Coachella, which is officially called the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, is an annual art and music festival that is held in California. This is a three-day event with art sculptures and installations of different areas and music stages all around the area as well.
Now why is Coachella important to K-pop fans? From what I gathered in my time in the fandom, I have learned that K-pop was not a type of music genre that was featured at Coachella, so it became a big deal when Blackpink became the first K-pop group to perform. This leads to other groups getting the opportunity to be able to perform, enjoy themselves, and hopefully get more recognition. One of the main ways K-pop groups end up disbanding is when the company thinks that the group cannot make more profits and the profits come from fans, so being at Coachella can help generate more fans and give more love to our favorite groups. Also, not only does Coachella generate new fans but it also tests K-pop groups on how well they can perform and interact with the crowd with equipment and management that is not from their own company. This is where it got a bit interesting for me and quite annoying and embarrassing for K-pop fans.
My opinion on Le Sserafim’s performance is that they have tried their best and I still like their music. Why do I say this? Because their performance was not up to par with the standards that most K-pop fans hold. Many have criticized their recent live vocals at encore stages in Korea, some saying that they do not sound as good as other groups. This is important due to the K-pop industry changing and focusing more on visuals and likability than talent in this new fourth generation of K-pop. Le Sserafim’s first weekend performance helps prove the fact that even as their vocals become weak due to the choreography and back-to-back songs, they end up screaming more than singing.
They received a lot of backlash and had been compared to other K-pop performances in the past. I think the girls had done the best they could and I know some of the members expressed that they would work on training harder on their vocals. However, the critiques did not stop there as their second-weekend performance was criticized as they used the backtracks heavily, yes it made the vocals sound better but it does not fix the fact that their live vocals are weak.
I honestly think that they should have waited until next year to make their debut on the Coachella stage as they could have more time practicing their live vocals. I say this because their live vocals were already under fire due to the past encore stages they have done before Coachella. If the company and group knew this information already it makes it weird for the group to perform at a place that expects nothing but live vocals. To me, it seems like it was a setup in some way. All that matters is the girls have fun for the time being and some people from the crowd had stated that they couldn’t even hear the live vocals due to loud music and bass, so the weak vocals weren’t noticeable in person only on the live broadcast.