This is how we found out that Justin Bieber is a YouTube Premium subscriber.
The 32-year-old teen pop survivor headlined Coachella on Saturday night, and for about half an hour in the middle of his set, what Bieber did was sit behind a laptop and sing along to his old music videos, often an octave below where he recorded them, while searching for the songs on YouTube and playing them over the festival's state-of-the-art sound system.
YouTube Premium, that is, since he (and we) don't face ads during the presentation.
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Expectations were incredibly high for this show: Bieber's first large-scale concert after a few years spent in the pop star wilderness recovering from various health ailments both physical and mental.
The invitation-only warm-up concerts he held in Los Angeles in recent weeks sparked widespread speculation that at Coachella he might play only material from last year's comeback albums “Swag” and “Swag II.”
And, in fact, that's what she did for the first half hour or so, singing songs like “All I Can Take,” “Speed Demon,” and “Butterflies” (and singing them with extreme precision) accompanied by pre-recorded backing tracks; After that, he brought in Carter Lang and Dylan Wiggins, two of his closest “Swag” collaborators, to do more “Swag” material “up close and personal with you,” as he put it.
“This is a night I've dreamed of for a long time,” he said, dressed in a red hoodie, shorts and Paddington and Balenciaga-style rain boots.
Together, the three gave gorgeous Christian youth group white soul renditions of “Things You Do” and “Glory” and “Everything Hallelujah,” the latter of which Bieber used to shout out his wife, Hailey Baldwin, who was in the crowd and made herself available to Coachella's roving cameras.
Then: “Looks like we have to take them on a little trip,” Bieber said. “Do you remember this song?”
That was his own cue for a YouTube deep dive (starting with “Baby” and including “Never Say Never” and “Beauty and a Beat”) that made you wonder about the unresolved trauma he's still dealing with from his child star days. (By the way, second night in a row for that, after Sabrina Carpenter on Friday.)
“How far back are you going?” he asked the crowd at one point. “Are you really with the s—?”
Bieber went on to play highly memed videos of himself running into a revolving door and falling off a stage; That led to an unfortunate little digression about paparazzi and their predatory ways.
“These guys won't leave you alone, bro,” he said before playing that famous video of the guy freaking out over double rainbows.
In the final part of the show, Bieber performed “Yukon” and then “Devotion” with Dijon – the vocals! – then “Essence” with Tems and Wizkid.
“Tonight was beautiful,” Bieber said before bringing out Mk.gee to close with “Daisies,” and he was right: This was a radical reframing of what a stellar Coachella performance is supposed to be, and I loved it.
