Lady Gaga returned to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in spectacular fashion on Friday, delivering a performance of gothic art-pop that mixed new songs and old hits, dazzling choreography and costumes, all of it on a stage designed to look like a decaying Parisian opera house.
When longtime Coachella fans talk about the greatest headlining sets in the festival’s history, they talk about Beyoncé in 2018 and Prince a decade earlier. With 20 songs over two hours on Friday, Gaga elbowed her way into that company.
Her show was presented like an opera in four acts, each of them focused on a different part of her musical personalities, with an artistic vision that matched music with art, fashion with dance.
And, if that sounds a little fancy-schmancy, rest assured that it also delivered plenty of campy fun – Gaga and her entourage dancing with skeletons during “Zombieboy,” say, or an encore of “Bad Romance” that opened with Gaga on the operating table, her frantic and unhinged dancer doctors in, um, plague doctor masks, before she rose from the table with wiggly twig-like fingers at least a foot long each.
But Lady Gaga was only the final and best highlight of Friday. As our three reporters roamed the festival grounds, here are a few of the other moments that caught their attention.
Hip-hop icon Missy Elliott drew a massive crowd at the main stage an hour before Lady Gaga arrived. With a futuristic, space-themed intro, a narrator described her journey through different planets before announcing that the final stop was, fittingly, Coachella. She made her entrance in a full-blown spaceship, stepping onto the stage in a metallic, eccentric space suit with oversized glasses and a bike-helmet-style hat as she sang “Throw It Back.”
SEE ALSO: Coachella 2025: Lady Gaga delivers a dazzling Coachella performance for the ages
The set was a millennial dream, with Missy calling out, “Is it okay if we take it way back?” before diving into her ’90s hits, along with “We Run This” and “4 My People.” The set played like a trip through her influential legacy. And, of course, she closed it out with “Lose Control.”
Walking from stage to stage shortly after nightfall, each new venue offered a different flavor, all of which make up the tapestry of Coachella in 2025.
The Los Angeles DJ and producer Mustard, who won a Grammy for his collaboration with Kendrick Lamar on “Not Like Us” this year, brought a solid crew of fellow hip-hop artists on stage for his Sahara tent set. Lamar, alas, was not among them, but he was joined by stars including 2Chainz, Big Sean, YG, and Tyga.
At the Outdoor stage, the Australian band Parcels offered the most beautiful harmonies heard on the field on Friday. Picture Fleet Foxes crossed with Daft Punk and you’ll perhaps have a sense of the beautiful, gentle, and yes, sometimes quite funky sounds they deliver.
Meanwhile in the Mojave Tent, the English techno band the Prodigy brought old-school beats and skittering guitars on songs such as “Breathe,” “Firestarter,” and more.
In the Sahara tent earlier, K-pop singer Lisa, who, alongside the quartet Blackpink, headlined Coachella in 2023, dazzled fans with a Gaga-worthy mix of modern pop music, choreography, and fashion. Her set was divided among her different performing personas – most of the songs came from her newest album “Alter Ego.” Highlights included “Elastigirl,” performed as Speedi, her bad girl alter, and “Rockstar,” presented by Roxi the rock star, which included a sample from Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”
Queen was also represented at Coachella on Friday in Benson Boone’s main stage set. Boone, who did numerous flips on and off the stage during his set – you may have seen him performing his hit “Beautiful Things” at the Grammys earlier this year – had Queen guitarist Brian May come out for a cover of the band’s iconic “Bohemian Rhapsody.“
SEE ALSO: Coachella 2025: Watch Benson Boone with surprise guest, ‘Queen’ guitarist Brian May
The Los Angeles band the Marias also captured a large audience for a dreamy, soul-stirring set on the Outdoor Stage just after sunset. Dressed in a flowing white skirt, corset top, and a long cross necklace, singer María Zardoya looked every bit as ethereal as the music sounded. She floated into crowd favorites like “Run Your Mouth” and a sultry cover of The Cardigans “Lovefool” before sliding into the trumpet-laced “Care For You.”
At one point, she asked the audience in Spanish, “¿Hay Latinos aquí esta noche?” The crowd roared as she began naming countries one by one—Mexico, El Salvador, Colombia, and more—with cheers rising up for each.
Earlier in the day, British singer-songwriter Lola Young drew a huge crowd to the Mojave tent, many of them drawn by breakout singles from 2024 including “Messy” and “Conceited,” which closed her set. At 24, Young comes from the same musical neighborhood as Amy Winehouse and Adele, a soulful R&B sound mixed with personal confessional vocals.
She performs with a vulnerability that many in the crowd clearly embraced. When she seemed to become physically ill from the triple-digit temperatures or nerves, she asked for a bucket and walked off stage for a moment before returning to wild cheers and applause.
As the afternoon sun blazed down, Southern California favorites the Go-Go’s tore through songs from their 1980 debut “Beauty and the Beat.” Then, with no announcement and little initial notice, Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong sauntered on stage.
The crowd at the Outdoor Stage roared as Armstrong, whose band headlined Coachella on Saturday, joined Go-Go’s singer Belinda Carlisle on “Head Over Heels,” taking the lead vocal and adding his guitar to those of Go-Go’s guitarists Charlotte Caffey and Kathy Valentine.
The Go-Go’s set also featured the full reunion of the band with drummer Gina Schock rejoining for the first time since 2022. Their set opened with “Vacation” and then dipped into the past with songs such as “Skidmarks on My Heart” and “Unforgiven.”
Their set peaked after Armstrong left the stage with “This Town” and “Our Lips Are Sealed” before wrapping up with “We Got the Beat” mashed up with Chappell Roan’s “Hot To Go.”
Kneecap, the rap trio from West Belfast in Northern Ireland, delivered a raucous set in the darkness of the Sonora Tent, mixing party anthems with political screeds against the British rule of their homeland. Rapping mostly in Irish with profane and hilarious banter between songs—”Let’s turn this a wee bit up!” Fans danced and moshed throughout.
“We’re not used to this heat,” one told the crowd. “Our pasty Irish skin is crumbling.”
Highlights of the set included “Better Way to Live” and “Get Your Brits Out. “H.O.O.D” closed out their performance with Kneecap members Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí both taking turns crowd surfing on the hands of fans.
Earlier in the day, San Diego’s Thee Sacred Souls brought a wave of old-school soul and romance to the Coachella Stage with a set that opened on a high note with “Will I See You Again?” The crowd swayed along as lead singer Josh Lane asked, “Has anybody ever experienced a romantic relationship not working out?” before gliding into the smooth groove of “Easier Said Than Done.”
Their live horn section added a nice warmth, bringing a nostalgic blend of Chicano soul and classic R&B. Before closing, they encouraged fans to tell someone they love them, saying, “If there’s somebody out there that you love right now, tell them they make it easy.” The band delivered a heartfelt performance of their most beloved tracks like “Can I Call You Rose,” reminding the crowd why they’re such a standout in the modern soul revival.
Austin Millz also brought his signature mix of hip-hop and dance music and had the crowd feeling good at the Sahara tent mid-afteroon Friday.
What started as a small audience quickly snowballed into avalanches of dancers and fans giving their best ooh-oooh-ahs. Millz also delivered an energetic set mixing the likes of Sean Paul and Panic! at the Disco that matched the party vibe in the crowd. He mentioned that it was special being able to perform at Coachella, and he reciprocated it with a celebratory set that Coachella’s EDM music is known for.
