The night of April 11, 2026, all “beliebers” gathered at the Coachella stage. It lit up and shined for the one and only Canadian singer, Justin Bieber. He began his set with “All I Can Take” from his most recent album Swag.
He continued his set with songs such as “Speed Demon”, “Everything Hallelujah” and “Daisies”. During his performance, he was using his laptop and had it connected to the screens on stage. He played a lot of classics such as “Baby”, “Never Say Never”, and “Beauty and a Beat”.
Although there was a lot of love for his performance, there were also a lot of mixed emotions about it.
“It wasn’t my cup of tea. It was not interesting to me and didn’t really entertain me,” sophomore Emily Hernandez said.
I disagree with this statement because I thought it was a beautiful performance, and he gave his die hard fans what they wanted. All he’s been doing his whole career is putting on big elaborate performances. I think this was a perfect way to really connect with the crowd and even the people that were watching at home.
Those of us who grew up watching and admiring Bieber got to see the little boy we saw grow up on stage. So many people say that it felt like we were watching him connect with this younger self in real time.
A funny moment that a lot of fans loved was him playing the paparazzi video of his “it’s not clocking to you…” moment. The audience felt this was making light of a very hard moment for Bieber, with being followed by people for the majority of his life and not really given any privacy.
To honor Bieber’s very popular “purple hoodie” era, Nia Sioux, also known for her time on the popular reality show Dance Moms, dressed as Bieber, alongside some of her friends who joined her at the festival.
Unfazed about what some people were saying about weekend one, he would go on to do the same performance the following week, keeping it a nostalgic and personal atmosphere.
He brought out Big Sean to perform “As Long as You Love Me”. The audience loved this, and it was very highly praised.
He would go through his set and performed “Baby”, “U smile”, “Snooze” with SZA and “Sweet Spot” with Sexxy Red. For the last part of his set he performed Lonely Girl.
At his concerts in 2010-2011, he would bring up a lucky fan or even sometimes a celebrity/friend. This time would not be any different. He would bring up a lifelong fan and friend Billie Eilish. In a video from that night, it shows Haley Bieber encouraging and gently pushing Eilish onto the stage.
At the end, this was more of just a performance, it was a real journey and was exactly how Bieber wanted to do his set. Even with some people saying it wasn’t a good performance or it was “boring”, he was still unapologetically himself and did what he wanted to do.
