Midway through her Coachella set, Slayyyter let out a death growl during “YES GODDD,” and the sound reverberated through the thousands-deep audience that gathered to see her. And so did a few astonished gasps when a drone shot revealed just how far outside of the Mojave tent her crowd of headbanging bodies stretched. Slayyyter didn’t have a primetime slot or an extensive budget for a flashy production. She went on in the scorching heat at 3 p.m. in an outfit she made herself. It didn’t matter to her or anyone else there. She delivered one of the most striking sets of the entire first weekend, joining the stacked roster of women who dominated conversation around this year’s festival.
On the other side of the pop spectrum, far away from metal screams and the electric current of “CRANK,” flashed the shining lights of Sabrina Carpenter’s Hollywood dream. The pop star’s headlining set was a two-year-old manifestation come to life. At Coachella in 2024, she promised she would be playing the most coveted position on the lineup the next time she came to the desert. Carpenter packed this year’s performance with film references, from Dirty Dancing and Cabaret to Psycho and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Call it Sabrinawood: Some say it’s the place where your dreams come true — which is especially accurate for pop fans who love spectacle as much as the women on this year’s lineup do.
FKA Twigs has never been known to hold back onstage, but what Coachella witnessed on the final night of Weekend One was revelatory. During “Cellophane,” the emotion that poured out of her as she choked out words through tears made for a moment as striking as when a crew of ballroom dancers descended onto the stage. It was the peak of performance. Even Twigs’ outfit changes were blink-and-you-miss-it seamless. This level of showmanship is often expected of women in pop. But watching all of the other women who put on knockout performances at Coachella this year, thus far, there’s never a sense that they feel weighed down by the obligation of meeting those expectations. They step onto a stage, and in that moment, it’s immediately clear to everyone watching that they belong there.
Historically, Coachella’s biggest moments have centered around women who define, disrupt, and dominate pop. It was true of Beyoncé, who immortalized her 2018 performance as the first Black woman to headline Coachella in the Netflix documentary Homecoming. (That performance also popularized the portmanteau of combining an artist’s name with the festival name, à la Beychella.) It was also true of Blackpink, who became the first K-pop girl group to play Coachella, in 2019, and the first K-pop group, overall, to headline, in 2023. Katseye named both as major influences for their first performance at the festival.
This year, the history-making mantle was passed to Karol G, the first Latina to headline Coachella. The Colombian pop star delivered the biggest performance of her career with the weight of history on her shoulders. She narrated the set introduction in Spanish and projected English translations onto the screens, setting the scene with a story about a young woman finding her voice by escaping the confines of the barriers placed around her. “We don’t do this because we want to take everyone out. We do this because we want everyone to feel welcome to our culture, to our music,” she said later in the set. “I want everyone to feel proud of where you come from. Please don’t feel scared, feel proud. Raise your flag.”
BINI followed suit as the first Filipino group to perform at the festival. The eight-member unit introduced the desert to P-pop, performing in a mix of Filipino, Tagalog, and English. These historic moments are often long overdue in a way that inadvertently highlights how far behind the curve the festival was at one point, and, to some degree, continues to be. This year marked the 25th iteration of Coachella since the festival launched in 1999. Prior to 2017, when Lady Gaga headlined, no woman had headlined in a decade, since Björk become the first to headline, in 2007.
Timing is an often underrated factor when considering what makes a great Coachella lineup. Take this year’s headline set from Justin Bieber, for example. Critiques of his performance were largely targeted toward his Swag-heavy set list and stripped-back stage design, which mostly included the laptop he used to browse through YouTube (a nod to his career origin). But no one who has been truly following him over the past few years expected anything more or less. The last time Bieber would have plausibly hit that stage with full-blown choreography and the career-spanning set list people seemed to expect this year would have been in 2017, post-Purpose and during peak “Despacito.” Pop moves quickly. It isn’t always easy to keep up, though women are unforgivingly expected to do so without fail.
In 2022, when Kanye West dropped out of the festival, it seemed like the most logical decision would have been to move Doja Cat into the headlining slot. She was billed right below him on the same stage and had essentially already planned a performance fit for scale, anyway. Festival organizers ultimately recruited Swedish House Mafia and the Weeknd to replace West, but booked Doja to headline in 2024. Her ascension to the top spot on the lineup marked a first for women in rap. It was fitting for Scarlet, the pop-denouncing record she released as a follow-up to Planet Her — one of the defining albums of 2021, which cemented her arrival as a star in the pop arena — which made up most of the set list. But it was hard to shake the feeling that the set missed the moment, in some way.
Carpenter similarly used her set as a pivotal moment between album eras. Since she debuted “Espresso” at the festival in 2024, she completed two legs of an arena tour in support of its accompanying album, Short n’ Sweet. Coachella, then, was a chance to switch gears. More than half of her set list came from her latest album, last year’s Man’s Best Friend. The rest was a mix of her earlier releases, but only those that seamlessly bridged the gap between then and now, like “Sugar Talking” leading into “Don’t Smile.” Coachella has become a place where artists back years of hits into barely two-hourlong sets, if that. But it can be easy to get stuck in the past that way. With this many eyes watching, why not put on a show that signals why they should follow you into the future?
One reason women have dominated the conversation around Coachella this year is that they are the ones defining the current moment. Few people in pop have their finger on the pulse in the way PinkPantheress does right now. Her Fancy Some More? remix album expanded her Fancy That mixtape with collaborators Kaytranada, Ravyn Lenae, Jade, and more. Most notably, it paired PinkPantheress with Zara Larsson on “Stateside,” currently sitting at Number Nine on the Hot 100, which opened her Saturday-night set. The near-hourlong performance, the most high-production and elaborate set of PinkPantheress’ career, packed in appearances from Thundercat, Tyriq Withers, the Dare, and more.
Larsson had a performance in Texas during Weekend One of the festival, but it’s possible Weekend Two will get lucky. If organizers really want to make Coachella pop next year, they’ll make sure Midnight Sun gets its moment in the desert. Having a concise and defined aesthetic — like the beach-ready, rhinestone looks Larsson has leaned into, or the plaid and ultra-British looks PinkPantheress has built around the Fancy records — creates an indisputable buzz around not only what songs will land on the set list, but what the set itself will look like. It’s been one of the primary ways women in pop have cut through the noise in the 2020s. Their influence was evident even in the outfits the crowd wore.
Since returning after a two-year pandemic-related hiatus, Coachella has only scratched the surface when it comes to booking pop’s new guard — though Addison Rae appearing on this year’s lineup shows that organizers may be trying to place their bets earlier and earlier. Dua Lipa and Olivia Rodrigo have made guest appearances during other artists’ sets at the festival, but have never played their own. (To that point, neither has Rihanna, though that’s another conversation for another time.) It’s also been nearly a decade since SZA performed at Coachella, when she was billed in the top slot just below the Weeknd.
In the weeks leading up to this year’s festival, unconfirmed rumors circulated speculating that organizers were keeping her on retainer to replace Bieber, should he decide to drop out. “Lmao who made this up?” SZA wrote in an Instagram comment earlier this week. “I’ve seen this 4 times now. I’m in New York no one paid me a dime. Wishing everyone the best.”
Even the women who aren’t at the festival are making headlines. This was true of Manon Bannerman, one-sixth of Katseye, who is currently on hiatus from the girl group. The show went on with the group making their Coachella debut as a five-piece, but the vague circumstances around Bannerman’s overall absence have been one of the biggest stories in pop this year. There was no reality in which that conversation didn’t carry over to this defining moment for them.
If the arrival of their “Pinky Up” music video on the eve of their Weekend One performance was meant to shift focus, it only fueled the speculation about the future of Katseye’s lineup. Heading into Weekend Two, Katseye announced their third EP, Wild. The five-song project isn’t scheduled to arrive for another four months. A lot can happen between now and August. During their set last weekend, Katseye promised, “There will be many more Coachellas after today.”
It’s safe to assume women in pop will be the beating heart of those conversations, too.
