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BLACKPINK in your desert area: K-pop superstars make Coachella 2023 herstory on girl-powered Saturday
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In 2019, when BLACKPINK were booked to play the dance tent at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, doubters initially wrote them off as a novelty act. But that set — the K-pop girl group’s first full U.S. performance, and also the first time that any Coachella show had been simultaneously broadcast in New York City’s Times Square — ended up being the event of that year’s lineup. This year, as Jennie, Jisoo, Rosé, and Lisa triumphantly returned as true global-crossover superstars to play Saturday's main stage — widely considered to be the three-day desert festival’s most coveted and prestigious slot — their even more hyped appearance signified Coachella’s continuing cultural shift from mostly white, male, Gen X-skewing alt-rock. And they continued to make Coachella history, not only as the fest’s first K-pop headliner, but as the first Asian headliner of any genre, as well as the first-ever girl group to receive that big-font billing.
“Four years ago, we were invited to perform for you guys here at Coachella over there at the Sahara Tent, and that made a mark in all of our hearts and made us remember the passion performing for you guys. Thank you so much. I feel like the reason all four of us are here is all because of you guys,” a giddy Rosé told the quartet’s synchronized-pink-LED-braceleted diehard fans, aka the Blinks, during Saturday’s 18-song, 90-minute revue. (Side note: Jared Leto, perhaps an honorary and newly recruited Blink, was also watching from the roped-off VIP section.)
“We are so, so happy to be back here,” gushed an equally excited Jennie. “It’s crazy that within four years, we made it from Sahara to the main stage.”
In general, few female acts have received top billing at Coachella: the only others to share that herstoric honor since 1999 are Beyoncé, Björk, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, and Lady Gaga. So, BLACKPINK, catwalk-stomping in military-precision formation onto the sprawling stage a fashionable half-hour late, had much to prove. And they did so with the sort of pristine, pyrotechnic pop production and intricate choreography/hairography not witnessed on the maximalist main stage since Beyoncé’s bar-setting, bells-and whistles “Beychella” spectacle five years ago.
While BLACKPINK’s lack of special guests was a mild disappointment — the group’s recent collaborators have included Gaga, Cardi B, Dua Lipa, and Selena Gomez, so the potential for an all-star, girl-powered review was enormous — such superstar cameos were probably unnecessary, considering that each BLACKPINK member got her own superstar spotlight. Among those solos from their respective individual albums (Jennie’s diamonds-and-pearls “You & Me” remix featuring a new rap verse; Jisoo’s lady-in-red, Busby Berkeley-style “Flower”; Rosé’s chainmailed, confetti-strewn “Gone”/“On the Ground” medley; and the explosive, explicit version of resident rapper Lisa’s “Money”), Lisa’s stripper-pole performance was arguably the most vibrant and visceral. However, all four ladies owned the stage, indicating that if they ever wanted to take a group hiatus to focus on their solo side careers, a la their male counterparts in BTS, they’d fare just fine.
Still, like all classic pop girl groups before them (Spice Girls, TLC, En Vogue, Bananarama, Girls Aloud), BLACKPINK truly shined in a sum-of-their-parts situation. The foursome’s highlights included the hip-pop bombast bangers “Pink Venom,” “How You Like That,” and siren sing-along “Kill This Love”; a chair-danced “Pretty Savage”; a laser-beamed, rave-ready rendition of “Boombayah”; a feathered Vegas-follies version of an extended “Typa Girl”; and a fuchsia-fireworks finale of the Gen Z anthem “Forever Young,” which certainly no one would ever confuse with the Alphaville or Rod Stewart prom ballads by the same title.
“I must say, this is a dream come true,” Rosé told the crowd, which included nearly 3 million Blinks watching worldwide via YouTube’s livestream.
The future of music may be K-pop, but judging from Coachella day two, the future is also female. Saturday was absolutely dominated by fierce women of all genres — notably indie-rock supergroup boygenius (Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus, clad in matching skinny-tied Knack suits), whose swaggering entrance music, Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town,” established the tone for a vivacious set of Laurel Canyon not-so-mellow gold on the Outdoor Theatre stage. The trio’s gorgeously harmonic performance was punctuated with Dacus’s speech advocating for trans rights (“I don’t know if you’ve been checking the news and seeing what’s been going on in Florida and Missouri and some of the other places, but trans lives matter, trans kids matter. We’re gonna fight it. We love you!”) and Bridgers’s well-received proclamation, “Abortion rocks. And f*** Ron DeSantis!”
Over in the garage-rocking Sonora Tent, the Linda Lindas made their own pro-trans political statement, as guitarist Lucia de Garza simply said, “All this anti-trans legislation is not it. It’s just not fun!” This was followed by a torch-passing moment of sorts, when the viral teen pop/punk family band effectively opened for trailblazers the Breeders, whose 120 Minutes classic “Cannonball,” shambolic cover of the Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” and massively crowd-pleasing surprise finale of “Gigantic” (by 61-year-old Breeders frontwoman Kim Deal’s seminal old group, the Pixies) brought all the ‘90s feels.
Speaking of the 1990s, over on the main stage, pop provocateur Charli XCX proudly declared herself a “‘90s bitch” during her cover of Icona Pop’s “I Love It” (which she co-wrote) and was joined by Troye Sivan for “1999” (not the Prince hit, but her own nostalgic single). Meanwhile, British synthpop goddess La Roux was the surprise guest during electrofunk revivalists Chromeo’s set, and Coachella favorite Billie Eilish even made an unbilled appearance with Labrinth for their recent collab, “Never Felt So Alone.”
But aside from BLACKPINK’s tour de force, the biggest Saturday moment undoubtedly belonged to ground- and boundary-breaking Spanish superstar Rosalía, whose main stage sunset set had (Stefon-from-SNL voice) ev-er-y-thing: Oscar-worthy fisheye-lens videography; billowing silk scarves straight out of a Kim Carnes music video; Sprockets-meets-Obsession-commercial-meets-Rhythm-Nation backup dancers choreographed by genus Charm La’Donna; and a two-song power-couple performance featuring Rosalía’s fiancé, reggaeton sensation Rauw Alejandro. Much like Sia’s buzzy breakout show from Coachella 2016, the entire set seemed more like a high-concept art-installation piece than a typical concert, and it probably looked even better on the “Couchella” livestream than it did on the Indio field.
The Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival concludes Sunday with reclusive rap visionary Frank Ocean (who was supposed to play Coachella 2020 before it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and has not publicly performed since March 2019 or in Southern California since 2017), along with a sure-to-be-stunning show by above-mentioned Coachella legend Björk. See you in the desert.
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