Was 2012 Coachella — With Dre, Snoop & The 2Pac Hologram — A Major Turning Point for the Festival?
In 2012, popular music was at a point of major transition. Rock was fading from the mainstream, R&B was getting weird, rap was entering its middle age, and EDM was suddenly at the center of everything. All of these trends were reflected at that spring’s Coachella, where some of the defining artists of the decade were making their debut at the festival, traditional headliners were getting outshined by up-and-comers, and it all climaxed with hip-hop’s first real classic rock live moment — including a surprise “appearance” from one of the genre’s late legends, in what ended up being a global headline news-making moment.
On this week’s Great Moments in Pop Star History episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard Senior Music Correspondent and Director of Dance Katie Bain, who just wrote an entire book about Coachella history, the excellent Desert Dreams: The Music, Style and Allure of Coachella. We recall our own memories of the 2012 festival — where we were in our lives, who we were most excited to see, and which performances ended up defining the weekend for us — and the whole thing led up to the debut of the 2Pac hologram, a moment that entered pop culture history with near-unprecedented quickness.
Along the way, we address all the most pressing questions about 2012 Coachella: How big a deal was it to get to go for a second weekend for the first time? Did the Black Keys ever stand a chance going up against Swedish House Mafia at the end of Day One? Did The Weeknd live up to the hype with his live debut — and was he given the wrong time slot? Could we already tell that Kendrick Lamar was the Prince Who Was Promised of west coast rap? Were hip-hop and EDM really read to take over from rock as the center of the Coachella festival — and have they since been edged towards the margins in the years since? And most importantly: Was this damn 2Pac hologram really all that, or does it seem kinda silly to have been such a thing in the moment?
Check it out above, and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!
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