Was Justin Bieber’s Coachella Set Lazy… or Genius?
The Sam Sanders Show
KCRW & Sam Sanders
4.9 • 709 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Justin Bieber headlined Coachella with a stripped down set that quickly divided the internet.
While other artists had intricate sets, Justin sang on a mostly empty stage with nothing but a laptop. If you thought his set was lazy, 'The New Yorker' critic Vinson Cunnighman says you’re missing the point.
Vinson joins Sam to talk about Bieberchella, what Justin was trying to convey about fame and loneliness, and asks how authentic do fans really want their pop stars to be?
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The Sam Sanders Show is a production of KCRW and Sam Sanders Productions.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coachella. |
| 0:02.0 | Hey y'all, Sam Sanders here. |
| 0:08.0 | Thank you so much for checking out my show with KCRW. |
| 0:12.0 | Did y'all watch Coachella? |
| 0:14.0 | I don't really need a reason to star you. |
| 0:17.0 | That's all you. |
| 0:19.0 | Don't pretend they got a reason to call you. It's not true. I did. I got a reason to call you. |
| 0:21.6 | It's not true. |
| 0:22.6 | I did. |
| 0:23.6 | From home on my couch, got to say, it's maybe the best way to do it. |
| 0:28.6 | A lot of the acts were pretty amazing, intricate and detailed, big, ornate productions, |
| 0:34.6 | flashy choreo. |
| 0:36.6 | But I was downright dumbfounded by Justin Bieber's headline set. |
| 0:41.2 | It involved Justin Bieber and the Coachella crowd just watching his old music videos, |
| 0:47.5 | literally on YouTube. |
| 0:50.0 | Justin queued him up on stage. |
| 0:52.3 | A bunch of passive versions of Justin Bieber on the big screen with the crowd and Bieber himself |
| 0:58.0 | singing along. |
| 0:59.6 | It felt sad, it felt sad, it felt weird, and it made me wonder a few things. Is Justin Bieber doing all right? |
| 1:14.8 | Is it ever possible for a child star to stay famous and happy into adulthood? What do we really want when we say that we want our stars to be authentic? |
| 1:24.3 | And what does a pop star owe us? Really? I posed all of these questions to Vincent Cunningham. |
| 1:30.8 | Vincent's a staff writer at the New Yorker. He co-hosts their critics at large podcast. And he |
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