Weekend 1: Just Bieber and the Backing Tracks

To clarify, I was not one among the crowd that Rolling Stone’s Jeff Miller hazarded was the “biggest ever on the Coachella field, stretching back almost to the ferris wheel.” I was at home, with millions of others, rocking Couch-ella with my emotional support livestream.

Bieber came out almost on time to “All I Can Take” from Swag II, the second of his 2025 album releases. He sported an oversized pink hoodie and roomy shorts not too far removed from his infamous street style, but we’ll let him be for a second.

As he flowed through song after song, Bieber proved his vocals only bettered with age, a lone silhouette swaddled in the vastness of some very trippy visuals behind him and a single set that reminded me of a blood cell but grey. Just him, the backing tracks and the audience. I closed my eyes and for a second, it almost felt like he was in my living room with me.

Not counting the very adorable ‘baby Jack hallelujah’ shoutout or the sudden lockdown TikTok flashbacks during the rather enjoyable ‘Stay’ with The Kid LAROI — sixteen songs into the SWAG universe, I found my personal interest as a 2010s Bieber truther slowly begin to wane. Then came the laptop.

Baby, One (More) Time: Justin Bieber’s Greatest Hits And a Coachella Laptop

Paul Lieberstein was onto something when he wrote The Office’s Dwight Schrute as saying “Nostalgia is truly one of the great human weaknesses. Second only to the neck.”

I feel it every time I see a tweet update about One Direction members interacting with each other or yet another classic Disney show announces a reunion. I felt it in my involuntary screams at the first notes of ‘Bang Bang Bang’ opening BIGBANG’s fantastic Coachella debut. And when Justin Bieber pulled up ‘Baby’, I was overwhelmed by a veritable deluge of who I used to be when I first heard it.

How emotional it would have been for fans at Coachella’s Empire Polo Club to cheer as one as he plowed past choppy WiFi through a catalog of his greatest hits—One Time, Favorite Girl, That Should Be Me, Beauty and a Beat (which climbed the charts as a direct consequence), and peaking at his cover of Chris Brown’s “With You,” the video that began it all.

The complete absence of backup singers compounded the effect of little Justin on backing vocals for the lower octave from Justin of this timeline. “He’s back,” I thought (appreciative).

Then he veered off into a pop culture meme tangent complete with the Deez Nuts video, the double rainbow one, the one of him crashing into a glass door, and of course, the infamous ‘standing on business’ video. It felt simultaneously like doomscrolling on the couch with my friend, albeit with a prick in the back of my throat knowing that living in some of those moments would not have been easy.

“Ah man, I’m getting sucked into the World Wide Web, man,” he told the crowd, right after chuckling at the Apparently kid. He’s back, I thought again (less appreciative).

The whole thing was, on top of the chock loads of nostalgia, strangely relatable, especially since as many have pointed out, trawling YouTube with bad internet was how many of us found him for the first time.

Bieber did bring the vibes right back at the end with ‘Yukon’, ‘Devotion’ (with fellow Coachella act Dijon), ‘I Think You’re Special’ (with Tems), ‘Essence’ (with Wizkid & Tems), and finally 'Daisies’ (with Mk.gee and blown-out guitar tone) in quick succession.

With the fireworks going off above him, Justin Bieber looked back on his name in bright lights. “Thank you, Coachella, you guys have my heart,” he crooned, later making a heart at the camera and therefore also at me specifically.

How Justin Bieber Changed Bieberchella For Weekend 2

Bieber mixed it up, literally, some more for weekend 2, bringing in Big Sean, Dijon again, Sexyy Red, and a sadly ‘Shiva Shambho’-less SZA for ‘Snooze’, which they’d already performed together last year. He also added in a couple more throwbacks; “You guys are too lit, I can’t with you guys man, this is crazy,” he said to the cheering crowd, half-smiling after ‘One Time’.

In an endearing and seemingly entirely unscripted moment, he chose pop singer and documented Bieber superfan Billie Eilish to be his ‘One Less Lonely Girl’, and the 24-year-old all but passed out on her way to the stage.

It was adorable culmination to a general emotional two shows, ones that if anything, quelled any fears of a downward spiral á la Frank Ocean.

However. If I wasn’t a Belieber, and was in the paying audience solely to check out the headliner that Coachella forked over $10 million for?

Brave, Stripped-Back, or Both

My truth remains that Bieberchella, for all its charm, required the audience to do a lot of the emotional lifting. There’s a version of what Bieber did that comes off as genuinely radical — a man wandering a bare stage with a MacBook and no pyrotechnics, no dancers, just their catalog and their complicated history with fame, laid out in front of thousands of people.

In an era of maximalist pop spectacle, however, that restraint is almost confrontational. I would point out in crowded territory, that Sabrina Carpenter, headlining the same festival the same year, brought multiple custom Dior looks, celebrity cameos and enough production value to foreshadow many a stadium tour.

For a stage as big as Coachella, where artists much older and more established than him had no trouble turning up the energy, Bieber’s choices are either brave vulnerability or just a Tuesday, depending on where you're standing.

Yes, his stripped back performances were a statement about where he is and what he’s decided performing means to him now, but we can all predict the response if he and the gloriously over-the-top Carpenter (or hey, most any female performers) had swapped productions.

Now that both Coachella weekends are done, there is no doubt that Justin Bieber fans will remain Justin Bieber fans — some even bigger ones, if that’s possible. For the average Coachella-goer, however, I’m not as sure.

Justin Bieber Coachella Weekend 1 Setlist

1. "All I Can Take"
2. "Speed Demon"
3. "First Place"
4. "Go Baby"
5. "Butterflies"
6. "Walking Away"
7. “All The Way”
8. "405"
9. “Too Long”
10. “Petting Zoo”
11. “I Do’”
12. “STAY” (with The Kid LAROI)
13. “Things You Do”
14. “Glory Voice Memo”
15. “Zuma House”
16. “Dotted Line”
17. “Everything Hallelujah”
18. “Baby”
19. “Favorite Girl”
20. “That Should Be Me”
21. “Beauty and a Beat”
22. “Never Say Never”
23. “Confident”
24. “All That Matters”
25. “With You” (Chris Brown cover)
26. “So Sick” (Ne-Yo cover)
27. “Sorry”
28. “Where Are Ü Now”
29. “I’m the One”
30. “Yukon”
31. “Devotion” (with Dijon)
32. “I Think You’re Special” (with Tems)
33. Essence (with Wizkid & Tems)
34. “Daisies” (with Mk.gee)

Justin Bieber Coachella Weekend 2 setlist

1. "All I Can Take"
2. "Speed Demon"
3. "First Place"
4. "Go Baby"
5. "Butterflies"
6. "Lyin'"
7. "Walking Away"
8. "All The Way"
9. "405"
10. "Too Long"/"Petting Zoo"/"I Do"
11. "Sweet Spot" (with Sexyy Red)
12. "Mother In You"
13. "Things You Do"
14. "Glory Voice Memo"
15. "Zuma House"
16. "Dotted Line"
17. "Everything Hallelujah"
18. "One Time"
19. "U Smile"
20. "Up"
21. "Baby"
22. "One Less Lonely Girl" (with Billie EIlish)
23. "As Long As You Love Me" (with Big Sean)
24. "No Pressure" (with Big Sean)
25. "Cry Me a River"
26. "Yukon"
27. "Devotion" (with Dijon)
28. "Snooze" (with SZA)
29. “Daisies”

Justin Bieber’s Coachella performance videos are streaming on YouTube.