Halfway through Green Day’s headlining set on the second day of this year’s Coachella Music and Arts Festival, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong asked the audience if it was their first time at Coachella.
When about half responded with a roar, Armstrong responded with a white lie: “It’s my first Coachella too!” Actually, it was more than a white lie: Armstrong performed a historic set at the Outdoor Theater on the Polo Field in 2014, filling in as frontman for the then-reunited Replacements while singer Paul Westerberg watched from a couch onstage.
That night, a small smattering of hardcore alt-rock fans watched Armstrong fulfill his own cult-hero fantasies. Last night, a throng many tens of thousands deeper saw Armstrong and his main band fulfill their destiny as the holders of rock’s eternal flame. As the only announced rock headliner in the festival’s post-Covid era (Blink-182 were a last-minute fill in for Frank Ocean on weekend two in 2023), Green Day’s hit-stacked 90-minute set, packed with banger-after-banger-after-banger, wasn’t just a referendum on their legacy, it was a endorsement of the continued presence of alt-rock at a festival that made its reputation on furthering the genre.
On a stage that had just the night before hosted a masterclass in spectacle from Lady Gaga, Green Day stuck to the well-worn rock tropes that have made them a multigenerational forebear: huge blasts of pyro enunciated “American Idiot,” “Basketcase” and “Hitching a Ride.” (One errant firework at the end of the set even briefly set a palm tree on fire backstage – props to the on-site brigade for putting it out so quickly it didn’t even effect the festival.)
Armstrong ran up and down the massive catwalk usually meant for teams of dancers, chalking up a marathon-level number of steps by the end of the set. Warhorse bandmates drummer Tre Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt assaulted their instruments with their trademark goofiness and aggression, with three other touring members helping fill the massive venue with a legion of guitars and keys.
Green Day’s set was almost more notable for what it didn’t have: no covers – save a tease of “Iron Man” and another few seconds of “Free Falling” – and no guests other than two audience members brought up to help. They brought out a clearly awestruck woman who screamed the end of “Know Your Enemy” and a Sunset Strip-ready guitarist in the crowd who helped close the set out with so much confidence during “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” that Armstrong needed to reign him in. With a setlist focused squarely on the power of the singalong, Green Day proved that their catalog was still enough to qualify them – and rock, in general – for one of the biggest stages in music.
It’s arguable that there were actually three headliners in a row on the main stage Saturday: immediately preceding Green Day was pop-star Charli XCX. The Grammy Award-winning singer drew the day’s biggest crowd for a surprisingly sparsely-choreographed set that featured multiplatinum guests Troye Sivan, Lorde and Billie Eilish all singing Charli’s biggest hits on a minimalist stage with flashing white lights and a mid-stage lift. Rapper Travis Scott, who was supposed to topline the fest in 2020 before Covid knocked out that edition, closed the night out, performing on the B-stage in the middle of the crowd flanked by flames and backed very occasionally by a massive horn section half-a-mile-away on the actual stage.
If you wanted pure joy during the day, there were two places to be. The first was at the set by perennial kids-show band Yo Gabba Gabba!, making their second appearance at the festival after first coming through a decade ago. Their set wasn’t adulted-up at all, making it a mix of nostalgia, wonder, and hilarity. The group’s 13 year-old frontgirl Kammy Kam is a superstar, leading an audience of adults through freeze tag and ridiculous dances alongside her magical mascot-costumed friends. By the end, when she brought out Weird Al, Thundercat, Portugal. The Man, DJ Lance Rock, and writer Paul Williams for “Rainbow Connection,” the childlike wonder in the audience was palpable and beautiful.
From there, anyone who headed to the Outdoor Theater got to experience a one-of-a-kind clear highlight of this year’s Coachella: the first-ever performance by the LA Philharmonic and their conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who – to some Angelenos who made the trek to the desert – may actually be the biggest star on the field. The set was brilliantly constructed, with pristine sound that enunciated every violin hit and percussive pump, and a setlist that found guests like Laufey and Maren Morris interspersed between essentially a greatest-hits-of-classical music (“Ride of the Valkyries” “Symphony #5, Movement 1”) before a set-closing, incredible collaboration between the dozens-strong orchestra and hip-hop legend LL Cool J.
Dudamel has always presented himself as a man-of-the-people, and watching him and LL embrace at the end of the set only proved that he sees no separation between the classical and pop world. His last season as conductor in L.A. is in 2026; this Coachella set was both an acknowledgement of his massive impression on the city and hopefully lays the groundwork for a yearly comeback in the desert.
Weezer made news earlier this week when bassist Scott Shriner’s wife was shot by police when officers were pursuing suspects in a hit-and-run case. Other than a fist-pump to the crowd when Shriner got onstage, the incident was not acknowledged. Instead, the band played through hits like “Say It Ain’t So” and “Island In The Sun” with their traditional stoic tongue-in-cheek earnestness, plus a surprise cover of “Enter Sandman” that was close enough to the original that some younger members of the audience may have left thinking it was actually a Weezer song.
The field also got surprisingly political for a couple of moments, with firebrand Bernie Sanders introducing Clairo with a greatest-hits stump speech acknowledging that we’re in a politically fraught time – and inferring that music is one of the most-important ways to get through it. Just hours earlier, Sanders was hosting a rally in L.A. featuring stars Neil Young, Joan Baez and Maggie Rogers.
Green Day, meanwhile, changed the lyrics of their 2004 hit song “American Idiot” lyrics to, “I’m not a part of your MAGA agenda.” The roar on the field wasn’t just because of the flames that enunciated it. From the response to both instances, it’s clear the generation on the field is fired up.