Coachella 2020

Overview

Coachella 2020 is the 2020 edition of the annual Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The festival, originally due to take place over the weekends of April 10-12 and April 17-19, planned to feature headliners Rage Against The Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean. Following the coronavirus outbreak, the festival was pushed to October in early March and then completely canceled in June.

Background

On January 2nd, 2020, Coachella released their full lineup including headliners Rage Against the Machine, Travis Scott and Frank Ocean. The lineup poster was published by Festickets^[1] (shown below).

Spread

Poster Parodies

Coachella Lineup Poster Parodies are photoshopped variations of the promotional lineup posters. On January 4th, 2020, Redditor Space-dweller uploaded a poster parody to r/electronicmusic^[7] with headliners Greta Thunberg, Billy Ray Eilish and Popeyes Chicken sandwich (shown below, left). The post gained over 2,00 points (94% upvoted) in five months. Following news of the postponement, Laughing Squid^[8] uploaded a parody featuring television shows and streaming networks (shown below, right).

Postponement

March 10th, 2020, CNN^[2] released a statement from Goldenoice, the production company behind Coachella:

"At the direction of the County of Riverside and local health authorities, we must sadly confirm the rescheduling of Coachella and Stagecoach due to COVID-19 concerns. While this decision comes at a time of universal uncertainty, we take the safety and health of our guests, staff and community very seriously. We urge everyone to follow the guidelines and protocols put forth by public health officials."

On March 30th, 2020, Coachella uploaded a trailer for the documentary "Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert: which was due to be released by YouTube Originals on the day Coachella was originally going to start in April (shown below, left). The trailer gained over 204,000 views and 3,500 likes in two months. On April 10th, the full documentary was released and received over two million views and 51,000 likes in two months (shown below, right).

Cancellation

On June 9th, Twitter user @Jeff__Benjamin^[3] shared a Billboard^[4] article explaining that "Coachella 2020 has been cancelled entirely, the festival's promoter AEG is looking at a limited-capacity version for April 2021" (shown below, left). Distractify^[5] published an article covering reactions to the cancellation. On June 10th, Twitter user @TimJDillon^[6] tweeted, "I will not tolerate Coachella being cancelled. It’s literally our only chance to end racism. I want to wear a headdress. This is so fucked" which garnered over 4,000 likes and 380 retweets in a day (shown below, right).

That same day, Twitter user @iam_johnw posted the Reese Hardy crying video captioned, "Girls in LA on zoom during the weekend that Coachella was supposed to happen" (shown below). The post received over 2,600 likes and 380 retweets in a day.

Girls in LA on zoom during the weekend that Coachella was supposed to happen pic.twitter.com/WZswn4PLGp

— john (@iam_johnw) June 10, 2020

Various Examples

Do you care that Coachella 2020 is cancelled and Frank Ocean won’t be performing this year?

Drugged out white hippies: pic.twitter.com/lBXmaLmd1t

— WeeklyNewsical (@WeeklyNewsical) June 10, 2020

Frank bc Coachella is now cancelled this year pic.twitter.com/MawzpAzp9I

— sofia (@ctrlultra) June 10, 2020

Search Interest

External References