This week, Damon Albarn took umbrage at a Coachella crowd who failed to sing along. But he is far from the worst offender

When Coachella 2024 comes to be remembered by future generations, the abiding image will be that of Damon Albarn attempting to engage the crowd in a game of call and response, and then failing, and then having a bit of a go at them.

In fairness to Albarn, it was a weird booking. Blur have always fared poorly in the US. Is this the band’s fault for writing all those songs about how much they dislike America? We may never know. Either way, by berating the crowd for their ambivalence – yelling “You’ll never see us again so you may as well fucking sing it” – Blur have joined the ranks of acts who have turned against their audiences.

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This year’s Palm Springs-based festival brought together some of the industry’s biggest names, from headliners like Tyler, the Creator to Doja Cat, as well as a raft of guests including Olivia Rodrigo and Shakira

• Doja Cat at Coachella review – an electrifying tour de force
• No Doubt at Coachella review – a joyous, high-energy reunion
• Tyler, the Creator at Coachella review – an exhilarating, high-stakes spectacle
• Lana Del Rey at Coachella review – a disappointingly lifeless start to the festival

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Empire Polo Club, Indio, California

Festival headliner delivered an A-game set, ignoring some of her mainstream hits yet bringing enough energy to power what some have called a middling year

Doja Cat took the Coachella mainstage as the last official act to perform on Sunday’s bill, becoming the first female rapper to headline the festival. (She’s also only the second Black woman to do so, after Beyoncé in 2018) Her closer rounded out a Sunday showcase of powerhouse female performers such as Renée Rapp and Kesha duetting the recession banger TiK ToK – changing the opening line to “wake up in the morning saying fuck P Diddy” – and Victoria Monet grinding through a slick and ultra-sexy set, at one point receiving artfully-simulated oral sex from a background dancer.

It would be diplomatic to say that Doja maintains a distant relationship with her fans, who call themselves kittenz, though their fave does not sanction this moniker. Doja’s told those who engage in parasocial relationships with the idea of her to “get off your phone and get a job” and “rethink everything” about their lives. Such boundary-setting has cost her some Instagram followers – around 300,000, to be exact, after going off on them in a social media tirade – but she could care less. “I feel free,” she wrote in an Instagram story after the snafu last year.

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Empire Polo Club, Indio, California

This year starts off on a bum note with the singer’s downbeat energy and underpowered vocals proving to be a buzzkill while even special guest Billie Eilish couldn’t save the day

The cliche image of Lana Del Rey – flower crown, heart-shaped sunglasses, Lolita pout – matches the cliche of a Coachella girl. Both Del Rey and the festival saw a peak in the mid-2010s, during the early years of influencer culture excess. So it makes sense that Coachella’s golden girl would headline … even though, in 2024, Del Rey doing so feels about a decade too late.

Indeed, Del Rey first played Coachella exactly 10 years to the day before Friday’s opening night performance, as she proudly told the crowd. This time, she rode in on a biker motorcade, clad in a baby blue sequin dress, smiling and waving like the beauty queens she’s prone to singing about. It was ambitious, lively crowd work – literal momentum to started the show off right. But then she opened her mouth.

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Lana Del Rey, Doja Cat and Tyler, the Creator will headline but splashy Palm Springs festival has faced slowest sales in a decade

Music’s biggest names head to the desert this weekend for a troubled edition of the Coachella festival, which has seen its slowest ticket sales for a decade.

Lana Del Rey, Doja Cat and Tyler, the Creator will headline, with other acts including Ice Spice, Blur, Grimes, Justice, Reneé Rapp, Vampire Weekend, Victoria Monét and J Balvin also performing.

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