The lineup for the 2025 edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which you normally don’t expect for another two months, arrived like an early Christmas present on Wednesday, Nov. 20, and our initial reaction is this: How has Green Day never played Coachella before?
Green Day, which in September rolled through Southern California on an anniversary tour for a pair of albums — “Dookie’ at 30, “American Idiot” at 20 — headlines both Saturdays in the desert, with Lady Gaga the Friday headliner and Post Malone atop Sunday’s bill.
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Travis Scott, who was supposed to headline in 2020 (but, well, you know what happened in 2020) fills the free-floating headliner spot that the No Doubt reunion had in 2024. No Doubt played before headliner Tyler, the Creator this year. If we had to bet we’d predict Travis Scott follows Green Day on Saturday.
Dozens of other artists fill out the lineup, of course. We quickly scanned the names for highlights and trends for 2025 and soon settled on these five themes for the Coachella to come.
Rock is good!
Green Day is arguably the first rock headliner since Tame Impala in 2019, with pop, hip-hop, K-pop and Latin music headliners dominating the post-pandemic years.
There’s not a ton, not like the O.G. years of Coachella, but if you peruse the lineup poster you’ll find electric guitars and kickdrums here and there. Indie rock band Jimmy Eat World has a slot on Friday
The original lineup of the Misfits is high on the bill on Saturday, giving Green Day a little punk-metal boost before their time slot. Sweden’s Viagra Boys were terrific in the Sonora tent in 2022 and their anarchic fun punk could play well on a bigger stage this year.
The Circle Jerks bring their vintage South Bay punk to the field on Sunday, and the terrifically fun Aussie punks Amyl and the Sniffers play Sunday too.
The women are fire
This is Lady Gaga’s second headlining turn at Coachella, though the first time she was a replacement headliner in 2017 for the then-pregnant Beyoncé. She should bring an arty rock-and-pop to the main stage on the first day of the fest on Friday.
But there are more fantastic female artists all over the lineup. Also performing Friday are Missy Elliott, whose show at Crypto.com Arena this summer was a true hip-hop spectacle, is listed just before Gaga on the poster, and FKA Twigs has the ability to deliver something every bit as artful, though in subtler vibe, than either Missy or Gaga.
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Our beloved Go-Go’s also play on Friday, so maybe we’ll start a petition to have a Gaga-Go-Go’s collab sometime during the day. Gaga-Go-Go’s — it’s just fun to say, right? Marina, the Welsh alt-pop singer who formerly played as Marina and the Diamonds, is also a Friday friend.
Charli XCX is one of the biggest breakouts of 2024 and her set on Saturday night is guaranteed to be packed beyond whatever stage she’s given. (It also could deliver a tasty guest artists or two. Among the collaborators on her various iterations of the album “Brat” are Billie Eilish and Lorde, so … .)
Beth Gibbons of Portishead should serve some moody atmospherics in her Saturday set, while the Brazilian singer Anitta, a revelation at Coachella in 2022, is back Saturday this year.
Sunday closes out the weekend with more crazy-good women: Rapper Megan Thee Stallion might be the lead-in to Post Malone’s headlining spot, and Filipino-British singer-songwriter Beabadoobee plays earlier on Sunday, too.
International pop rocks
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Artists from outside the English-speaking world continue to have a presence in Coachella’s lineup.
The K-pop girl group Blackpink has played Coachella twice, most recently as 2023 headliners, and two members of that group — Lisa and Jennie — are back this year for solo performances on Friday and Sunday respectively. Their old girl group slot is filled this year by XG, a seven-member girl group from Japan.
Seun Kuti, the youngest son of the late Afrobeat star Fela Kuti, took over his father’s band Egypt 80, and the Nigerian musician and his band should deliver some seriously funky grooves during their set on Friday.
Some acts are international by heritage, not birth. The Los Angeles band the Marias play an enchanting bilingual indie pop, with the Puerto Rican-born Maria Zardoya a mesmerizing vocalist. Twenty-year-old Iván Cornejo was born and raised in Riverside and some of his music has a regional Mexican flavor.
Shaboozey, the Virginia-born son of Nigerian immigrants, is another of 2024’s breakout stars, with his country-tinged hip-hop vibes on songs such as “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” earning him five Grammy nominations recently including best new artist and song of the year.
Weird and wonderful
One of the greatest pleasures of Coachella is the unexpected gems the lineup delivers. For instance, would you expect to see Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Phil at this festival? They’ll be there Friday, following in the footsteps of film composer Hans Zimmer and rocker-film composer Danny Elfman who proved Coachella fans will listen to an orchestra in the open air of the desert.
If you only want the brass section and percussionists, don’t miss Meute, an 11-member German marching band that plays techno and house music covers. Definite crowd favorites when they played Coachella a few years back.
Vintage electronic acts deserve their own shout-out: In addition to the German electronic rock pioneers Kraftwerk, which was most recently seen in Dudamel’s house, Walt Disney Concert Hall, earlier this year, the lineup also includes several classic British DJ-producers in the Prodigy and Basement Jaxx.
There’s lots of good hip-hop in the lineup — GloRilla, T-Pain, and Oscar winners Three 6 Mafia, to name a few — but have you ever seen three white Northern Irish rappers tear down the roof? Kneecap, whose members played themselves in a biopic of the same name this year, play Fridays.
And finally, for utter childlike bizarre-o fun, Yo Gabba Gabba! is back, with the costumes and mascots of the kids TV series to sing and dance at Coachella as we all embrace our inner toddlers.