IT WAS impossible not to click on the video. And it wasn’t anything of grand scale that would upend my unhealthy doom-scrolling diet — the idea was just absurd.
Justin Bieber used YouTube videos for his Coachella performance.
It was a flex at the absolute apex of artistic peak. You can call it a full-circle moment, when Bieber had no one else to talk to at this point in his career but himself, enjoying karaoke-style duets with his younger, soprano-singing superstar version. You could also say he was at the end of his creative climb — a summit so high that only a few pop icons have breathed the same air — so he chose to come back down to tell people: I know what it feels like to start.
A Belieber, I am not. While bordering on Messianic messaging, at the end of the day, Justin Bieber is just another pop star whose different strokes of luck have aligned. Or, borrowing again from religion, he’s been pretty blessed.
There are other ways of looking at what he did on music’s biggest stage in April 2026. Critics might label it performance art. Others might say the guy was trolling. Whichever way you look at it, he achieved the biggest objective of performing at Coachella: making headlines.
If this were a solo concert, it would feel like a rip-off. If it were a guest appearance on Super Bowl Sunday, it might feel slightly out of place on a stage known for production extravagance — made possible, as multiple reports have pointed out in the past, by lip-syncing. But to pull it off at a music festival — where there’s an unwritten rule for artists to craft a show that sets them apart while not alienating the audience — it struck the right mix of slapstick and strategy.
This was well-timed comedy.
And the world is smiling. (LQ3)