LOS ANGELES — Coachella’s first weekend is in the books.
The desert mega-festival returned to Indio’s sprawling Empire Polo Club on Friday for the first time since 2019, putting dozens of acts — including headliners Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and the pairing of Swedish House Mafia and the Weeknd — in front of an estimated 125,000 fans over a tightly packed three-day schedule due to play out all over again this coming weekend.
Given the two years of repeated postponements and cancellations that got us here, it wasn’t surprising to see how pumped people were to be back at this most storied of music festivals. The prevailing mood was a kind of mellow euphoria even when the wind kicked up enough dust to obscure the surrounding mountains (and even when a child’s-size poke bowl could run you more than 20 bucks).
