Harry Styles stood at the top of the stage, the singer-songwriter swallowed up in a fluffy black coat at the start of his headlining set at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Friday, April 15.
Eighty minutes later, Styles had surprised the crowd with country-pop star Shania Twain, who sang two of her biggest hits, dropped a pair of brand-new songs, and thoroughly charmed the fans who stuck around until nearly 1 a.m. Saturday on Day 1 of the first Coachella in three years.
Elsewhere on the festival grounds Friday, a surprise set by Arcade Fire packed the Mojave Tent, Brazilian pop star Anitta delivered a breakout set on the Main Stage with guests that included Snoop Dogg and Saweetie, and indie singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers played a lovely set of her emotional music.
After his entrance, Styles sprinted down the curved white staircase that surrounded his band, launching the show with the live debut of his recent single, “As It Was.” At 28, he’s a terrifically charismatic performer, and he delivered a very, very good performance to close out the festival’s first night.
The coat gone, Styles dazzled in a one-piece pantsuit covered in large round sequins, which made him sparkle and flash like a human disco ball as he danced around the stage. Freddie Mercury would have approved.
After opening with more familiar songs such as “Adore You,” “Golden,” and “Carolina,” the announcement of “Boyfriend,” the first new tune, drew wild cheers from the crowd, prompting Styles to chide them, jokingly, for their blind devotion. “You haven’t heard it yet, you don’t know if you like it!” he told them.
A few songs later, Styles turned up the energy with a trio of upbeat hits. “We’ve got 12 minutes of non-stop dancing, are you coming with me?” he asked the crowd. “Please say yes.”
“Canyon Moon” featured Styles’ horn section, who joined him at the end of a ramp that stretched out into the crowd. “Treat People With Kindness” followed with a similarly funky groove.
But the next number, “What Makes You Beautiful,” really got the audience engaged, the ridiculously catchy pop song that was the one tune from Styles’ former band One Direction included in the show.
Twain then appeared at the top of the stage, slowly descending as the band kicked into “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” a sassy, fun number that had the crowd singing along loudly.
“In the car, with my mother as a child, this woman taught me to sing,” Styles said almost reverentially after the song.
“I’m kind of lost for words,” replied Twain, whose outfit featured almost as many sequins’ as Styles. “I’m a bit star-struck, what can I say?”
“You’re Still The One,” one of Twain’s loveliest songs, followed. At its close, gentleman Harry kissed Twain’s hand, and off she went, now the one performer to have performed headlining sets, or at least contributed to one, at both Coachella and Stagecoach.
Another new song, “Late Night Talking,” came next, its bassline the kind of funky Chic-inspired riff in David Bowie’s “Let Dance.” “Watermelon Sugar,” “Kiwi,” and “Sign Of The Times,” all of them among Styles’ best numbers, closed out his night.
Phoebe at night
Before Styles, Friday after dark features sets from such varied artists as British post-punk band Idles, Los Angeles-based Tokimonsta, and Australian punks Amyl and the Sniffers.
Bridgers’ set on the Outdoor stage was quieter than many of the acts on Friday, but the devotion of her fans was clear as they leaned into the windy night to hear her sing such songs as “Motion Sickness,” “Kyoto” and “Moon Song.”
She was clearly thrilled to be playing Coachella, which she’d grown up attending. At one point she thanked her mother, who was present, for all the years she’d driven her daughter to the festival as a teen.
“Picture it. It’s 2011 and I’m in a Two Door Cinema Club crop top,” she told the crowd at one point. “My hair is pink. And I am at this festival. Actually, don’t picture it. But I am from L.A. and being here means so much to me.”
Arcade Fire rekindles
Throughout the festival’s 21-year history, perhaps no other artist in the Coachella-verse has produced as many of those elusive Coachella moments — those special memories that only happen in the desert — as Arcade Fire.
And you can go ahead and notch the band’s surprise set at the Mojave Tent on Friday as the latest feather in the band’s festival cap.
The tent overflowed as the sun dipped behind the Santa Rosa Mountains and the band took the stage for a set that went slightly over an hour, which, if you’ve ever seen Arcade Fire at Coachella, was to be expected.
And it wasn’t just the thrill of seeing a former headliner of the festival in a far more intimate space of a tent, but Arcade Fire exemplifies what Coachella is at its core, a taste-making festival. The band has history here, too, from its 2005 sunset performance on the Outdoor stage to its 2011 headlining set that included lighted balls dropping from the roof of the Main stage.
On Friday, as the band opened with “The Lightning I” off the forthcoming album “We,” Butler stopped the show and called for a medic for a fan in distress, to loud applause from the crowd, before restarting.
The performance brought together the highlights of the band’s catalog, including a raucous “Rebellion (Lies)” and “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” early in the set as well as “Ready to Start,” “Sprawl II” and “Everything Now.”
When the band ended with the staple “Wake Up,” the performance was nothing short of goosebumps-inducing and the flowing inflatable figures on stage rose again.
The girl from Brazil
Anitta is the biggest pop star in her native Brazil and given the size of that country that’s certainly something. But based on her twilight performance on the Main stage at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival it’s not likely anything can stop her from going wherever she wants in the pop world.
On a stage designed to look like a working-class neighborhood in Rio, complete with laundry on the line outside a second-story window, a group of 20 or so brightly costumes dancers kicked off the show with Snoop Dogg onstage to welcome her to Coachella.
“Anitta, Anitta, so glad to meet ya,” Snoop rap-sang as she arrived to sing “Onda Diferente, her 2019 single in which Snoop collaborated.
Two songs later, Anitta brought out the singer-rapper Saweetie to do her part on the 2021 English-language single “Faking Love,” and it was perfectly clear Anitta didn’t come to mess around. She came to slay.
Her music crosses languages – she sings in Portuguese, Spanish and English – and genres: songs skip from pop to funk to Brazilian rhythms to club beats.
Add to that a ton of charisma as a performer, some seriously wicked dance moves, and her powerful voice, and it’s no wonder that by the time star DJ Diplo joined her for the final songs of her set the crowd had nearly doubled.
This and that in the sun
It had been three years since live music played at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival, so to get things started early Friday afternoon, we raced to catch Meute, a German marching band that plays live covers of techno hits.
Three drummers set the beat. A sousaphone, and bass and baritone saxes filled out the bottom end. And two trumpets, a tenor sax, a trombone and marimbas took turns on the melody lines.
Next door in the Sonora tent, Giselle Woo and the Night Owls entertained a small crowd with a Latin-tinged set of bluesy psychedelic rock. The band hails from the Coachella Valley sounded great on songs such as “Everything” and the aptly themed “Coachella Gold,” they showed why they’d earned their spot on the bill.
Two weeks ago, Pakistani singer Arooj Aftab won a Grammy for best global music performance on a night when she was also nominated for best new artist. In Gobi, she and her band, which included violin and harp, played a set that mixed traditional Pakistani sounds with jazz and other genres.
That kind of eclectic world music was also reflected in the Hu on the Outdoor Stage. The 8-piece Mongolian folk metal band – that a minute to let that settle in – mixed classic heavy metal postures with traditional instruments such as the Morin khuur, a bowed string instrument also known as a horsehead fiddle. Vocals are a mix of Mongolian throat singing and death metal growls, which in any language had fans throwing up those heavy metal hand signs in the heat of the afternoon.
As the afternoon shuffled toward evening, bigger names started to arrive on stage.
The singer-songwriter Omar Apollo arrived on the Outdoor stage just after 5 p.m. resplendent in an oversized fuchsia suit. Raised in Ohio to parents originally from Mexico, Apollo, who is gay, welcomed visitors via a billboard on the freeway to Coachella that touted him as “the cure for heterosexuality.”
His soulful voice, undeniable charisma, and cross-cultural connections clearly have him poised for breakout success.
Carly Rae Jepsen, meanwhile; remains one the truly great dance-pop artists. Her packed set in the Mojave tent had fans singing along to songs such as “Runaway With Me” and “Julian” as Jepsen beamed happily as she bounced around the stage.
When her band kicked off the music to “Call Me Maybe,” her breakthrough and signature song, the fans singing along were almost loud enough to match her amplified vocals and unbridled joy.