Coachella Has Become a Victim of Its Own Success
Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna passed on headlining Coachella in 2025. The festival long is looking for a big name to recover from a couple down years.
Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna.
Photographer: Christopher Polk/Getty Images for NARAS
For kids growing up in Los Angeles, attending Coachella is a rite of passage. The cool kids got to go in high school, while those of us who worked on the high school newspaper didn’t make it until college.
But by 2011 – my first year at the festival – Coachella had become the single most important music festival in North America, if not the world. Over the next several years, it served as a kingmaker and a referendum on the state of the music business.
It was the first place many people saw a hologram perform live (Tupac) and the first place many Americans experienced Korean pop or Latin music. It served as the unofficial beginning of summer concert season and used its various stages to coronate many acts.