Bieberchella Was An Anti-Spectacle Spectacle — And It Was Good
Justin Bieber started his absurdly hyped Coachella 2026 set laying on the ground. As he crooned some songs from recent album SWAG, he strolled around the mountainous set that took up the entirety of the festival's main stage. No band, no backup. It was just Bieber, his red hoodie, and tens of thousands of true Beliebers.
And then he whipped out the MacBook.
What folllowed next was a bizarre experience, frankly, smacking of something decidedly unrehearsed and dare I say un-corporate, despite this being one of the world's most famous people giving free publicity to the the world's largest video-sharing site at one of the world's biggest music festivals. But this is why Bieberchella, as fans have been calling it, worked surprisingly well. It felt weirdly low-stakes for being the huge return of a huge singer to a huge stage. It felt real.
This is the kind of authentic "goodness" that we at Highsnobiety have been talking about for months, which relates most plainly to clothing — the best clothes are good clothes, real clothes — but also to everything, really. When people tire of hype and trend and cliche, they come back around to the thing that's always there and always better: reality.
This attitude informed the most crucial moment of Bieber's Coachella set, when he quite literally sat down to scroll through YouTube, duetting with his child self as he pulled up vintage Bieber clips.
With Bieber's laptop's screen projected on Coachella's displays, the 32-year-old grabbed clips of his original hit songs — yes, he performed "Baby" alongside younger Bieber — and memes both modern and fabulously outdated: 15 years later, Bieber brought the double rainbow guy to Coachella.
Here, Bieber broke the fourth wall unlike any other recent pop star, taking his enormous audience along for the scroll through memory lane. It was like a guided tour through his famously scattershot social media feed.
Haters called it lazy, speculating that it reflected the state of Bieber's mental health. Maybe, maybe not. But in an industry where high-budget blow-out spectacles are to be expected, something this raw reads as fresh.
There's a hint of premeditation here, mind you: the singer pulled up his own "it's not clocking to you" rant that became a meme, but this was not spontaneous. Bieber's clothing line, SKYLRK, was already selling "It's Not Clocking" tees.
However much of this was planned, it didn't feel like it. Even the clear desire to do some SKYLRK promo — Bieber wore his brand's new red hoodie on-stage and, the day prior, it dropped a Coachella capsule by way of its second-ever physical retail experience — read as a natural extension of the Bieber Experience.
Because that's what Bieber's Coachella set really was, not so much a concert as an "experience." A lot of promoters toss that word around but this actually was one, something you had to be there for because watching it later just will not hit different.
The crowd, and perhaps Bieber, had little idea what was going on and what was coming next. Just like real life! Or, more accurately, just like hanging out at your friends' house, scrolling through YouTube to find something worth talking about.
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