Beyonce, Radiohead and Kendrick Lamar to headline Coachella

Beyonce will become Coachella's second solo female headliner, after Bjork in 2007.
Beyonce will become Coachella's second solo female headliner, after Bjork in 2007. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE- PRESSE

NEW YORK • Pop superstar Beyonce, British rock group Radiohead and rapper Kendrick Lamar will headline Coachella this year.

The annual festival in the California desert will be held on April 14 to 16 and repeated the following weekend, April 21 to 23.

Details of the latest edition of Coachella at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, were announced on Tuesday in what has become an annual online ritual.

Goldenvoice, its promoter, posted an image of the festival's line-up poster on Twitter, which quickly ricocheted around the Internet. The top names had been correctly guessed - or leaked - weeks ago: Radiohead the first night, followed by Beyonce on the second and then Lamar on the third.

Although Coachella has had big pop stars before, such as Prince in 2008 and Drake in 2015, this is arguably the first time that an act such as Beyonce - a superstar of plain old pop, with a stage show of choreographed dancers - will be on the main stage.

By the time she goes on, she may have won the Grammy Award for Album Of The Year (or any of the other eight categories in which she was nominated). She will become the festival's second solo female headliner, after Bjork in 2007.

The other headliners this year are repeat performers. Lamar last played the festival in 2012 and Radiohead will be making their third appearance.

And those dozens of other big names? Lorde, Bon Iver, The xx, Travis Scott, Future, DJ Khaled, Gucci Mane, DJ Snake, Justice, Father John Misty, New Order, The Head And The Heart, the Avalanches, Dillon Francis and Mac Miller, among others.

Passes for the festival went on sale yesterday on the festival's website, coachella.com, with weekend-long general admission passes starting at US$399 (S$577).

In 2015, the Coachella festival sold US$84 million in tickets, making it the world's highest-grossing annual festival. Its only potential challenger is Desert Trip, an event last autumn that featured The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, The Who and Roger Waters. That show was also produced by Goldenvoice, which did not disclose its sales, but it was estimated to be as high as US$160 million.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, NYTIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on January 05, 2017, with the headline Beyonce, Radiohead and Kendrick Lamar to headline Coachella. Subscribe