I am trying out as many posts as I can right now, with the free time I have currently. Once I build up a portfolio, the rate will slow down a bit!

This summer, a very special event happened: I went to my first festival. This was Latitude Festival in England and I will write a post about this soon. This inspired me to delve into different festivals, lineups and headliners. One of the biggest festivals in the world is, of course, Coachella. The festival is held every year in California in the Colorado Desert.

The festival has evolved over time. The headliners in the earlier years consisted of mainly alternative rock acts, such as Red Hot Chill Peppers, along with classic rock artists such as Paul McCartney. With the changing market of music, by 2018, the headliners were all modern pop and rap. Headliners in the years since have included Billie Eilish, Eminem and the famous 2018 Beyoncé performance.

This year featured similar modern artists, including a bonkers headline performance by Lady Gaga. However, like the past couple of years, with Blink-182 in 2023 and No Doubt in 2024, a big rock band also had a prominent slot. Enter Saturday night headliner, Green Day.

I believe that Green Day were the perfect choice of rock band to headline Coachella. They always get the crowd at their shows to sing along and go crazy, and the famously lax crowd at Coachella did sing when asked. Not for the hits “Longview,” “Welcome to Paradise” and “21 Guns” but they still did pretty well. I believe they could’ve got guests from the crowd to help sing these songs, like they do for “Know Your Enemy.”

Coachella is now a mammoth event which spans two weekend in April, featuring the same lineup. As the event has grown, special guests have become a main feature of sets. I think Green Day did a smart move of having no guests for the first weekend and having a special guest on the second weekend.

Instead of peaking too early, they saved a surprise for the second weekend, making it feel like a culmination of their Coachella experience. Also, having one guest on one weekend made that particular performance feel more memorable. If they had guests both weekends, it might have diluted the impact, making each performance feel like separate events rather than a cohesive whole. Especially considering both weekends featured practically the same setlist. Although I was worried they weren’t going to have any judging by the first week!

The guest was Public Enemy hip-hop legend Flavor Flav, who already made some silly guest appearances over the weekends at Coachella. At Green Day concerts, a person dressed in a bunny suit hypes the crowd up, over “Blitzkrieg Bop” by legendary punk band The Ramones. The bunny took its head off to reveal itself as Flavor Flav, who got the crowd ready for Green Day to come on stage. Not many bands could have their guests come on in a bunny suit!

*the band with Flavor Flav at their Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony this year

The setlist for both weekends is a great festival setlist. All the hits are present: “American Idiot,” “Basket Case,” “When I Come Around,” “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” “Jesus of Suburbia,” and “Minority.” They also played their hits “Holiday,” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” even though, controversially, I’m not a big fan of these 2 songs! They also played a couple new songs from their fantastic album last year and did all their usual concert tricks, which is a reason why I believe they were the perfect band to headline modern Coachella.

These include bringing fans on stage to play guitar and Billie Joe Armstrong doing his usual Freddie Mercury-esque crowd-pleasing. Some tricks I’d wish they’d bring back though are the toilet paper cannon present in their Reading 2013 set, and their fun covers of rock classics such as “Rock and Roll All Nite” by Kiss and “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC.

In signature fashion, they closed both weekends with their acoustic anthem, “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” which has become a staple for graduations. With these electric performances, Green Day proved that rock can still appeal to younger generations and sit with modern stars, just as they can with old rock bands. I hope this is a trend that continues.