Center Stage

Bad Bunny & BlackPink to Perform at Coachella

By Kayla Jovel, Staff Writer

BlackPink and Bad Bunny are making history as the first Asian and Latino to be headliners at this year’s Coachella festival in California.

Coachella is an annual music festival replete with influencers, celebrities and talented musicians.

Over the years, the festival has hosted some of the greatest and most popular artists across genres, including headliners like Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Harry Styles and Billie Eilish. Other performers have included Anita, Karol G, Kid Cudi, Grupo Firme and even Los Tucanes de Tijuana.

But in the festival’s history, never have we seen a Latin or Asian artist headline Coachella — not until now.

Bad Bunny is headlining Friday night, being just one of the many Latin artists who are performing at Coachella this year. Bad Bunny, although not new to Coachella, has performed on the main stage as a second headliner artist. He took the Coachella stage in 2019, giving a versatile show at the time switching from emotional songs like “Ni Bien, Ni Mal” to upbeat hits like “La Romana” and “200 Mph” from his album, X100PRE.

Bad Bunny released his summer album, Un Verano Sin Ti, in 2022, and performed at the Grammys and had his World Hottest Tour.

“Bad Bunny has been killing it this past year,” said Maria Lopez. “His new album is literally for the summer and for festivals. I hope that during his performance he really brings in the Latin culture and maybe brings out some special guests like Jowell and Randy. That’ll be cool to see them perform ‘Safaera’ or even ‘El Apagón’ at Coachella.”

Bad Bunny is not the only performer representing the Latino culture on the main stage this year. Artists like Becky G, Kali Uchis and Rosalía are second headliners who will be performing, and we can expect to see great things from these Hispanic artists.

“I feel like Coachella has been adding a lot more variety of the artists who they choose to perform at Coachella,” said Stephanie Gomez. “Last year was probably the first time [when] we had so many Latin and Hispanic artists perform on some in the big stages like Karol G and even Banda MS. It’s such as prideful moment to see our culture be represented in such a big festival.”

With so much Latin representation, we cannot forget the Saturday night headliner, BlackPink. BlackPink performed on the main stage as a second headliner in 2019. This K-pop group went on to perform their hits, “DDU-DU-DDU-DU” and “Kill This Love,” giving an amazing performance with stylish outfits and dance performances from group members Lisa, Rosé, Jiscoo and Jennie.

“It’s cool to see artists from other countries get their time to shine,” said Gomez. “I think K-pop overtime is getting bigger and bigger like not just BlackPink performing at Coachella, but this year there are so many K-pop groups going onto the big stages like Tomorrow x Together and New Jeans are performing at Lollapalooza. It’s showing how representation and how big of a deal it is to have Asian and Latin artists perform or headline in events like these.”

BlackPink will not be the only Asian performance at Coachella this year; artists DPR Live, DPR Ian, Jackson Wang and Sunset Rollercoaster are other Asian acts to be featured.

Coachella continues to make history by hosting incredible performances, and will make history this year with its diverse headliners — Bad Bunny, BlackPink and R&B singer Frank Ocean. This is a big win for people of color and especially for our Latin and Asian friends.

If you were not able to secure a ticket, YouTube will be live-streaming all the performances starting on April 14.