Last year around this time, the five members of K-pop group Le Sserafim were glued to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival live stream on YouTube, watching Blackpink make history as the first headliner Korean. On Saturday afternoon, they were looking glam in an artist trailer of their own, hours away from making their own Coachella debut.
“Coachella was something I could hardly dream of getting to, even as a spectator,” said Huh Yunjin of the innovative girl group HYBE. “We've seen acts like Blackpink and Billie Eilish online and thought, 'It would be amazing to be on a stage like this one day.' “
“It's a very famous festival in Korea too,” added Kim Chaewon, through a translator. “For many artists there, it is a dream opportunity.”
This year, that opportunity came for a whole new generation of Korean artists. After Blackpink's rapid rise from newcomer to top-billed artist, Coachella is already cultivating its next generation of K-pop and South Korean music more broadly. Genres always wax and wane at the festival, with classic rock and EDM giving way to rap and pop. But it looks like South Korean music is a new centerpiece of the festival.
Ateez's Jeong Yun-ho performs during the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club on Friday.
(Amy Harris / Invision / AP)
On Friday night, K-pop group Ateez, already performing in stadiums across the U.S. and the first K-pop boy group to perform at Coachella, performed an explosive set to an audience where many probably saw them. They were seeing it live for the first time. . The core fandom of the eight-member group could hardly believe their luck at being able to see them so close.
“When I was training, I was really looking forward to this kind of big festival,” said Ateez captain Kim Hongjoong, dressed in full goth gear backstage just a couple of hours before his band's Sahara Tent set. “Coachella has many iconic stages and Korean fans love to see Beyoncé, The Weeknd and Blackpink perform here. I think our performance style really fits this big festival. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”
“In fact, we filmed our first music video (“Pirate King”) in the Sahara desert and now we are playing in the Sahara tent,” added the band's Yunho. “So Coachella definitely seems like the right place for our live set.”
The group left it all on stage Friday: singing, rapping and dancing with a ferocity and skill that demonstrated the work they put in to get here. Who knows if they'll ever make headlines, but now there's proof that it's possible, and Ateez is leading a new class of Korean acts working towards it.
“We really love performing for our fans, of course, but we're also curious about how other audiences listen to our music,” Hongjoong said. “Today is a new experience that is very important for us.”
For Kim Woosung, the singer of the Korean rock band The Rose, Coachella is close enough to a local show: He spent much of his childhood in the Valley here.
“Personally, I always loved Coachella,” Woosung said. “Performing here was always a goal for us, after our first international festival we left very inspired by the atmosphere. “It is a dream to be here on stage just one year later.”
Kim Woosung of The Rose performs at the Outdoor Theater during the 2024 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club on Sunday.
(Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Coachella)
The Rose's sound leans more toward the expansive, richly detailed rock of groups like U2 and 1975: singles like “Back to Me” and “You're Beautiful” howl and soar on their own terms, and led the group to the Forum in Inglewood last year. Woosung recently teamed up with BTS’s Suga and the late Ryuichi Sakamoto on the song “Snooze.” A Sunday magic hour set on the outdoor stage will be a masterpiece for non-K-pop Korean music to resonate with the new crowds of rockers in Woosung's old hometown.
“We are proud to represent Korea in listeners' personal journeys in music,” said the band's bassist Lee Jaehyeong. “We have so many artists from different lands and styles that we want to see again this year as fans.”
The range of Korean music at Coachella is even broader: former Goldenvoice affiliates at 88 Rising have a Mojave Tent set, “Futures,” dedicated to emerging pan-Asian talent that has often included Korean acts. South Korean DJ and producer Peggy Gou found her own success in underground club music, completely outside of any Korean pop apparatus (she's more of the Berlin nightlife type). Her own Friday set at the Sahara was packed after her single “(It Goes Like) Nanana” became a hit on TikTok. Gou has become an in-demand model and with her debut LP, “I Hear You,” she is on her way to becoming one of house music's great success stories.
On Saturday night, Le Sserafim made a strong claim about his own future at Coachella. Dressed in custom Nicolas Ghesquière leather, the group played heated Afro-Latin tracks like “Antifragile” and brought out Chic legend Nile Rodgers for their collaboration “Unforgiven,” a strong endorsement of a type that previous Sahara Tent legends, Daft Punk and Avicii, they have shined. until.
“We met him in person for the first time yesterday,” said Yunjin (she grew up partly in New York and long admired his productions). “It was absolutely crazy working with him. He taught us that when you collaborate, you never want to take anything away from that person. You always want to add. “There are so many acts that came before us that we are so grateful for.”
The group's music is unusually candid and bristly about the pressures for perfection that young women face in K-pop, a sentiment many young fans identify with. The group formed in 2022, but judging by the set's vandalized Sahara Tent, SoCal will be seeing a lot more of Le Sserafim soon.
“After this, we really want to go to Santa Monica beach,” Yunjin said. “And we hear L.A. has a pretty good K-town.”
