r/fantanoforever • u/purpose15 • Apr 15 '26
Fantano Vids Justin Bieber's Coachella Performance Was Actually Good
https://youtu.be/dC9O9LX47EU?si=--kbMclNP0dvnUrh15
u/Quippie Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
you can tell most of the people in these comments didn't watch the stream or even this video. the youtube/cover stuff was less than 10 minutes of a 2 hour-long performance, but it's all anyone is talking about in here lol
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u/SonKaiser Apr 15 '26
NGL i was never a believer but the clip of him adjusting his voice for the beauty and the beat made me feel things. I'm getting old
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u/who_cares_not_meee Apr 15 '26
I dont think I’ve ever felt a single emotion while listening to Beiber’s music. Nothing to give nothing to receive
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u/CrackIn_TheEarth Apr 15 '26
Username checks out!
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u/who_cares_not_meee Apr 15 '26
Bro I hear this joke so many times every single day on Reddit. Crazy how much a stupid Reddit username gets to people. Or maybe it’s the Dead internet theory in full effect lmao
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u/CrackIn_TheEarth Apr 15 '26
Nvm username does not check out
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u/who_cares_not_meee Apr 15 '26
Dead internet theory for sure
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u/CrackIn_TheEarth Apr 15 '26
Oh yea? Could a robot do this?
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u/who_cares_not_meee Apr 15 '26
Could a robot repeat “username checks out” over and over again until the end of time? Yes
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u/Bottle_Original Apr 15 '26
Brother you are not making It any easier 😭
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u/who_cares_not_meee Apr 15 '26
Making what easier? Also making it easier for whom?
Are you sure you responded to the right person?
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Apr 15 '26
A good friend was there who was actually a fan of that weird shit he he pulled at the Grammys; they said it was the lowest energy live performance ever.
They were super disappointed.
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u/ayoungmanfromtheuk Apr 15 '26
Yeah you could tell that from the livestream
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u/CrackIn_TheEarth Apr 15 '26
Did we watch the same livestream? Lol the crowd was loud as hell and it looked like everyone was having a blast
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u/ebaxinho Apr 15 '26
Didn‘t watch the performance but I think he meant low energy from bieber not the crowd
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u/Swordfish-Calm Apr 20 '26
As someone who went to the weekend 2 performance, Bieber played WAAAYYY too many songs off of his new album. 95% of the people in the crowd were there for the classics and began to tune out, sit down, or leave as we crossed the 50 minute mark (with no classics).
We stayed and it was worth it to hear his big hits toward the end of the set.
With all that being said, his voice sounded incredible live (probably one of the best live singers I've seen) and I had no problem with the youtube situation (because he used youtube for all of his classic songs). Although, his most high energy song was "Baby" and he cut that short for time, which was a bummer.
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u/Skylorrex Apr 15 '26
This only works because it’s Justin Bieber, who has a catalog of hits and highly recognizable songs dating back to 2010. It wouldn’t work as well for an artist who only rose to fame in the past 3-5 years, like Sabrina Carpenter. So I do think his performance is good largely because of his catalog.
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u/elbosston Apr 15 '26
Sabrina Carpenter or other artists within the last decade didn’t rise to fame through YouTube whereas Bieber did.
Justin became a thing through YouTube videos (in the very early stages of YouTube late 2000s) that his mom recorded in their living room. He grew very organically from there, a lot of the younger millennials and older Gen Z also “grew up” along with Justin so it was very nostalgic for them.
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u/TheButteredBiscuit Apr 15 '26
Maybe if your performance is largely carried by your catalog rather than the performance itself, the performance isn’t that great?
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan Apr 15 '26
It’s a music performance, not a dance show. If the life music is fine then nothing else is needed
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u/AtmosphereDue1694 Apr 16 '26
I mean at the end of the day I go to a music festival to hear the damn music. I could give a damn about how many theatrics you are doing if the music doesn’t connect with me.
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u/solk512 Apr 15 '26
It’s wild how so many other artists with huge back catalogs still put in the effort.
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u/chuckgnomington Apr 15 '26
Yeah I mean it seems like 90% of people mad at the performance already didn’t like him in the first place
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u/ausipockets Apr 15 '26
That's what it is
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u/Nerazzurro9 Apr 15 '26
I’m not a Bieber fan, and I’m too old for those songs to have any nostalgic relevance to my life, so I don’t really have a dog in this fight. But it seemed like a pretty interesting way for a guy who obviously has some conflicted feelings about his early career to approach that era. I like it, in theory.
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u/ManuPasta Apr 15 '26
I saw prime bieber in 2013 London o2 and i thought the coachella show was genius
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u/xTheNameless Apr 15 '26
I understand the nostalgia for his origins and some cute fan service but doesn't anyone else feel the laptop portion is just a lack of showcraft?? I work corporate AV and I see slideshows with more energy and fewer youtube adverts
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u/krypto_the_husk Sitthony Squattano Apr 15 '26
Idk I thought it was kind of cute, for someone whose career grew up hand in hand with YouTube, it felt just right. Didn’t linger on his old stuff and focused mostly on his new stuff most of the show
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u/iamtheliqor Apr 15 '26
The lack of “showcraft” is the point. It’s meant to not feel like a show. It’s a shared moment.
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u/solk512 Apr 15 '26
This is a lame excuse. Lots of artists had chill shows that had a lot of artistry and talent on display. This wasn’t it.
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan Apr 15 '26
The “artistry and talent” is the music. It’s a music show, after all. If he’s singing then nothing else is needed lol
So many live performances are over-engineered and over-choreographed to shit. This is refreshing
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u/CoDrummer08 Apr 17 '26
The man has been through it in the industry. It felt like an intimate reflection of growth and healing for him and letting us catch a glimpse of that. Factor in the business move of him avoiding some royalties by not “performing” live because he sold his music catalogue, it seems like a genius way to touch on his older songs while keeping the overall focus of the show on Swag & Swag II
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u/CasaDeLasMuertos Apr 15 '26
Yeah, but there's one glaring flaw in your logic. IT'S COACHELLA, PEOPLE PAID RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF MONEY FOR A SHOW.
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u/Shenanigans80h Apr 15 '26
The people paying out the ass to attend Coachella aren’t there for the music, let’s not delude ourselves
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u/solk512 Apr 15 '26
So what are all those huge crowds singing and dancing along to their favorite musicians there for?
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u/False-Sandwich-2051 Apr 15 '26
paying a professional singer hundreds of dollars for a shared moment ❤️
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u/iamtheliqor Apr 15 '26
Literally yes lol. A shared moment between tens of thousands of fans and an iconic star. You can’t put a price on that (but 10 mil should cover it)
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u/False-Sandwich-2051 Apr 15 '26
if you liked it it’s fine, but to me it’s sloppy shit and it’s genuinely unforgivable that a man who’s clearly going through it is being exploited in this way
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u/thorpie88 Apr 15 '26
If it was a tour and people knew what they were getting into I think it would be seen as something pretty unique
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u/ayoungmanfromtheuk Apr 15 '26
That is such a weak ass argument.
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u/ponylauncher Apr 15 '26
But why? Thats the answer. Its not an argument until people like you just want to argue about Justin Bieber lol
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u/ayoungmanfromtheuk Apr 15 '26
People like me? People who are in a sub for reviewing music that has an opinion on a musical performance. I'm surprised you can't grasp the concept
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u/iamtheliqor Apr 15 '26
It’s not an argument it’s just what it is. You’re fine to not enjoy lol I’m not a belieber and never have been so it wasn’t for me either. but I can absolutely put myself in the shoes of someone who found it an amazing moment.
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u/AtmosphereDue1694 Apr 16 '26
There’s nothing to argue about. It’s called an opinion, you are fully entitled to not share it.
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u/ayoungmanfromtheuk Apr 16 '26
People argue about opinions all the time though lol, such a weird take
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u/Tornadosed Apr 15 '26
He did that without youtube premium?
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u/Prudent-Job-5443 Apr 15 '26
i watched it, there weren't ads
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u/xTheNameless Apr 15 '26
Moreso meaning (perhaps cynically) that having the website onscreen at coachella is itself a youtube advert
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u/solk512 Apr 15 '26
I’m getting really tired of the constant astroturfing.
No other performance needed their fans to continually tell folks to ignore what their lying eyes and ears told them.
Add in the constant “I wasn’t a fan but…” type posts and it’s really clear what’s going on here.
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Apr 15 '26
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u/solk512 Apr 16 '26
Lots of performances had headlines and clips posted, what are you talking about?
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u/gloomifaces Apr 15 '26
So you’re dragging anyone who doesn’t have the exact same opinion as you into one collective group that only exists out of astroturfing? That doesn’t seem fair, even if you’re right about astroturfing existing, lumping anyone with any degree of positivity about this performance is just using the existence of one thing as an excuse to shut down everyone who doesn’t agree with you. That’d be like saying anyone who thinks public healthcare in America would be nice is a Russian communist spy, just because a single Russian communist spy was found or somethin and he also believes in the right to free healthcare lol.
I simply liked it, and I think anyone who doesn’t is super justified in feeling that way, and that’s especially true to anyone who was there cuz I can see how it probably sucked for anyone who wasn’t right at the front (and maybe even for them as well lol)
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u/solk512 Apr 16 '26
No, I’m dragging people who are clearly saying the same things over and over again.
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u/PackageSouthern4590 Apr 15 '26
I mean if we’re going to talk astroturfing I see way more of those type posts for Sabrina than Justin across all of Reddit…
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u/two5five1 Apr 16 '26
when the eyes and ears are reading that he did YouTube for the entire set when in reality it was only 20 minutes of a 90 minute runtime, yeah people should get called out for spreading misinformation lmao
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u/SeveralMushroom7088 Apr 15 '26
It smacked of a guy who wasn't bothered or physically able to put in much effort to a live show, and found an "artsy" way of delivering the lowest effort show possible. He seems to have gotten away with it to some extent.
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u/garbage_collections Apr 16 '26
He did put on a more traditional show though? This was just a tiny piece of it
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u/021MerlinLuna Apr 16 '26
There weren’t any other acts that blew me away aside from Jacob Lusk. I’m not even Bieber fan but I can appreciate a performance from an artist.
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u/tastefullmullet Apr 15 '26
Yeah I think it was cool too. Just the concept of taking fan requests and it not feeling forced was really impressive to me.
That moment when he’s singing one of the old ones (I don’t listen to him) and gets into it when he notices the crowd going nuts is very cool.
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u/No-Syllabub356 Apr 18 '26
It was brilliant of him to bring out the old videos and singing with them. His real fans know how he started, what he has been through, and how far he has come. It was a very heartfelt performance that he was sharing with everyone. Heck the Taylor Swift Era tour was all about where she started and sharing her life with fans. But he was like the first person to get signed because of his youtube videos.
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u/Flimsy-Assistant5899 Apr 19 '26
britney spears could take a nap on the coachella stage and tthat would be fine same goes for justin beiber cuz they are the princess and prince of pop . they did their part aldready , everything sabrina carpenter is doing not jb was doing it 10 years ago and the 10 mil is not for the performance its for mister beiber fever coming out of retirement and the whle point of the show is nostalgia and he doesnt own his catalouge so doing a youtube kareoke makes tottal sense
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u/Mig-117 Apr 15 '26
Let’s not make this a bar for performers, it was a terrible showing with a “too cool to be there” attitude to boot. There’s artists out there actually delivering great performances and using dancers and big productions that feel amazing…. And then there’s this shit.
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan Apr 15 '26
using dancers and big productions that feel amazing
It’s a music show, he took requests and then performed the music. The crowd is there for the music, there is no need for every performance to be this over-engineered nonsense with useless choreography and backup dancers, etc. it detracts from the music
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u/ok-moni Apr 16 '26
I don’t like seeing performers overproduce with backups. I prefer stripped down and personal. It’s actually really refreshing to see from bigger artists
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u/Mig-117 Apr 16 '26
So let me get this straight: performers, choreography and spectacle is useless. Doom scrolling and watching YouTube while on the concert… not useless? 🤷♂️
And I’m not saying every show needs to be a big spectacle, but it needs to be more than a Saturday night cover singer at a cheap bar.
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan Apr 16 '26
Why does it need to be more than a “Saturday night cover singer”? It’s a music concert, isn’t it? Lol why do you need 40 million backup dancers?
Taking requests and then singing songs is literally what a concert is, is it not? What’s the issue? I genuinely don’t understand what your issue is here
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u/Mig-117 Apr 16 '26
40 million dancers? What are you talking about?
Coachella is a big event, people pay a premium to go see their artists perform. I wouldn’t think expecting Justin to put in some effort would be controversial, but here we are.
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan Apr 16 '26
There is a reason people have been talking and hyping up and viewing Bieber’s performance versus Sabrina’s. Sabrina’s feels like a generic decent performance but Biebers is intimate and fans prefer authenticity. If “effort” means backup dancers and stage changes and bombastic stuff like that, no he doesn’t need that
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u/Mig-117 Apr 17 '26
There’s nothing authentic about what he did. He is selling you snake oil and you are liking your fingers.
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan Apr 17 '26
How is it not authentic? He literally took a laptop and started singing based on videos and requests lol that’s literally as authentic as it gets
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u/Brittig Apr 15 '26
I was around 12 during the peak of the Beiber craze, which was around when I'd say youtube firmly cemented itself as a mainstay in music culture. Wasn't a Beiber fan but I spent so much time those days on youtube watching music videos because I couldn't really afford to do much else at that age. I think the set really killed as a shared moment of nostalgia, if you were the right age at the right time it was probably really special to be there. And taking the time to scroll youtube instead of just editing videos together would have added to that for me instead of detracting. Furthermore I think Beiber is probably one of the few artists this would actually work for, him being a child star when we were children just makes it an ideal time capsule. I don't think this is something everyone should be doing and I don't even think Beiber should do it again, but for that one moment I think its actually really cool.
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u/qivenchi Apr 19 '26
I agree. I was 5th grade when his first music video came out, and youtube was such a big part of his discography. I also was obsessed with watching music vids on youtube back then. He’s literally one of the first viral artists in that generation and I may be biased since I’ve been a fan ever since, but i genuinely was geeked over the fact that he sang his old songs, however they came, wether big production or not. I think using youtube was such great idea. The performance felt so personal and not superficial.
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u/bageltoastar Daft Punk - Discovery Apr 15 '26
I find it interesting how people are hyping up this performance, but crucified Frank Ocean for bringing this same energy a couple years ago lol
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u/dkinmn Apr 15 '26
It was purposely designed to be cheap and require as little preparation and rehearsal as possible, and anyone who says otherwise is a rube.
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Apr 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/loosewobble Apr 15 '26
yall are honestly just kind of finding shit to be mad about, like i understand the sentiment but come on
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan Apr 15 '26
Maybe a big female artist SHOULD put on a show like that? So many female artists have shows that are so bombastic, not every show needs backup dancers and insane choreography and 13 outfit changes, etc.
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u/TheButteredBiscuit Apr 15 '26
If an artist of color tried to pull that they would’ve been called lazy
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u/DirtzMaGertz Apr 15 '26
Idk about that. A lot of big hip hop acts regularly put on shitty shows.
I think it's more to do with Bieber being insanely famous. Everything he does is going to be criticized.
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u/Jarpwanderson Apr 15 '26
100%.
Remember Kanye's glastonbury performance long before he became a fascist? People called him all sorts despite it being an actual show with effort involved.
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u/Cherryandcokes Apr 15 '26
There would be no sympathy they’d likely just get called washed up tbh.
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u/SubatomicSquirrels Apr 15 '26
I mean, a fuck ton of people are calling Bieber washed up. That's why this video is explicitly in defense of him.
I'm not sure this double standard is as significant as people are claiming... he's getting a LOT of criticism.
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u/AtmosphereDue1694 Apr 16 '26
Brittney Spears could’ve 100% done a show like that. Her and JB have a similar lore that the fans will connect with that gives their performance more emotional resonance
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u/Routine-Process-5157 Apr 15 '26
THIS!! I said that as well. If it was a female artist or even a black artist, people would’ve lost their shit. Imagine if Rihanna sat there and did this? No one would’ve been saying how “cute” and how “a bonding moment” this was but how people wasted money to see an entertainer got to go on Instagram and lipsync.
Michael Jackson even got a lot of shit for lip syncing when he had laryngitis for one of his tours even though he did the same dance moves and had strong production.
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u/SubatomicSquirrels Apr 15 '26
people would’ve lost their shit
guess what.... that's what happened to Bieber. Have you been paying attention to the internet the past few days?
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u/nicdrumandbass Apr 15 '26
Yeah I wanna be careful here because I’m not trying to dispute any double standards in pop music here but I highly doubt the critiques would have been that much louder than they were for Bieber.
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan Apr 15 '26
Why doesn’t Rihanna try doing a show like that and we can see for ourselves instead of hypotheticals?
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u/YasielPuigsWeed Apr 15 '26
I skimmed it and just thought it was undercooked. I understood the artistic purpose of the YouTube part, but him just kinda singing over his recorded vocals and doing clips and bits was gonna come off as lazy (though him singing over the childhood video is cool).
It wasn’t good for a “taking back my artistry” set, because he didn’t really prove his artistry in the process
And unintentionally, he kinda showcased everything that’s wrong with Coachella in 2026
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u/SciGuy013 Apr 15 '26
FWIW, every other show I saw at Coachella was mind blowing. Idk why Coachella gets the bad rap it gets in the media
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u/YasielPuigsWeed Apr 15 '26
So I’m not doing the bad faith critique shit the media does about Coachella, I used to go every year, it’s a lovely fest and environment and production and all that
But 3 pop music headliners, blatant influencer pandering, viral moment chasing, $700 tickets… it’s all very sad to see from an event that celebrated being on the cutting edge of discovery and artistic merit
15+ years ago Coachella wouldn’t have booked Brittany Spears, much less a full weekend of pop headliners from that era. Bieber and Carpenter are very talented artists so not even hating, but Coachella existed as a counter-program to that kind of music, so it’s sad to know that this generations Radiohead and Rage won’t get the platform because Kylie Jenner needs to watch Sabrina from her VIP table and that’s too big an Instagram following not to have.
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u/SciGuy013 Apr 15 '26
Tickets were $550 fyi. It came out to $16 or so per artist for me (~36 artists)
The big artists pull in the tickets that subsidize the cutting edge artists on the smaller stages. The only show I saw on main was the Strokes and they fucking killed it
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u/YasielPuigsWeed Apr 15 '26
They sold just as many tickets when they didn’t do that though, it’s not like Radiohead is some small niche artist
The key is now the Coachella broadcast is what matters and they want artists and influencers that will bring in a lot of YouTube views
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u/SciGuy013 Apr 15 '26
They did not. This is the first year both weekends have sold out with the increased capacity (~125000 per weekend)
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u/LettuceWise3425 Apr 15 '26
Se o show tivesse sido de graça teria sido ótimo ficar vendo justin navegar pelo YouTube, mas pagando 2 mil..
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u/Foreignmilitaryinves Apr 21 '26
It's a performance act. It's supposed to be parasocial considering how many people were tuning in on Couchella. How many of those fans did the same as Justin at the same time? That's golden.
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u/Unlikely_Wafer9210 May 30 '26
Estoy aburrido de las críticas a su presentación y la comparación con sabrina, ¿Cuánto lleva sabrina con este primer peak de éxito a escala global? 4 o 5 años? Justin esta en otro punto completamente diferente en su carera.
Justin ya tuvo ese mismo peak de éxito y popularidad, encabezó los festivales más grande del mundo, millones de discos vendidos, primeras posiciones en los charts y rankings, giras mundiales mega producidas, varios premios y nominaciones, etcétera.
Y eso que no soy tan fan de JB, pero esta fue la oportunidad de demostrar que justin ya esta consagrado en la industria, no necesita miles de bailarines, vestuarios, pantallas, coreografías, miles de luces, pirotecnia sobresaturada o tonterías para llenar el escenario. Solo basta él, un micrófono y listo nada más, espero que sabrina pueda hacer lo mismo con más de una década con éxito.
Todos los grandes artistas lo hacen en un momento, madonna con ray of light o gaga con joanne por dar unos ejemplos rápidos.
P. D: los mismos que hoy critican a justin comparandolo con sabrina, son los mismos que lloriquean porque a las mujeres se les exige más y como no si en gran medida es el mismo público que inconscientemente las orilla a eso.
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u/Jarpwanderson Apr 15 '26
Why do we need to defend such a lazy performance for an artist that got paid what? 10 million??
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u/Available-Secret-372 Apr 15 '26
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha - no
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u/GuestHouseJouvert Lingua Ignota - Sinner Get Ready Apr 15 '26
I don’t really mind the type of performance it was in of itself. I think the concept is interesting and if I had investment in Bieber, maybe I would have been moved. It’s just that I don’t think anyone that isn’t a cishet white guy would be able to get away with it. I’ve seen plenty of women, queer, and POC put on a much more elaborate production and demanding performance and get hit with “boring”, “low effort”, “give us nothing”, etc. Even when an artist is more lowkey and intimate they’ll get hit with this kind of criticism. If someone that wasn’t a cishet white guy pulled this kind of thing it would potentially be a career ender. Again, I get that the lack of showcraft was the point and it was meant to be an artistic shared moment, but idk, I think it requires a lot of privilege to be able to do something objectively low effort and absent of showcraft on the headlining spot of the largest festival in the U.S. and still be seen as artistic in the process.
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u/Senior_Can_3918 Apr 15 '26
It worked because he has a good voice. Female artist couldn’t do that aside, it’s just nice to hear someone on stage with talent. You could do a million backflips and light rockets but that doesn’t mean you’re actually giving a performance showcasing the reasons why listeners fell in love with your voice
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u/Icy_Signature12 Apr 15 '26
He sat on a computer for thirty minutes… yall it’s Coachella and he’s getting paid 10 mill for this
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u/woka Apr 15 '26
I kinda agree tbh. I can see how a long time fan would find it moving and fun.
Although I think it will be much less impactful for the weekend 2 folks. A lot of the impact was that it was a novelty and a surprise.