On 4/20, multi-hyphenate Machine Gun Kelly revealed the trailer to his upcoming stoner comedy film, Good Mourning. Credited by his birth name Colson Baker, Good Mourning sees Kelly play an actor named London Clash.
One morning, London receives a text message from his girlfriend, Apple (Becky G), reading, “I wish I didn’t have to do this thru text,” then a follow-up message reading, “Good Mourning.” Assuming Apple is going to break up with him, London falls into a spiral. Joining him on his pot-fueled mission to get his girlfriend back are rapper Gata (of Dave fame), Pete Davidson, and Whitney Cummings. Kelly’s real-life fiancée Megan Fox also appears in the movie.
“We are looking forward to bringing this wild comedy to audiences in theaters and at home on demand. The film is a reminder of how fun movies can be to make and watch,” Open Road Films CEO Tom Ortenberg said in a statement. “Colson and this incredible cast will bring audiences to their knees in laughter and leave their jaws on the floor.”
Check out the red band trailer above.
Good Morning is out 5/20 in theaters and on demand.
If the Vibe Shift is real, there’s no better artist to help soundtrack it than Girl Talk. DJ Gregg Gillis made his mark tackling the mashup genre in his own way, deconstructing and reconstructing tracks with a cohesive vision, in a way that allowed for his titled songs to be played at times individually as standalones, but also part of the overall album experience. By taking cues more from borrowers like Daft Punk and the Beastie Boys, he had artistic license with his sampling, giving new life to otherwise standard songs from a variety of genres. It was in this spirit that he leaned heavily into music discovery, giving club kids, hip-hop fans, indie heads, and others a chance to hear tracks in a new light, finding the beat in the mundane or elevating a rap song into a metal-inspired breakdown.
Back with his first album since 2010’s All Day, Gillis has a lot to celebrate. Full Court Press is a collaboration with Wiz Khalifa, Big K.R.I.T., and Smoke DZA, and it’s far different from anything he’s released commercially in his career. The album elicits threads of different genres and eras, much like his sampling, but in much more cohesive, straightforward songs that showcase the rappers’ unique styles.
On the road to support the new album – and a return to touring that was delayed by the pandemic – Girl Talk’s energy is as infectious as ever, with a live show that mirrors the ADHD-fueled mania of his earlier works. At the Regent Theater on Monday, after an inspired homecoming set from opener Hugh Augustine, Gillis brought the entire indie sleaze era into focus.
The sold-out crowd was in it from the jump, in a room that as Gillis pointed out, felt “40 degrees hotter” than any other venue on his tour. The stage was an ever-evolving mishmash somewhere between Everything Everywhere All At Once and I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson. There were no fewer than 40 people on stage (including Augustine at one point), toilet paper guns, clouds above the stage that had images blasted onto them with projectors, various sizes of balloons, confetti cannons, gigantic light-up palm trees, t-shirt guns, guys in skeleton costumes, guys in tuxedos with ski masks, a hundred-foot long condom filled with confetti, enormous inflatables that resembles cornhole bags, a dude in a Sonic The Hedgehog wig, and Girl Talk with his laptop, shedding a layer of clothing at a time.
The set was a tight 90 minutes; any longer, and the danced-out, overheated, and dehydrated crowd might’ve been in trouble. What’s always made Girl Talk inviting and even more interesting as a creative project is the lens through which Gillis sees not just music, but how people consume music. His work in the 2000s forecasted the natural evolution of crate digging into mp3s into streaming, and even the TikTok experience. Songs on TikTok take on a life of their own independent of label, time period, or even context. A song may trend and get warped into having an entirely different meaning, and it’s less important how fans come to a song than it is that they discover it at all.
One of my favorite memories of 2008’s Feed The Animals was on “Hands In The Air,” where the first, instantly recognizable lines of “Whoop There It Is” spill out into the air. But the backing beat was one I couldn’t quite place. It took me much longer than I like to admit to learn that it was “In A Big Country” by Big Country, a song I eventually would put on a bunch of playlists and still listen to today. It’s entirely possible someone out there heard Gillis use “Lovefool” by the Cardigans over a Doja Cat song at a live show, and has spent days trying to place it before the sheer joy of connecting the dots, and listening to it on Spotify.
Monday night’s show felt similar to those early days of trying to track down any beat and any song that made me feel that way, and it gets me nostalgic, but also excited for any generation that can find songs — new, old, or reworked — that inspire them. Whether it’s Olivia Rodrigo utilizing the DNA of pop-punk songs that have been around her whole life, a Fleetwood Mac hit finding new breath on TikTok, or ’90s songs slowed down and inserted into dramatic movie trailers, the flattening of culture and the inexhaustable nature of streaming makes everything, everywhere, all at once a creative well that is equally as maddening and dizzying as it is inspiring.
It’s only fitting Girl Talk gets to have his encore, his chance to stand on a table and look out at it all.
We pride ourselves in covering a lot of ground daily here at Uproxx, always looking to highlight the best music releases in hip-hop, indie, pop, and more. But there are a lot of tunes out there in the world that sometimes get past the radar when they first get released. So this piece is dedicated to making sure that some of those gems don’t go unnoticed. These are the best albums that you might have missed that were released from early December through the end of March.
Atalhos – A Tentação do Fracasso
It doesn’t take long to get swept into the Brazilian band’s psychedelic dream pop on their debut album. The jangly guitar riff on opening song “Tierra Del Fuego” is super sweet and it sets the stage for an album filled with them. The album’s title itself is a phrase in Portuguese that means “the temptation of failure” and it’s this kind of carefree poetry that typifies the unique lyricism of songwriter Gabriel Soares and Atalhos. From the title track to “Mesmo Coração,” their fuzzy São Paulo grooves are nostalgic like Real Estate and committed to varying guitar sounds like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. There are moments of Spanish along with the album’s primarily Portuguese singing — plus a touch of saxophone — resulting in eight tracks that will be living on repeat all year.
Nia Archives – Forbidden Feelingz
The debut EP from London producer and singer Nia Archives will hit you like a freight train. Mostly because her blend of jungle and garage beats with soul-packed vocals is laid down like silky steel. Think back to what you felt when you first heard PinkPantheress, ’cause this is right there with it, but with a more direct lean towards the dance floor. You wanna make a mean bass face when the thick, chunky beat hits on “Luv Like,” but then open your eyes wide open and blissfully tip your head back when Nia’s heavenly vocals come in. There are old-school dancehall ragga jungle vibes throughout and the only downfall is that the EP only has six tracks. But they all bang.
Maggie Gently – Peppermint
Previously the lead singer of erstwhile San Francisco queer pop-punk band The Total Bettys, Peppermint is Maggie Gently’s debut solo album. Her upbeat indie-pop tunes are akin to acts like Clairo and Rosie Tucker, and these are very much songs about anxiety, love, identity, and finding personal growth while balancing your mental health. “I can’t put it into words why I’m so worried,” she sings over a lively guitar lick on “Worried.” “Hold My Hand” has a melody that sounds right of the solid gold ’90s in the best way possible and this is an album indie fans shouldn’t let slip through the cracks.
Gabriels – Bloodline
The first time I heard Jacob Lusk’s vocals on “Blame” I was floored. There’s an inherent elegance to his velvet baritone and perhaps I thought he was British at first. Turns out Lusk is a Compton native who grew up singing in a gospel choir, appeared on the 10th season of American Idol, and has sung with artists ranging from Diana Ross to Nate Dogg. Gabriels is the emerging trio of Lusk and Hollywood-minded multi-instrumentalists Ari Balouzian and Ryan Hope. On the LA retro-soul and R&B group’s second EP, Lusk is sublime over cinematic production, proving Gabriels to be a growing force.
Widowspeak – The Jacket
Signed to the influential Captured Tracks label, Brooklyn duo Widowspeak’s latest album is a glorious blend of shoegaze and cowboy pop. Singer Molly Hamilton evokes shades of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval and together with Robert Earl Thomas, they use fuzzy guitars in the shotgun seat of a very chilled-out collection of songs. “Everything Is Simple” is propped up by Hamilton’s mesmerizing coo while twangy guitars and soothing keys round out an arresting tune. This is music tailor-made for a relaxed lamplit evening, or a sunny afternoon on a porch with a rickety swing for kicks.
Lil Yee – Unbreakable
San Francisco street rap is having a resurgence and rappers like Lil Yee are at the forefront of the movement. Now on his third album, Unbreakable is Yee’s ode to succeeding in life, while remaining loyal to friends, family, and the soil. There are a ton of seriously epic slaps on this album. “Free The Home Team” is a bonafide Bay Area hip-hop anthem featuring fellow SFer Lil Pete. “Come From” is a humble nod to his Fillmore District upbringing and being grateful for the life he’s leading, while “ChiAli” is an impassioned call to the ghost of his dead uncle. There are guests on the album like Detroit’s Babyface Ray and Berkeley’s Rexx Life Raj, but it’s Yee and lines like “Why’d I come that far to throw it all away?” that represent the hustle that’s unique to the Bay Area street rap grind.
Combo Chimbita – Ire
One of the most bombastic Latinx music groups, Combo Chimbita is forged in the mystical lore and revolutionary spirit of singer Carolina Oliveros’ native Colombia. The Brooklyn-based group fuze traditional rhythms with boundary-pushing instrumentation, making Ire one of the most powerful albums out this year. “Mujer Jaguar” is a contorting number with twisty strings, pulsing bass, and Afro-Caribbean drums surrounding Oliveros’ banshee howl. “Memoria” has a straight-up electro-lounge beat while “Babalawo,” with a trap-rock groove, dance music sensibility, and lyrics channeling Santeria, might very well be their defining jam. Guitarist Nino Lento Es Fuego summed up the latter in a statement, saying that, “These intimate moments of spiritual guidance are incredibly important to us as a band with decolonial aspirations.”
Soul Glo – Diaspora Problems
A hardcore and screamo punk band at their core, Philadelphia band Soul Glo do everything loud. But Diaspora Problems is a gut punch that sounds like a rapper making a hardcore album. Singer Pierce Jordan is incredibly verbose, packing in extensive diatribes on each of the album’s twelve tracks. On “Jump!! (Or Get Jumped!!!)((by the future))” he sings, “Living on Juice Wrld, Pop Smoke time. I’ll be in my future, come try to remove it, I live only for this, it’s how I must do it. There’s no way they can take what I say and skew it.” In a genre dominated by mostly white artists, Soul Glo — with three Black members out of four — offer a perspective in punk that is underrepresented and is hopefully here to shape the future of it.
During Arcade Fire’s joyous, surprise performance on Friday evening in the Mojave tent at Coachella, leader Win Butler took time to reflect (reflekt?). He recalled the band’s first performance at the event nearly 20 years prior in 2005, noting that they were just children back then. It’s the kind of realization that not many bands or artists are able to make at Coachella. Sure, someone like Richie Hawtin can trace his roots back to the first Coachella, but the vast majority of musicians don’t get to grow old with a music festival. If they aren’t sent out to pasture, there is certainly a nostalgia-based mico-genre fest waiting for them 20 years down the road.
Arcade Fire, of course, aren’t just any band. Their rise has always been inextricably linked to Coachella, this last weekend being their fifth total appearance, including headlining in 2010 and 2014. YouTube videos of those first couple performances in 2005 and 2007 are touchstones to how many people first experienced them, in a time when a conquering set at Coachella could help get you to a next level, whatever that is. Announced with just a day’s warning, the Canadian indie-rock icons played what is the equivalent of a Coachella underplay (they’ve recently been doing club shows in New York and their current home of New Orleans), filling up the modest Mojave instead of their usual Coachella Stage.
But despite their iconic status, there was still some concern about whether the young-leaning Coachella fans would even care. So, yes, it was heartening to see the Mojave overflowing, and even more so to find people singing along not just to the classics like “Rebellion (Lies)” and “Wake Up,” but also “Afterlife” and “The Suburbs.” It felt like exactly the moment the band needed after years of playing arenas, to see their music connecting in a space where the energy didn’t get lost in the rafters. The band looked Coachella straight in the eyes and found their commitment delivered back to them in spades.
Philip Cosores
But while the magic of their 65-minute performance can be attributed to many things — the surprise aspect, Arcade Fire’s live prowess, the glory of a sunset set in the desert — it also affirmed something a bit unexpected. Coachella, for the first time in more than a decade and in its 21st total installment, felt like a music festival for adults.
It doesn’t necessarily feel like the event was booked that way. Its headliners, particularly Harry Styles and Billie Eilish, are both closely tied to youth culture. Styles certainly tries to bridge the youth of today with those of decades past (he’s virtually always linking himself back to classic rock signifiers via style, album titles, even his collaborators and choices of cover songs), but as a live performer, he’s still used to playing for teens. Even at Coachella, there was a bit of overly-rehearsed canned banter that comes with the territory of playing for young people. In turn, it also felt like his headlining set was the least attended and talked about on the grounds. Eilish, in turn, only recently stopped being a teen herself. But she’s always been an outlier for her age group, which is probably why every aging male rocker under the sun wants to make it known in their interviews that they are a fan.
And maybe the headliners knew that this Coachella would be a different demographic than years past. Styles bringing out ’90s country-pop legend Shania Twain was certainly not a play for the zoomers hearts, nor was Billie’s decision to share the stage with Gorillaz’ Damon Albarn. Even the weekend’s sort-of-replacement headliners, Swedish House Mafia x The Weeknd, called back to Coachellas of a decade past as much as they served to highlight one of the biggest pop stars on the planet (SHM last played Coachella in 2012, the first year that The Weeknd performed at the festival). Meanwhile, teenagers’ favorite rapper-du-jour, Jack Harlow, was performing at a branded Coachella offshoot party a few miles down the road rather than on the grounds, in what can be seen as an oversight from bookers or a conscious decision based on perceived appeal.
It was almost like Coachella knew a vibe shift was coming. After three years away and two postponed editions — who knows if we’ll ever see Rage Against The Machine, Travis Scott, or Frank Ocean top the bill — the world of Coachella 2022 is very different than the world of the last Coachella in 2019. And while I’m not going to overly analyze all the factors that led to a notably older crowd, it feels like price point, pandemic job opportunities, and public health all have an impact on how all people approach large-scale events. And the festival went ahead and used some of its most coveted real estate — the big stages at sunset — to highlight the world of international music with 88rising’s Head In The Clouds Forever, Brazil’s Anitta, and Colombia’s Karol G. All three sets felt like landmark moments for their own cultures, and for music’s globalization, where sounds from different part of the world can all fit nicely in front of the same audience. And all felt more like testing the water than knowing for sure what would work best. Sure, dance acts like Flume and Disclosure still had huge audiences looking to groove, but it hardly felt like the revelry of the past, with people seemingly better aware of personal space and using the massive polo field to stretch out. Seeing fans pulled out of the audience, despite the sweltering heat, was rare. Never was there any fear of an Astroworld-esque crowd surge.
Philip Cosores
As someone that’s been covering Coachella for more than 10 years now, the festival’s M.O. has long been its ability to evolve. Sometimes, it is so ahead of the curve, people question whether Coachella has a plan at all. But then April hits and Harry Styles has the No. 1 song in the country (at least during the first weekend) and artists like Fred Again.., Carly Rae Jepsen, Japanese Breakfast, and 21 Savage all made their tents overflow with the kind of real-world interaction that can’t be inflated by Spotify listens or Instagram followers. Likewise, artists like Beach Bunny, 100 Gecs, Denzel Curry, Wallows, Finneas, and even our beloved Phoebe Bridgers didn’t manage to woo people in mass to their sets. Each of these musicians have had different pathways to the polo fields and different measurements for success. But it is still a curious thing that can only really be seen at a music festival, where musicians have to compete with each other, half-mile walks, and hand-dipped corndogs for attention. It’s definitely not as easy as getting someone to click follow or maintaining passive attention on a curated playlist.
Whether Coachella’s next phase is to reinvent itself for the next group of young people or to age with its current audience remains to be seen, but for this year at least, there was something special in the air. People seemed appreciative to have music festivals at all, soaking in the moments rather than blacking them out. Of all the awful shit we’ve had to deal with since 2020, the hope coming out of it was that we’d be a little better as a culture, that we wouldn’t take things for granted. Arcade Fire, a band that somewhat unfairly lost the good will it had built in the aughts, understands this. Fred Again.., who wasn’t even releasing music before the pandemic, also gets it. Doja Cat, the star-of-the-moment that did the best job of securing that title over the weekend, for sure gets this. She didn’t waste time in her set for a contrived special guest that had little to do with her performance, but instead put on fellow oddball Rico Nasty, who in turn got to play in front of what is surely the biggest audience of her life. For maybe the first time ever, Coachella was able to look backward and forward at the same time, the kind of self-reflection (self-reflektion? sorry) that only comes in adulthood. Coachella felt all grown up, and ready for whatever comes next.
Check out our exclusive gallery of Coachella 2022 photos below.
Daniel Caesar
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Phoebe Bridgers
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Lil Baby
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Arcade Fire
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Anitta w/ Snoop Dogg and Saweetie
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Carly Rae Jepsen
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Ari Lennox
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Raveena
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21 Savage
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Megan Thee Stallion
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Freddie Gibbs
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100 Gecs
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Girl In Red
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Giveon
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Arlo Parks
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Japanese Breakfast
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Conan Gray
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Head In The Clouds Forever
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Run The Jewels
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Doja Cat
Swedish House Mafia x The Weeknd
Jamie xx
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Joji
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Karol G
Fred Again..
Maggie Rogers
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Orville Peck
Finneas
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Coachella
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Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Along with Coachella, San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival is easily the most comprehensive music fest on the West Coast. While last year’s heavily-costumed edition took place over Halloween weekend as pandemic precautions delayed it a few months, Outside Lands 2022 is back to its usual early-August weekend and the newly announced lineup has a little bit of everything. Green Day, SZA, and Post Malone are headlining the three-day affair, which goes down from August 5th to 7th at one of the greatest venues in country, Golden Gate Park.
The first batch of artists on the lineup following the primary headliners is likewise stacked with Jack Harlow, Phoebe Bridgers, and Weezer coming next. Also performing are Lil Uzi Vert, Ilennium, Kali Uchis, Disclosure, Mitski, Anitta, and Mac DeMarco. And while this is looks like a top-heavy affair on the surface, there’s a seemingly endless list of diverse acts that standout like Pusha T, Kim Petras, Dominic Fike, The Marías, Larry June, Wet Leg, Pussy Riot, Robert Glasper, Griff, Cassandra Jenkins, L’Rain, Duckwrth, and more.
The SOMA Tent also makes its return this year, making it so that the indoor dance music tent seems to be here to stay. While it’s a bit antithetical to the concept of “outside” lands, it was obvious that the festival needed to bring this type of element into the fold so this year’s acts like Claude VonStroke, Tokimonsta, Dixon, and others could play in the club-like atmosphere that their music is best suited for.
Tickets to Outside Lands 2022 are on sale now here and check out the same link for the full lineup and additional details.
Outside Lands
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Saya Gray has, for years, worked as a bassist to the stars — Daniel Caesar, Willow, and Liam Payne all among them. But more than 45 minutes pass on her imaginative and immersive debut LP, 19 Masters, before she takes the record’s first and last true bass solo.
It arrives near the end of “Leeches On My Thesis!,” a guarded bit of confessional pop about navigating others’ expectations of her own success and relevance. Just as the breezy acoustic tune seems to dissolve into a comedown of swirling electronics and shivering static, Gray steps forward on electric bass, gliding up and down the neck with the sort of rolling melodic licks Tony Levin might add. It lasts a little more than 30 seconds, teasing what Gray can do and has done but not necessarily what she ever wants to do again.
“I can’t really learn other people’s songs anymore without doing my own thing first,” says Gray from her hometown, Toronto. “They’re like, ‘Can you not just play bass chords over this, just play the part?’ That isn’t for me anymore.”
Gray, now 26, worked as a session and touring bassist for more than a decade, drawn to the teenage novelty of making 100 quick bucks by showing up at a festival, instrument in hand. “Chick on bass? Gets gig immediately,” she says, noting that her Japanese-Canadian heritage only amplified that allure. The shows and tours grew, alongside the paychecks. But those around her, like Payne’s manager Steve Finan O’Connor or her peers in Caesar’s band, recognized that Gray had more to offer than root notes and rhythms. On the road, she began capturing song ideas with her cell phone or in whatever nearby studio she could access.
19 Masters is a captivating and provocative introduction to Gray, a magnetic singer-songwriter with the restless mind of an expert improviser. The sweeping hooks of “Empathy 4 Bethany” slide into a warped jazz duet for piano and trumpet, while “S.H.T.” flits between a fetching folk tune and electroacoustic abstraction while making space for a Hodgy verse. “Little Palm” is an elegiac country beauty, while “Saving Grace” is a minimalist soul manifesto about uncertainty. Though Gray shies from social media herself, 19 Masters feels like New Weird (North) America updated for the TikTok generation. As tuneful and accessible as it is idiosyncratic and experimental, the record reflects Gray’s acceptance that she’s more than a bass player, even if she’s been one most of her life.
“I was self-conforming, turning into the gig because that’s what it takes to be a session musician. You have to turn into what you’re playing,” she says. “It took me a long time to be like, ‘I’m just going to be my weirdo self — whoever likes it can come.”
That sense of autonomy is so strong now that Gray actually doesn’t remember writing many of the tracks on 19 Masters, and not only because some of them are five-year-old voice memos. When Gray writes, she nearly blacks out, she says, slipping into what she calls “a flow state” that often allows her to go from initial idea to recorded track in about an hour.
The process is less about her head and toiling through a song than viscerally feeling it and giving it room and time to appear. Though she’s struggled with depression and anxiety her whole life, her songs actually arrive when she feels good, when she’s already worked through her struggles. They are artifacts of what she’s endured. It’s so personal and intuitive, she says, that writing with other people in the same room is almost impossible.
“As soon as I start thinking, there’s nothing that will come through of any substance,” she offers. “There are months where I won’t create songs at all because they have to move through my body.”
19 Masters is as musically diverse as it is texturally rich, with kotos and singing bowls and bells all suspended inside spans of noisy squelch or bits of Signal chats of Gray’s friends talking about Asian exploitation or general malaise. True to her isolated approach, Gray plays nearly every instrument on it, allowing her to find unexpected sounds.
Her heritage has been key to the process, too. Gray’s father, Charlie, is a Berklee-trained trumpeter, composer, and audio engineer who has written television themes and performed with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, and Ella Fitzgerald. Meanwhile, her mother, Madoka Murata, founded the Canadian music school Discovery Through the Arts more than 40 years ago.
Gray began playing piano before she could speak, even earning her allowance from her technical progression at one point. She tried every instrument she saw around her before she finally got serious about bass around the age of 10. “My brain barely thinks about music. It’s just in my body,” she says. “It was bred into my subconscious, you know? ‘This is what we do as a family.’”
And though 19 Masters wasn’t made as a family, it was at least made with her family. Just before the album was finished, Gray thrust a phone into her mom’s face and asked her to say “welcome to my world” in Japanese; the sample is the entire first track. After all the paintings Murata had done of Gray over the years, including one where she’s a bass-playing alien, she felt like the favor was the least she could ask. “That’s not something weird for my mom,” she says, laughing.
Gray also recorded several of these tracks in her mother’s basement or father’s closet, using instruments she pilfered from the family music school. Her father plays trumpet on a pair of songs, having diligently written out charts and recorded his parts after the tunes were finished. (“He’s so old-school,” jokes Gray.) These were poignant additions for Gray, as her father retired from performance in the wake of Covid-19 lockdowns.
Her guitar-playing brother, Lucian, appears, too; he’s one of the few people she can stand having in the room while she writes or records. She wants to collaborate more, she admits, but it’s an unsteady learning process. “We have very similar upbringings and influences,” she says of Lucian, “So I know I can trust him if he’s like, ‘That’s sick,’ even if I can’t hear it today.”
Though 19 Masters is Gray’s first full album, it represents an ending as much as a beginning. It closes a period of self-doubt, when she wondered whether or not her ideas were good enough to stand alone. It closes her era of prioritizing other people’s songs. And it collects so many of the tunes she imagined while making money from music that wasn’t her own. “We have these transitions, and we change. We have relationships that end, jobs that end. We just jump timelines and become a different person,” she says. “This is the end of me self-conforming.”
After three years away, Coachella returned to Indio, CA this weekend. And while some might have expected young fans to rage across the polo fields with all the angst of two previous cancelations in the rearview mirror, the sense on site was a lot more tepid, as if everyone wanted to get their feet wet before fully diving in. It’s far too early to say if the past few years have changed Coachella’s identity or changed how young people approach these massive cultural events, but the initial sense is that things have slowed down a little, and the traditional revelry has given way to something more appreciative and understated.
All that said, the fashion-forward appeal of Coachella remains. There were costumes and skin, lots of transparent lace and vibrant colors. With years of opportunities to show off festival fashion squandered by a pandemic, fans dressed their best and made 2022’s edition count. Below we have some photos of our favorites, who returned to one of the world’s best festivals with a commitment to show off exactly why Coachella is what it is. As they prepared for a day that included Harry Styles, Arcade Fire, Lil Baby, and more, everyone looked predictably great with the giant art structures and palm trees as a backdrop.
Bluegrass and Americana favorite Billy Strings is fresh off some decent exposure, as he performed on the outdoor stage at the 2022 Grammys, where he also had a pair of nominations. He’s also captured the attention of at least one household name: Post Malone, who joined Strings on stage last night for a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Cocaine Blues.”
Yesterday, Strings and his band performed at The Observatory in Santa Ana, California, where Malone unexpectedly popped up. Strings introduced Malone, saying, “I saw this guy lurking around backstage and figured we gotta drag him up here to f*ckin’ sing for us.” Posty then offered a compliment, saying, “Billy Strings is the best to ever f*ckin’ do it.”
They then launched into the cover, with Malone strumming an acoustic guitar as he sang lead vocals on the bluegrass rendition of the song. When Malone wasn’t singing, he was smiling, and based on the audience reaction, it looked like a good time was had by all.
This comes shortly after Dre London, Malone’s manager, claimed Posty’s next album, Twelve Carat Toothache, is slated for a May release, which has yet to be confirmed by Malone himself.
Watch Malone and Strings cover “Cocaine Blues” above.
