Cloutchella

Attending Coachella is more than a fun annual tradition at this point, it’s essential for me in my work as a trend forecaster and cultural analyst. At its core, Coachella is a curatorial brand like Vogue, The Academy Awards, or The Met. A mini zeitgeist. From the lineup to the food to the fashion, Coachella is about taste and it was a place that attracted those who had it as a playground to exchange energy and ideas. Keyword was.

Don’t worry, I am not going to get started with claims about how Coachella has “fallen off” like an internet troll externalizing my FOMO on a lifestyle girlie’s Coachella vlog. Rather, I think that you could argue that the festival is more successful than ever. It hit its stride, carving out a distinct and recognizable brand for itself in the cultural landscape, has more capacity than ever, and live streams globally to millions thanks to a decades-long partnership with YouTube. So, if we’re defining “success” in metrics, Coachella is arguably at the top of its game. However, in my opinion, all this strategic decision-making has come at a cost: the fulfilling communal experience that made it worth the desert heat and exorbitant prices, and attracted the tastemakers. Coachella is at an interesting inflection point: it has established itself as a modern American lifestyle brand but that brand is in danger of continuing to calcify around clout, not community. And that’s not sustainable for an experiential brand.

In its current era, Coachella’s curation has become less about taste-making and more about taste-capturing. As it’s become more commercial, it’s also become more reactive to what’s popular on streaming services and platforms like YouTube.

Instead of being ahead of the curve, it’s a pulse check on music, fashion, and youth. It’s a place where emergent trends can be popularized and dominant ones can die or be solidified as modern staples. This year it was crochet, cowboy hats, and cowboy boots respectfully. As a curatorial event brand, Coachella is a container, an idea, and a format, and therefore heavily reliant on the creativity and quality of its vendors, attendees, and performers to fill in the blanks.

So if everyone else is supplying the color, fun, and excitement what is Coachella selling? Access.

The original promise of Coachella is that it has done the cultural sifting for you and curated the most exciting artists and gathered them in one place. These artists then attract the bohemians, interesting people who appreciate their work and music enough to trek to the desert to gather, celebrate, and be inspired. These die-hards dress and act like appreciators of arts & self-expression: uniquely, interestingly, unlike what you’d see in a department store. The bohos are then followed by the tastemakers who act as a bridge, translating this free expression into something digestible, relevant, accessible, and understandable for everyone. The tastemakers are then followed by the wealthy who are hungry for access to the cultural richness and freedom they see in the boho crowd. However, oversubscribed to Western norms and status symbols, they are insecure in their own tastes and behaviors and lack the ability or confidence to engage with bohemian culture directly. So they require a bit of separation that prioritizes their status and comfort over engagement with the artistry. Enter the “VIP” section and party drugs. The wealthy are then followed by the bourgeois who are chasing both the social status that comes from being associated with the rich and the approval of tastemakers. Each target audience enhances the appeal for the next—and gets further removed from the music and the artists.

Did influencers ruin Coachella?

Collectively, influencers have been taking the brunt of the criticism for “ruining” Coachella. However, if that’s true, and I don’t think it is, then Coachella was theirs to ruin. Influencers & creators are tastemakers who serve a special role at Coachella, and in our cultural ecosystem generally. They are modern tastemakers, a bridge between the public and the experiences that are just out of their reach due to resources, time, or pure logistics. Influencers have not “ruined” Coachella; they just happen to be the documentarians of its cultural rise and potential creative downfall. I would argue Coachella has been a bit misguided in its emphasis on aesthetics and FOMO over the actual quality of the experience.

This tension is not Coachella-specific. We are at the tail end of an internet era marked by the dominance of Instagram and the Millennial generation. A hallmark of this era is the social media “highlight reel.” An idea borrowed from sports speaks to the way Instagram rewards users who curate picture-perfect (but somehow still candid and authentic) moments. The app has since embedded this once-colloquial language into the very fabric of its product: users can save curated albums of their ephemeral “stories” as “highlights” and when it debuted a short-form video feature to compete with TikTok, Instagram named it “Reels.”

Purposeful or not, Instagram has built its entire brand identity and algorithm around aspiration and that’s part of why it’s waning in relevance. Aspiration, once the backbone of the marketing industry, has been exposed as a capitalistic farce and lost its luster. In a world rocked by the pandemic, aspiring to the trappings of status is more of a habitual holdover than a driving cultural force. Influencers are responding accordingly, adapting in their roles as bridge builders to meet their audiences where they’re at. In recent years, that’s meant dealing with frustrations triggered by Coachella as a site of blatant aspirational brand building.

The Coachella FOMO is real and influencers are both inspiring it and absorbing the vitriol of it. To walk this fine line, they have adopted a way of posting about Coachella with a bit of critical distance to please these dual audiences. They want you to know that they’re there, give you vicarious access, and show off their outfits, but they also give their audience something to make fun of, critique, or belittle. Alix Earle posted about a lowlight, “going too hard too early and missing Bad Bunny” to the tune of 1.4M TikTok likes, Loren Gray “exposed” the “reality” that “a lot of influencers don’t even go to Coachella… they’ll go out to the desert get an Airbnb… and they don’t go to the festival, they don’t have wristbands” and assured her viewers that “if you feel boring and sad because you’re not at Coachella just know most of these people aren’t either.” There’s a bitterness to the Coachella commentary that is reflective of a larger growing distaste for overt flexing as audiences reject purely aspirational symbols, figures, and brands.

I foresee this becoming a problem for Coachella. It’s a brand that is pretty overtly trading in aspirational access at the expense of the communities to which it is providing access. What used to be a brand with a reputation of being a grassroots explosion of creativity, fun, and life has morphed into one that’s a smoke and mirrors maze of microtransactions, lines and barricades, and status games.

When Everyone’s Special, No One Is

Speaking of status games. This year, the behind-the-scenes perks as denoted by the festival's iconic ‘wristbands” seemed to be more finely sliced and hierarchical. As always, there was General Admission (GA) and VIP, both available to the public for purchase. Both sold out (for weekend 1 and not weekend 2 for the first time ever). VIP offers exclusive access to separate sections of the festival with slightly better food, more space, gardens, expedited entry, a designated viewing section, and so forth. There are no lines in the VIP section. Not because you don’t have to wait for anything but because the majority of attendees in that section think nothing of marching their way to the front. Apparently telling people that they are “very important” imbues them with a bit of entitlement.

Then there’s a secret third thing: “Artist" passes that cannot be purchased but are only available to artists, and those close to them. These offer access to yet another exclusive section within the VIP section and priority stage view access. As the top tier, these artist wristbands are the most coveted by those in-the-know and in recent years they’ve become ubiquitous among wealthy non-artists, celebs, and influencers. With the help of brands and industry connections, these people were able to get their manicured hands on these wristbands and infiltrate the most exclusive sections.

In recent years, the festival seems to have addressed this by creating yet another tier between VIP and Artist. I was lucky enough to be given one of these wristbands and let me assuage your FOMO right now: to be honest, what’s behind that barricade isn’t that special. I found the biggest difference between VIP and VVIP not to be the food, facilities, or even fashion but the people. The VIP section at Coachella felt like 7 PM at Catch on a random Thursday night: an over-hyped clout fest for the benefit of the followers and the “Artist” section felt like Soho House on the same random Thursday: a clout fest where everyone’s there to be seen & talked about while pretending they’re above all the “internet hype” happening over at Catch.

The thing is, clout is a status symbol like any other. Some people buy a Birkin, Rolex, or G6 to prove their status, but “clout” is intangible like an NFT. Unlike an NFT, it’s very desirable in our world where we’re more physically connected than ever but also more emotionally disconnected as well. It’s incredibly easy to get your physical needs met but harder to get the emotional ones met. When you really think about it, the modern desire for “clout” is just a desire for community as filtered through the lens of capitalism and aspiration. What is clout but being well-liked with a reputation of being someone who has fun and is thought of as interesting by their peers? 

But, however intangible it may be, clout is not an infinite resource and it’s harder than ever to come by. At Coachella, the artists, not the festival are the key suppliers of clout and they’re pulling back their investment.

THE MUSICIANS ARE QUIET QUITTING

Perhaps the biggest story coming out of Coachella is the artistic mess that Frank Ocean made. Ahead of the festival, many were speculating that Ocean would pull a Kanye West and no show last minute. Others said there was an ice rink and he had a spectacular performance planned. A few hours before he was set to the stage, it was made clear that the performance would not be live-streamed on YouTube as all the others from the weekend had been, much to everyone online’s shock, surprise, and disappointment. On the ground, it only increased interest in the show. After all, clout is a finite resource and not having to share it with the Livestream meant there was more to be had. 

My group and I headed to the stage late Sunday night hoping for the best but expecting the worst. What we got was somewhere in the middle. When the time came, Frank Oceans’ performance was 1-hour late, inconsistent, and abruptly cut due to the local noise curfew. But he sounded good and I enjoyed hearing “Chanel” live after just seeing Chanel number 1 herself, Emma Roberts.

Frank Ocean’s lackluster performance was part of a larger shift I noted this year: The artists are over it. 

Take DJ Calvin Harris. He played a solid set, but it looked exactly the same as the one’s I’d watched him play on Instagram for the last 10 years rather than a Coachella special edition. Sofi Tucker, artists I’d seen perform twice before at the same festival, were noticeably less enthused to be there. It had been about 6 years since I’d first seen them at their 2 PM Gobi set and there was a notable shift in their energy. It was the coveted Saturday sunset spot on the Outdoor Stage, but it also seemed to be just another show for them. 

Lately, there’s been a prevailing sense in a culture that everything is kind of “mid.” Some say it’s a vibe shift, others say it’s late-stage capitalism, I think at its core, it’s a lack of motivation. We put artists on a pedestal and forget they’re people too. People for whom their passion has become their livelihood. It's expected of them to create art that moves people and meets the demands of capitalism. The scope creep sneakily demanded by the 1%’s obsession with growth at all costs has left them tired, tapped of energy and creative intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is what makes artists, the desire to create for the sake of it. Capitalism’s transactional nature kills that desire, slowly choking it, recording every last breath because it’s profitable even as it dies.