As someone who has never attended Coachella, it seems to creep up on us every single year. I don’t realize it’s that time until I see TikToks saying “Help me pick my outfits for Coachella!” So of course, I forgot who the headliners were. After finding out it was going to be Sabrina Carpenter, I got intense FOMO, but when I found out Saturday’s headliner was Justin Bieber, I just rolled my eyes.
My disdain for Bieber has grown over the past few years. It was the way he would treat his fans, but especially the way he would treat his wife (and I’m not even a Hailey Bieber fan) that really gave me the biggest ick. His Grammy performance where he is in his underwear singing a song and playing his guitar made me so angry because no one was mad at him. Yet every time a woman – for example, Tate McRae – is showing her legs and stomach, the world explodes. How does that work?
But I’m not here to talk about his clothes or lack thereof. I am here to talk about the pressure we put on women to perform versus the lack of pressure that we put on men. If you haven’t seen either Bieber’s or Carpenter’s Coachella performances, then I would advise you to check them out now. I was excited to see Carpenter’s performance. She had been hyping it up, saying she had a new set and production, and I was interested to see what songs she would sing if she was changing the typical setlist. She sang more Man’s Best Friend songs than she did when she was touring and had completely different outfits and set designs. She opened the show in a car at a drive-in movie, live on stage. She then walked down what seemed to be the Hollywood Walk of Fame and opened with “House Tour.” Already, she was putting on a performance. Carpenter had at least four outfit changes and many set changes throughout the show. She had so many dancers and sang about 20 songs.
The next night, Bieber threw on a hoodie, grabbed his laptop and a microphone, and basically called it a day. It was like he was doing karaoke to his own music. There was zero production. He would play his old music videos and sing over them. He brought out a couple guests and ran around the stage, but that was it. And people are calling this the best Coachella performance ever, saying they were more moved than any other performance has ever moved them! Even Finneas said in an Instagram story he was so moved by Bieber’s performance. Do they not have eyes? Or ears??
I decided to do some deep dive research and found some posts on X regarding these performances. One post said “unironically, this is more genuine and worth ur money than any other artist that’s performing,” Another said, “Unpopular opinion but I genuinely think he can do whatever the hell he wants. Watching the world literally drain the light from his eyes since childhood? And honestly, blowing up the way he did in the YouTube era it all makes sense. Let him live.” Do these people, along with Bieber himself, not realize he could just not perform at Coachella?? Boo-hoo, he’s traumatized? Okay, then stay home!!
On the other side of this, there are posts like “Expensive sets couldn’t hide the fact that she is a bad performer,” referencing Carpenter, and then of course we have “I love Sabrina [liar], but here there’s something nobody says [everyone is saying this]: she needs a whole acting game and, above all, to sexualize herself because otherwise, with her voice alone, she doesn’t stand out, and she’s just starting out. Justin’s been at his career for 20 years already, and he doesn’t need anything more than his voice to make history.” Genuinely, what is this word vomit? Saying Sabrina doesn’t have a good voice? But if she were to stand there with a guitar, she would basically have tomatoes thrown at her because people “paid so much money to be there. She needs to put on a show!”
This is typical of people and their opinions on performers. Male artists can stand on stage with a guitar and sing and be praised for their performances, while women can create the most elaborate, incredible production, set, and stage design you can think of and still get called boring, bad, overdone, outdated, etc. This, to me, is a weird extension of the patriarchy we’re in, but the thing is that it’s women praising Bieber and women hating on Carpenter. I’ve honestly seen more men than women saying Carpenter’s performance was amazing, etc.
All I feel I can hope for is that one day people will wake up and take off the rose-colored glasses they have on for these male artists that are past their prime and put on boring performances because they feel they don’t have to do anything more. Considering Bieber is the highest-paid Coachella performer ever, I was hoping for more, though I knew I wouldn’t get it.
To quote Taylor Swift (shocker), “I’m so sick of running as fast as I can/ Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man,” because even Beyoncé put on a real show when she headlined Coachella in 2018, and she’s literally Beyoncé.