FESTIVALS

Ariana Grande Is Headlining Coachella 2019

The only logical follow-up to Beyoncé’s 2018 showstopper.


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If there’s anyone who could possibly live up to Beyoncé’s practically legendary performance at Coachella last year, it’s Ariana Grande, who announced on Wednesday night that she is indeed headlining this year’s festival—and even snagged both of its final slots. This year, as with last, Coachella will take place across two weekends—April 12 through 14, and April 19 to 21—meaning that Grande’s performance will come after dozens of others, including two more headlining sets by Childish Gambino and Tame Impala.

For Childish Gambino, those performances just might be a swan song; this time last year, Donald Glover announced that he’d soon be putting this portion of his musical career to rest, after walking back on saying he’d do so in 2017. (Instead, he released his album Awaken, My Love!, which was nominated for five Grammy Awards.) He’s sticking around, however, for the first days of each of the festival’s weekends, which will also include performances by Janelle Monáe, Diplo, Kacey Musgraves, and King Princess. (Also on the lineup ahead of Grande are Solange; Kid Cudi; Weezer; the Pixies; Bad Bunny; Billie Eilish; Kacey Musgraves and her soon-to-be tour opener, Soccer Mommy; and DJ-slash-designer-slash-collaboration king Virgil Abloh, who’ll have just shown Louis Vuitton and Off-White’s fall 2019 collections the previous month.)

Still, there’s no doubt that Grande, like Beyoncé before her, will end up stealing the show. (Even Grande’s surprise appearance at last year’s festival has been largely forgotten in the wake of #BeyChella, which also marked the first time that a woman headlined the festival in 10 years.) These days, though, it’s Grande who’s been dominating the headlines: her post-breakup single, “thank u, next,” has now been no. 1 at the top of the charts for seven weeks straight, making her perfectly poised to finally put the past behind her in the new year. It’s no surprise that just a few days ago, she excitedly bid “farewell [to] 2018, you fuck”; what with her extremely public breakup with her ex-fiancé, Pete Davidson, the death of her ex Mac Miller, and the aftermath of the Manchester bombing, she’s come to consider the past 12 months as “one of like the best years of my career and like the worst of my life,” as she put it when tearfully accepting Billboard‘s Woman of the Year last month.

The final days of 2018 also saw Kanye West drag Grande into his ongoing feud with Drake. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem likely that she’ll be running into West backstage. (According to TMZ, he declined to perform at this year’s festival because he found its traditional 60×40 foot stages to be too “artistically limiting.”) Still, that’s not to say that another Kardashian won’t make a surprise appearance; it was, after all, just a couple of months ago that she got Kris Jenner to make a cameo as Regina George’s mom in the music video for “thank u, next.”

Related: Kylie Jenner Makes an Appearance at Coachella, Declaring: “I’m Not a Regular Mom, I’m a Cool Mom”

A Visual History of Celebrities at Coachella, From Kendall Jenner to Cameron Diaz

Cameron Diaz attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Lindsay Lohan attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Kirsten Dunst and Alexander Skarsgård attend the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Dita von Teese attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Sky Ferreira attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Lily Collins and Kate Bosworth attend the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Vanessa Hudgens attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Danny Devito attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Emma Watson attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Brie Larson attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Katy Perry and Rihanna attend the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Agyness Deyn attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Sofia Richie attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Diane Kruger attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Kendall and Kylie Jenner attend the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Clint Eastwood attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Justin Bieber and Kendall Jenner attend the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Behati Prinsloo attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Hailey Baldwin and Kendall Jenner attend the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Zoe Kravitz attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Cody Simpson and Gigi Hadid attend the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Miles Teller attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Cara and Poppy Delevingne and Sienna Miller attend the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Emmy Rossum attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Jared Leto attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Sarah Snyder attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Kristen Stewart attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Paris Hilton attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Brooklyn Beckham attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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Alessandra Ambrosio attends the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California.

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