The Sunday Round-Up: 21st-27th April (the History of Coachella Festival, Happy Birthday to Iggy Pop and The Cure's Robert Smith!)
Examining the history of Coachella Festival, and celebrating the birthdays of two music icons, Iggy Pop, and the Cure's Robert Smith
The History of Coachella Festival
2025 marks 26 years since the first ever Coachella. In 1999, the Californian music and arts festival was held in October with headliners Beck, Rage Against The Machine, and Tool. As the Independent notes, ‘Coachella’s conception into the world of festivals perfectly aligned with the post-grunge era’1.
Coachella 1999 poster (Coachella.com)
In recent years, Coachella has gained a reputation as ‘the influencer’ festival, synonymous with celebrity and wealth. Music Radar recently described Coachella as ‘the festival to be seen at’. They went on ‘Coachella’s appeal increasingly only hits home with over-privileged, cash-laden, rights-of-passage-seeking elites with little interest in music [...] Likewise, their willingness to deliver any kind of interaction or excitement to help the performer along has evaporated alongside their tolerance.’2
Examples include last year’s Blur performance where the Coachella crowd didn’t engage in a singalong of one of the band’s m…