Some reviewers believed Frank Ocean’s Coachella performance this year on April 16 had to be a deliberate, masterful deconstruction of expectations for festival headliners because it was so bizarre, starting with the fact that much of it took place backstage. Then, Ocean cancelled his appearance for Coachella’s second weekend, claiming it ‘wasn’t what I intended to show’, a decision his representatives claimed was made on doctor’s orders due to a leg injury.
Overall, it certainly wasn’t what everyone had anticipated for his first concert since 2017, especially since Blonde, his instant classic album from 2016, has yet to be followed up. Additionally, it took place at Coachella, arguably the biggest music festival in the world, which Ocean has previously frequented and even mentioned in his early song ‘Novacane’. Beyonce and Daft Punk have shaped and shaken culture there.
More than a year after Coachella officially announced Ocean as a future headlining act, the announcement was made that he would be replaced. The COVID-19 pandemic forced a cancellation of the 2020 festival which Ocean was initially scheduled to perform at. Following the cancellation Coachella co-founder Paul Tollett stated in a 2021 interview with the Los Angeles Times that he wouldn’t typically announce the name of a musician so far in advance, but that fans needed hope for the future given the uncertainty of the pandemic. “Right now, it’s the Wild West,” Tollett said. “I’m just trying to be as fair as I can to artists and to the fans to make sure that eventually, they get to see everyone that we talked about.”
The revelation comes after days of controversy surrounding Ocean’s divisive performance during the festival’s first weekend, which was musically strong, but uneven, and hampered by significant production problems. A complex performance featuring an ice rink and skaters was scheduled but abruptly cancelled. Numerous sources claim that the large production was abruptly called off on Sunday, just hours before Ocean’s scheduled performance, because the singer simply decided he didn’t want to do it. However, the official statement claims that it was postponed due to an ankle injury the singer had sustained earlier in the week.
Ocean has since withdrawn from performing as the festival’s headlining act on the second Sunday, claiming an ankle issue. Even though those who were travelling to Coachella that weekend must have found this disappointing, postponing seemed like the only sensible course of action in light of last weekend’s unfortunate events. Following that, Blink-182 got in line to replace Ocean as the headliner, according to Variety.
Ocean mystified the audience at times as he lip-synced and danced around the stage with a toothy grin, cheekily mugging at the camera, while playing studio recordings of old tracks from his frenetic alcove beneath the stage while wearing his insulated space suit. He occasionally displayed the tennis ball-green robot infant that he had brought to the 2021 Met Gala. But from the beginning, he made it clear where his priorities lay. He wasn’t playing there that night because he was about to drop new music. Rather, he used to visit Coachella with his younger brother Ryan Breaux, who passed away in a car accident in 2020 at the age of 18.
Fans were led to assume that Frank Ocean had actually withdrawn from the desert festival after his headlining performance began an hour late and was cut short by curfew. After YouTube announced there would be no livestream of the celebrity’s first Coachella performance in six years, his followers were shocked.What are your thoughts on this?
Written by: Annika Nair
Edited by: Hannah Clarke