Billie Eilish was last Saturday on stage at the Californian festival Coachella. She had already played the previous weekend, on April 16, so she seemed as comfortable as being alone in her bedroom performing to the tens of thousands of people following her second headlining performance. So she began to jump in the style of those children who jump on the bed. And she got carried away so far that… she ended up on the ground. As she got up, she reassured the respectable: “Oh, I’ve given myself a serious bump,” she exclaimed, pointing to the square structure she tripped over. “You couldn’t see anything… But I’m fine. It was so dark!”
Eilish, whose career seems unstoppable, thus starred in one of the musical moments of the appointment (which was also of another type, like that viral video of a bodyguard of Paris Hilton in trouble). Coachella returned to the grounds of the Empire Polo Club, in the town of Indio, three years after the last time. The party, watered down, like so many other things, due to the pandemic, was not held in its 2020 and 2021 editions. The motto was “Let’s get back!” (“Let’s go back!”) and in addition to Eilish, he had among his great claims Harry Styles (who stole the show on the first weekend by taking the soap opera singer Shania Twain out of the trunk of memories), and Swedish House Mafia with the Weeknd, who replaced Kanye West, drops out at the last minute.
According to the organization, the festival attracted some 125,000 people per day during the six days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday of two consecutive weekends) in which it is celebrated. These are numbers that sound like another era, before the coronavirus entered the scene, an entry that affected many sectors, but especially attacked the waterline of the live music industry. That is why this Coachella, which closed at dawn this Monday, has been experienced, in addition to being an opportunity for tens of thousands of young people to renew their feed of Instagram with photos with filter for the sunset, as a litmus test of the return to the old.
Reminiscent of a high-class high school prom in the desert, Coachella has marked the symbolic opening of the big tour season for years. So this time it has been scrutinized by the sector as a testing ground on whose success the future of a million-dollar industry seemed to depend. After a timid return last year, concerts in the United States, where measures for mass gatherings have been severe, are now making a strong comeback. And seen what has been seen, the direct industry has reasons for some optimism.
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If industry predictions pan out, 2022 will eclipse 2019 as a record year for ticket sales. To believe these projections, just take a look at the programs of venues in cities like New York or Washington, which present an authentic music festival of all genres every night, as if their performers were eager to make up for lost time. The pandemic is not over, but the advancement of vaccination appears to have encouraged a return to the community concert experience.
Some tours have, however, been postponed or cancelled. This is the case of reggaeton star J Balvin, who did so by alluding to “some unforeseen production challenges” caused by the pandemic. Others who have thought better of it are the legends of the middle class of the indie Superchunk, who also postponed a tour this week with this tweet: “When the band members are the only masked people in the venue, it’s clear this stage of the pandemic will be around for a while.”
In addition to his challenge to covid, this Coachella will be remembered for the unexpected duets and unlikely appearances. In addition to the Styles-Twain tandem, the festival has witnessed the birth of these other couples on stage: Lizzo joined the Styles concert on the second weekend; the local hero Kendrick Lamar took the stage by surprise at the recital of the rapper Baby Keem, who is also his cousin, Eilish brought the leader of the pop punk band Paramore, Hayley Williams; and Colombian Karol G invited compatriot J Balvin to her party.
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