The lineup for the 2022 edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival finally arrived late Wednesday, though its headliners — Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, Billie Eilish, and Harry Styles — had leaked in the days and hours before.

And perhaps more than any pre-pandemic year, it’s a tricky lineup to assess.

There are a good number of returnees from the 2020 lineup that was not to be, 21 Savage, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Hot Chip among them, though that year’s headliners — Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott, and Frank Ocean — are absent.

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And while 2019, the last Coachella we had, featured a worldly and diverse mix of acts — BLACKPINK from South Korea, J Balvin from Colombia, Burna Boy from Nigeria —Coachella has continued its global reach, with Asian acts especially well represented.

So while there’s much more research to be done — some of these artists weren’t on anyone’s Coachella radar two years ago, after all — we’ll take our first pass at running the lineup through our ought-to-be-patented InstantLineupAnalyzer and see what five themes for 2022 our trusty machine spits out.

Billie Eilish will headline three nights at The Forum in Inglewood April 6 and 8-9. (Photo by Drew A. Kelley, Contributing Photographer)

1. Pop rocks: Billie Eilish is cool pop. Harry Styles is pop rock. And Carly Rae Jepsen, well, she’s my queen. Pop traditionally meant fluffier stuff, songs and artists who sold a ton of records. But here we’ll make the case that it’s simply music with irresistible melodies, smartly crafted, and aimed straight at the heart of its listeners.

Some of it rocks a lot: if you’ve seen a Harry Styles show you know how much he loves ’70s rock, and Phoebe Bridgers does more singer-songwriter kind of lower-volume rock.

Some is introspective: Japanese Breakfast writes beautiful songs that make strong emotional connections. Others, like Doja Cat, whose spot in the lineup is much higher now than it was in 2020, come from a hip-hop aspect.

If it’s a song you wanna sing along to, and it moves your heart, it doesn’t matter how much it sells, we’re calling it pop.

Filipino British indie rock singer Beabadoobee will appear at the Head In The Clouds festival at Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Nov. 6-7. The festival will be streamed live on Amazon Music. (AP Photo/Scott Garfitt)

2. The 88rising effect: Like in 2020, the 88rising music company gets special billing on the 2022 Coachella lineup poster, with a tagline at the bottom pledging Head In The Clouds Forever, a shoutout to its festival which 88rising in general champions Asian and Asian American artists.

Scattered across the lineup are names that just played the third Head In The Clouds festival in Pasadena a few months ago: Niki, Rich Brian, Joji, Beabadoobee and Japanese Breakfast among them.

But the diversity of the lineup goes beyond that one company and festival. Japan’s Kyary Pamyu Pamyu returns from 2020’s lineup, and the heavy metal Mongolians the Hu are back, too.

3. Rock or pebbles: If a time traveler from Coachella 2005 happened on this lineup they wouldn’t know what to make of the rock bands on the poster, or lack thereof. This isn’t a new trend by far, but with Rage Against the Machine dropping out of a headlining spot it feels more obvious this year.

You do still have some fine choices though. The British-Irish band Idles is a terrific post punk band. The English electronic rock band Spiritualized will float you off to some distant, groovy cloud. Australia’s King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard traffic in psychedelia. I’m looking forward to Måneskin, the Italian hard rockers who won the most recent Eurovision Song Contest.

2011: Kanye West performs on the Coachella stage during the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club in Indio on Sunday, April 17, 2011 (File photo by Rodrigo Pena)

4. Rap still rules: With the former Kanye West headlining again this year, rap has a prestige spot on the lineup. But the undercard is solid too: 21 Savage, Megan Thee Stallion, Run The Jewels, Brockhampton and Lil Baby are guaranteed to draw huge crowds.

Danny Elfman as Jack Skellington performs in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas live-to-film concert experience at the Banc of California Stadium in Los Angeles on Friday, October 29, 2021. (Photo by Drew A. Kelley, Contributing Photographer)

5. Fresh faces and oddballs: Every Coachella has a good portion of acts that you kinda-really-wanna-got-to-catch. They might be rising stars like Yola or Caroline Polachek or elder statesmen like Fatboy Slim and Richie Hawtin.

Others might not fit neatly into any mold: Danny Elfman is both an acclaimed film composer and the leader of beloved and defunct band Oingo Boingo. What he does at Coachella will pull one of the widest age ranges of any set.

Orville Peck is the fringe-masked Canadian country singer — I’m there for that. The Avalanches were fantastic last time they played the desert — I’ll be back for them.

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