Sofi Tukker tried to get Jennifer Coolidge as a surprise guest for their Coachella 2023 set
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Can you imagine Tanya McQuoid getting down at Coachella?
That may sound like the setup for an amazing third season of The White Lotus, but it's actually an idea electronic duo Sofi Tukker (a.k.a. Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern) had for their Coachella 2023 set on Saturday.
"We tried to get Jennifer Coolidge," Halpern told EW, talking about potential surprise guests for their performance, which took place later that evening. Sadly, the plan didn't work out, but what a brilliant plan it was.
The Grammy-nominated band recently went viral for their remix of the White Lotus theme song, which is why they thought it would only be appropriate for Coolidge to show up when they played it at the festival in Indio, Calif. However, it may have been a blessing in disguise that Coolidge couldn't appear in their set because they wanted to kick off a new chapter in their career by unveiling two new tracks as well as a new stage design.
"Because we are introducing our new world and this is the first show, we sort of felt like, 'Let's just do this one with us, and be very us,'" Halpern said.
Arturo Holmes/Getty for Coachella Sofi Tukker perform at Coachella 2023
Sitting backstage just a few hours before their set, Hawley-Weld and Halpern were feeling "really good" about ushering in this new era to tens of thousands of fans.
"We've literally been working on this for many years, so this is a big moment for us," Hawley-Weld said. "This is the next iteration of our universe. We just last night actually did our finale of the last tour, the Wet Tennis tour, and now we're ready to start debuting a whole new world. We have a song coming out next week that's the first song for this new world."
Their new single, "Jacaré" (out April 21), was inspired by a recent trip to Brazil. "It's definitely very Portuguese-heavy," Hawley-Weld said. "And it is, I would say, a kind of return to our roots in the sense that when we started the band, I was especially inspired by jazz, Tucker was especially inspired by house music, and [with this] we both returned even stronger to both house music sounds and to Brazil."
The stage design features a full-size playground, a trampoline, and monkey bars, which they plan to employ throughout their shows. "We like to use our bodies and our physicality to bring the songs to life, so we'll be climbing monkey bars and jumping on the trampoline during a heightened moment," Hawley-Weld said. "We love to use the stage to accentuate the music."
Arturo Holmes/Getty for Coachella Sofi Tukker perform at the Outdoor Theatre at Coachella 2023
Three hours later, Sofi Tukker burst onto the Outdoor Theatre stage for an electrifying 55-minute set in which Halpern and Hawley-Weld challenged Coachella attendees to beat the energy of the audience who saw them perform the night before in Mexico City (of course, Coachella won that competition). The highlight of the hour came when they played their take on the White Lotus theme song and the crowd went absolutely wild (watch a video of that moment above).
"We were just in South America for a while doing the tour, and we played it at one point, and we realized that people didn't watch that show in that country," Halpern said before their Coachella set. "We were like, 'Oh no!' But then we were like, 'Coachella is definitely the festival with the most overlap with watchers of that show, 100 percent. It's going to be so good.'"
The pair still can't believe how popular the remix has become — they initially just made it for themselves. "It was our favorite show, and we were just having fun putting these two songs together," Halpern says. "I worked and made the remix in the next, like, three days without leaving my computer because I was so excited about it."
In light of its success, Sofi Tukker discussed remixing more TV show theme songs but ultimately decided against it. "I said, 'We can't become the TV show theme song people,'" Halpern explained with a laugh. "But then my dad called me just the other day, and he was like, 'Have you heard the Succession theme song?'"
We have no doubt Jeremy Strong would be up for a cameo at their next Coachella set.
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