The anti-festival: You couldn’t pay me to go to Coachella
As I roll out of my undersized tent, slouch on a half-broken camping chair and look out onto the beer-soaked apocalypse of my temporary home, I realise that I am happy. The true beauty of hedonistic suffering is never more apparent than it is at festivals, a lawless society where the structural norms of a modern society have fallen away, and your inhibitions are left to run wild.
I may not look it, on those mornings, my slouched, topless figure more akin to a bag of milk than a temple of health, but nevertheless, I am free. Good festivals make you feel that, unbound by any responsibilities that have made modernity a crippling existence. Actually, the shoddy phone service should encourage us all to free ourselves of any distractions, embrace the music that soundtracks the weekend and celebrate the sense of camaraderie that has been robbed from us for so long.
While we struggle to get a lot right here in Britain (see public services, railways and economy for examples), we do know how to throw a good party, particularly in troubling times. Banding together in the spirit of silliness is simply what we do, be it sliding headfirst through a muddy puddle, à la Jurgen Klinsmann, aimlessly yelling “Alan!” in a campsite, or simply shedding our pretence and wandering around the site in fancy dress. There is a distinct lack of seriousness that exists in our greatest festival moments and, in turn, fosters the most authentic sense of freedom that modernity can truly offer.
When Coachella was created in 1999, it was designed to carry that torch. Woodstock ‘99 had just ripped a hole in the American festival reputation, tarnishing the legacy of its ‘69 counterpart by descending into a riotous weekend of fights, vandalism and sexual assault. It celebrated nothing of the utopian vision festivals were designed for, and so Coachella’s creators, Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen, stepped in to create a remedy.
It worked initially. Beck, Rage Against the Machine, and Tool put the music back into focus, and critics heralded this new desert festival as the “anti-Woodstock”. A fitting title when viewed through the lens of Woodstock ‘99, but in 2026, it has become an even more apt one when viewing the event in comparison to Woodstock ‘69.
While the original event was regarded as “the Big Bang of counterculture,” according to David Crosby, Coachella has become the Big Bang of influencer culture. Flocking to the sunlit skies of California’s vast desert, a troupe of aesthetically curated internet personalities congregate at the festival with the sole focus of creating content. Because, of course, fun isn’t had if no one was there to document it.
In 2026, ‘influerism’ is something of an unstoppable plague. It’s active at every festival in the world, not just Coachella. But Coachella is the only one that deliberately facilitates it. Brand activations and photoshoot backdrops are littered across the site, in a bid to appeal to the influencers who have been invited to attend, or more commonly, paid by a brand to attend.
Either way, the outcome is the same: a distinct lack of atmosphere and a rising of costs for the aspiring punter who has paid for the whole thing out of their own pocket. In fact, in 2025 60% of attendees paid via a payment plan, plunging themselves into debt to experience a lavish lifestyle that has been corporately displayed to them. The ironic thing is, you couldn’t pay me enough money in the world to attend in the first place.
Because once I get there, I am paying a reported $15 for a beer or $16 a seltzer. Once I have enjoyed that at roughly $1 a gulp, I’m then faced with the apocalyptic reality of walking the site. Where any of my inhibitions, lost at the hands of their chosen lubricant, will then swiftly be found again, by the endless fleet of people filming bitesize moments to soon be uploaded to social media, where supposedly a world of outsiders await jealously watching. Watching what exactly?
The utopian ideal of a festival has been smudged out by the cowboy boot of late-stage capitalism, in turn making Coachella nothing of an escape from the commercial reality we are drowning in, but a hyper saturated microcosm of it all.
You may be wondering why I haven’t addressed the music as of yet. Ultimately, because it is in keeping with the order of priorities at the festival.
“It’s the only festival where the phones aren’t pointed at the stage, but at the person holding the phone.”
Jamie Hewlett
It’s not just my cynicism speculating this to be true; in fact, it’s a reality that all artists are confronted with, and one Blur were brave enough to call out in 2024. During their performance of ‘Girls & Boys’, the crowd appeared tame at the very best, and completely uninterested at their worst. When they barely sang the chorus back to Damon Albarn, he exclaimed, “You’re never seeing us again, so you might as well fucking sing it. Know what I’m saying?”
Trust me, this isn’t a tale of precious musicianship. No, Albarn wasn’t being a prima donna, just someone completely in tune with the genuine reality of festival going, where a singalong chorus serves as a vehicle of social liberation, not content interruption.
“We did feel at Coachella, when we came over with Blur, that maybe it was a slight mismatch, us being at that festival,” Damon Albarn explained, “It’s kind of the embodiment of social media now, isn’t it?”, before his Gorillaz co-headliner Jamie Hewlett then added, “It’s the only festival where the phones aren’t pointed at the stage, but at the person holding the phone”.
Throughout this entire article, I’ve grappled with expressing my point of view, with some form of intellectualism. I want to lay out theoretical evidence of why this festival is devoid of all culture and is subsequently harmful to the music industry around it. But try as I may, I don’t think anything will outline the point quite as impactfully as a clearly laid out viewpoint.
Simply put, Coachella is all of the worst things in society bundled into one plastic environment. I’ve often been asked what I love about my favourite festivals, and I’ve always resorted to some anecdote about feeling as though I’m walking through the pearly gates of heaven when entering the site. In the case of Coachella, I can only imagine it being similar to the fiery gates of hell, but I’d much rather dance with the devil than take selfies with an influencer.
