Lady Gaga, Green Day and Post Malone headline Coachella 2025
Coachella has announced that Lady Gaga, Post Malone and Green Day will be the three weekend headliners for the festival in 2025.
unbranded – Entertainment
Lady Gaga vowed “a massive night of chaos” for her Coachella headliner performance, an apt complement to her newest album christened “Mayhem.”
Her festival shows on April 11 and April 18 will give fans the first glimpses of what grandiose staging she might be preparing for the 45-date tour to support “Mayhem,” which kicks off July 16 in Las Vegas.
This will be Gaga’s second time playing the iconic desert gathering in Indio, California (officially called Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival). In 2017 she stepped in at the 11th hour to replace a pregnant Beyoncé a few months after the release of her “Joanne” album.
But while festival performances are often a mere appetizer to a full production, we have some thoughts about which songs – and other musical callbacks – we’d relish hearing when this current Goth-i-cized iteration of Gaga hits the stage.
With her chameleonic range and style, Gaga could easily shift her artsy approaches to reinvention from the slicked-blond hair iciness from her Chromatica Ball tour to the retro-Western air affiliated with “Die with a Smile” to the inky-black bangs and avant garde steam-punk-meets-grunge palette hooked to “Mayhem.”
Let’s hope we see all of the facets.
As for the songs, it’s inevitable that the staples that have defined her career – “Just Dance,” “Bad Romance,” “Born This Way,” “Poker Face” and “The Edge of Glory” – will be represented. But here are other Lady Gaga songs we’re wishing are on her Coachella setlist:
‘Abracadabra’ and ‘Killah’
Her thoroughly Gaga March performances on “Saturday Night Live” were captivating in their weirdness and artistic audacity – especially commandeering most of Studio 8A to unwrap “Killah.”
As presented in video and on (small) stage, the “Thriller”-esque dance moves and alien eyebrows employed by Gaga and her dancers – looking like Dr. Frankenstein’s chic assistants – pair well with the soaring chorus of “Abracadabra” and disjointed funk of “Killah.”
But given Gaga’s unrepentant idolization of David Bowie and Prince – and their undeniable influence on these two tracks – it would be cool to hear a little “Fashion” or “Kiss” inserted into the songs, even if just a bass line. We’re also hoping to still hear a reference to Queen’s “Radio Ga Ga,” the origin of her stage name, woven into an instrumental during the inevitable act changes in the show.
And will the stage floor be on fire during “Abracadabra”? Yes, please.
‘Die With a Smile’ and ‘Shallow’
Although both ballads paired her with a male accomplice – Bruno Mars and Bradley Cooper, respectively – we know there is nothing Gaga can’t accomplish with just her voice and a piano. She proved as much with her inclusion of “Shallow” in the Chromatica Ball setlists and during her sweetly effective performance at January’s FireAid benefit concert.
Her Grammy-winning “Die” might be a more complicated endeavor solo, but if it provides a reason for her to don that Dolly Parton-styled updo, we’re sold.
‘Stupid Love’ and ‘Rain on Me’
Bold hair, metallic fashion and lyrics you can scream-shout? These “Chromatica” songs were made for music festival glory. And as the closing songs on her Chromatica Ball tour – Gaga’s first all-stadium outing – they’re proven crowd pleasers. Of course we’d love it if Ariana Grande joined Gaga onstage for their best pop duo Grammy-winning “Rain on Me,” but all we ask is for Gaga to show us a real good time.
‘Steppin’ Out With My Baby’ and ‘La Vie En Rose’
OK, we concede that throwing in some big band or classic French vocals would present a jarring tonal shift.
But consider: Gaga’s dear friend and mentor, Tony Bennett, has died since her last tour and she continues to tout his influence. She also nodded to her jazz-swing period nurtured by Bennett with last fall’s “Harlequin” album, which, unfortunately, was too tied to her “Joker: Folie à Deux” film flop to receive its due.
And if you caught her Jazz & Piano residency in Las Vegas, you are well aware that she can shake a fringed skirt through Irving Berlin’s “Steppin’ Out With My Baby’ – popularized by Bennett – as effortlessly as she can slip into the velvety belting required for “La Vie En Rose,” as she showcased in “A Star in Born” as well as in her Vegas shows.
‘Telephone featuring Beyoncé’
Look, we know the likelihood of Beyoncé showing up at Gaga’s Coachella set to sing a 15-year-old song is about as high as a teenager knowing how to use a rotary phone. But we can dream, and seeing two inimitable musicians reprise their gloriously unhinged 2009 music video for “Telephone” in any capacity is it.
