Consider this a eulogy for music as we know it, as Coachella takes its last breaths. The most tragic and culturally relevant happening of the past week.
In a desert utopia, flower crowns adorn the beach-waved masses, whose fringe outfitted bodies writhe and flow as one beneath the palms. This is where culture is born, love is free and music reigns. The festival of a generation that will go down in history, an inspiration etched into the annals of the American musical tradition.
Its legitimacy and importance cannot be overstated, it’s incredibly necessary that celebrities, both micro and macro, niche and mainstream alike, parade around in strips of iridescent fabric, unenthusiastically lip synching in the crowd while taking photos on their G7x’s. Without such an important cultural landmark, how will Urban Outfitters stay afloat? How will our economy survive? What will happen to the fate of music itself?
I will not begin to entertain ideas of it being somehow shallow or not important, because the gravity it has held cannot be denied. What may just be an odd couple of days in April for most people is akin to the Super Bowl or a Pilgrimage to those who are truly plugged in.
It takes a true genius to be able to comb through the heaps and hordes of clips and media from Coachella to get to the bottom of it all. To truly grasp what makes a good festival fit, versus what’s poser-y. To accurately predict and identify Kylie Jenner’s festival fashion influences and predict her future outfits is a feat of 21st-century precognition equivalent to whatever Nostradamus was on about. I’m sure he said something about Beychella somewhere.
To those who know, the decline of Coachella is devastating. Perhaps the single most important event of the past couple of weeks. Undeniably so, to be completely realistic here.
While Coachella as an entity still exists, it’s a shell of itself. Forever lurking in the shadow of its former glory. We’ve lost the true meaning of Coachella, and its importance is being forgotten. We need to believe in it again, or else it’ll lose almost all of its magic entirely.
If one were to be nuanced, they’d say it’s difficult, if not nearly impossible, to pinpoint the exact day the music died. However, we are in dire straits. Nuance is out of the question now. While we may not know what exactly killed it, it can certainly be narrowed down.
Video killed the radio star and hubris may have killed the pastime of our favorite niche internet microcelebrities.
To figure out what killed music’s most important festival, past or present, we must let the whodunit begin. Veneered public figures may fall to the wayside one by one, until there are none left at the fairgrounds. A site akin to Pompeii, if not slightly more consequential. Coachella historians will have nothing left but sepia-toned Instagram archives and the beaded pieces that inhabit thrift stores big and small.
Was it the Sugar Bear Hair controversy that blew the online beauty community wide open? Was it the disappointing re-emergence post-pandemic? The waning of Coachella’s cultural power can’t be explained away by one event, but rather by a series of small incidents. As Neil Young might say, it didn’t burn out, but rather faded away.
However, one key event confirms my long-held suspicion and worst waking nightmare. Vanessa Hudgens didn’t even go this year.
Just a few short years ago, Vanessa Hudgens, patron saint of Coachella herself, saw it worthy to sacrifice the lives of millions of Americans to experience such a cultural event. It was a life-or-death necessity, where the risk of widespread and inevitable death had to happen, to ensure equilibrium for culture and art. Now it’s not even worth a little extra walking in her eyes.
The Coachella aficionado put it in her plea to reinstate the canceled 2020 festival that pandemic deaths were inevitable, so Coachella should still happen. Except it wasn’t as important as we were previously led to believe, because Hudgens was markedly absent for the second year in a row. The death knell for music as we now know and understand it.
What is music without Coachella, and what is Coachella without Vanessa Hudgens?
It’s just not the same. It’s not even that the hype is gone; all that remains is hype. The idea of what once was, a desert mirage of Aztec prints, strappy sandals and cutoff shorts, fades into the background.
It’s undeniably losing relevance. The oasis that was Coachella is slowly fading from our pop cultural visage. It’s just not the same anymore, regardless of any half-baked 2010s larps. The chunky belts on the hips of the new generation of festival-goers are not indicative of or reflective of a true spirit or vibe anymore.
What does this even mean for culture? Is there anywhere to move forward, given the collapse of possibly the biggest cultural phenomenon in the history of music?
What is more authentic of an expression than performative music festival attendance, of long days spent in the sun curating the optimal outfit picture, of odd mingling and networking at Revolve Festival Weekend?
Isn’t music meant to be shared? How else will we proliferate and spread the art form, if not through a select few social media entities in hyper-specific, uniform garb in the form of sponsored content?
We should weep for what the future of music and festivals holds in store, because it’s certainly not any better. Music is dead, all because we didn’t feel like walking the extra mile. The sky isn’t actually falling, but it may as well be.
The Queen of Coachella is abdicating the throne, leaving behind a nation in ruins. Her kingdom may be abandoned, but the fall of Coachella will be remembered, and its cultural legacy immortalized.