ANAHEIM, Calif. — Swedish House Mafia and the Weeknd will team up to replace Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) as the Sunday headliner at the 2022 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the festival announced via social media on Wednesday.
The news comes two days after Ye pulled out of the festival’s Sunday night spot.
The Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia will join Harry Styles and Billie Eilish atop Coachella’s return to the Empire Polo Club in Indio April 15-17 and April 22-24. Swedish House Mafia had been previously listed on the lineup poster in big, bold font, but at the bottom of the image, not assigned to a day. The Weeknd was not previously booked for this year’s event.
Swedish House Mafia, the EDM supergroup of Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso, announced their reunion in 2021 with new music. Among that new music is a collaboration with the Weeknd, “Moth to a Flame.”
Swedish House Mafia has never headlined, but the trio did close out the main stage back in 2012 after the Black Keys’ opening night set. And the individual members have played Coachella in other years.
The Weeknd made his Coachella debut in 2012 before closing out the main stage after headliner Jack White in 2015. He finally became a headliner in his own right in 2018, but in the time since has become a household name, with his song “Blinding Lights” being pretty much everywhere, including last year’s Super Bowl halftime show.
The festival is sold out and each weekend is expected to draw around 125,000 people to the venue to see artists such as Danny Elfman, Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion and more than 100 others.
West dropped off the festival on Monday. He was expected to return to Coachella as a headliner for the first time since 2011, although he had brought his Sunday Service worship program to the festival in 2019.
However, after he was announced as headliner, West ended up in the news for erratic behavior, which included a social media spat with Eilish over her perceived slight of Travis Scott and a feud with Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show” after the host called out the rapper’s harassment of ex-wife Kim Kardashian. And the rapper’s music video for “Eazy” depicted kidnapping and burying Pete Davidson, Kardashian’s boyfriend.
Nearly 50,000 people signed an online petition calling for the rapper to be removed from the Coachella lineup on Change.org.
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