“Why don’t you go on west to California?” John Steinbeck wrote. “There’s work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there’s always some kind of crop to work in.”
When Steinbeck published Grapes of Wrath, his 1939 tale of an impoverished Oklahoma family moving to California in pursuit of work and land, the state was the final destination of the American Dream. Sweeping deserts and the infinite Pacific coast; germinating the seeds of Hollywood battered by the inescapable Great Depression. Escaping the poverty of their home states, California promised survival through reinvention for artists and everyone else, too.
A century later and young Americans are again going on west. Less cap in hand, more iPhone between fingers: Coachella, a temporary city in the Californian desert, is where young people descend from across the country in search of work and partying, status and spectacle.
This is, by no means, a slight to these people. It’s easy to call Coachella uncool; but most would love to go, judging by the voyeurism on social media. Decked in something of a desert uniform of cowboy boots and bandanas, the three days of sun and dancing is usually the greatest catalogue of popular musicians for any music festival that given year. Only Glastonbury in England can compare in scope, but not necessarily in spirit. For young people across the world, teenagers especially, Coachella represents a hyperreal version of the All-American experience.
Maybe I’m being sentimental. I was a teenager in the mid-2010s’ Peak Coachella era, when the festival still felt near mythic. It was that gorgeous slice of the internet, when YouTube live-streaming of sets broadcast to the world just how impossibly blue the Californian sky was, how gorgeous the golden frolickers were, but, crucially, just before mass influencer culture permeated the two-week desert oasis.
In recent years, the influencer-ification has consumed the festival, spilling out beyond the actual parameters of Coachella and setting up branded shop in the surrounding flatlands of the Colorado Desert. Brands dominated that sprawling flatland this year in particular, from the usual suspects – Kendall Jenner’s 818, Kourtney Kardashian’s Poosh, obviously Justin Bieber’s Skylrk and Hailey Bieber’s Rhode – to the outright random, such as ramen brand Maruchan. To misquote former headliner Kanye West: I like some of the Gaga’s songs. But what the fuck does Maruchan know about music festivals?
It’s what Vogue Business has deemed the formerly indie festival’s “Big Brand Renaissance.” It's what the internet has decreed the Influencer Olympics, with decent music in the background. Whether brand staff or influencer, road crew or content creator, once again young people journeyed to California for a new type of work. Influencing, networking, content creating. Former President Calvin Coolidge once declared: America’s business is business. Is anything more American than the state of Coachella today? Look out over the horizon, where the country’s most beautiful and wealthy indulge in the curated hedonism of red sunsets and vivid night stars, iced drinks and VIP wristbands.
Perhaps that’s why the second weekend’s plethora of surprise appearances — Olivia Rodrigo at Addison Rae! Madonna with Sabrina Carpenter! — felt so thrilling. Coachella is still that festival, a thrilling anecdote of the spectacle of art. The most touching was Billie Eilish at Justin Bieber’s set the second weekend, when the Prince of Pop invited the former Belieber, and now, one of the world’s biggest pop acts, to just hang out with him on stage.
And yet none of these high profile appearances have matched the impact of Bieber’s striking first set, in which the very first internet star stunned the audience and the internet, inviting the former to celebrate his roots from the latter. If Coachella is the final destination of the American Dream, Bieber is one of this century’s greatest manifestations of it.
The pressure was on: fans had declared the festival Bieberchella since it was announced Bieber would headline. He’s been out of the public eye for the past few years, slowly returning to it with the release of Swag. This was Bieber’s first ever Coachella set, following a surprise cameo four years ago, and there was a lengthy build up to it.
The second Bieber opened up YouTube – the very platform through which he, at a mere thirteen, was discovered. His present audience and subsequent online viewers seemed stunned. From “Baby” to “Never Say Never,” the first pop superstar of his generation delivered his zeitgeist defining hits in some sort of karaoke duet with his former self. The costumes and tight choreography that Sabrina Carpenter delivered so efficiently the night before suddenly felt old school in the face of this intimate, time-collapsing performance between the past and present.
A little Canadian boy, uploading videos of himself singing on YouTube, back when the internet was the very fertile land for hope and success that the West Coast promised to the young and hungry all those years ago. A sudden skyrocket to the grandest of careers in the arts; a fall from grace in the public eye; a subsequent redemption arc on music’s largest stage. Today Bieber is a married man, a family man, a Christian man, a matter as documented by Hailey as his former decline was by the press.
The American Dream isn’t just the end point, but the mythological journey to get there. Returning to the source was a celebration of the songs of his career, the remarkability of it all. It’s a hero’s quest, perfectly packaged for Coachella’s unique blend of uber-capitalism set against the otherworldliness of the Californian desert plains.
Instead of Steinbeck’s crops and oranges, it’s USB cables and oversized Skylrk hoodies. It’s Beliebers, and their god, and his god. There’s work there, in Coachella. And it never gets cold.
Images via Getty
