goes for Rihanna, by the way—but that’s a story for another time.) Plus, SZA’s last Coachella performance was almost a decade ago, when she was in the lineup directly below The Weeknd.
SZA and the rumor mill
In the weeks leading up to this year’s festival, unconfirmed rumors circulated that organizers had her in line to replace Bieber if he dropped out. “Lmao who came up with this?” SZA wrote in an Instagram comment earlier this week. “I’ve seen this 4 times now. I’m in New York, nobody paid me a dime. I wish everyone the best.”
Even the women who aren’t at the festival make headlines. This applies to Manon Bannerman, one of six members of Katseye who is currently on hiatus. The show went on, the group celebrated their Coachella debut as a five-piece – but the vague circumstances surrounding Bannerman’s absence as a whole are among the biggest pop stories of the year. There was no version of reality in which this debate did not spill over into this defining moment for the group.
If the release of her “Pinky Up” music video on the eve of her first-weekend performance was intended to redirect attention, it only fueled speculation about the future of Katseye’s lineup. Ahead of the second weekend, Katseye announced her third EP, “Wild.” The five-song project is not due out for four months. A lot can happen between now and August. During her set last weekend, Katseye promised, “There will be many more Coachellas after this one.”
It’s safe to assume that women in pop will also be at the heart of these conversations.
