Justin Bieber headlined Coachella this weekend. He brought a laptop.
That’s it. That was the show. The 32-year-old pop star sat at a desk on one of music’s biggest stages, pulled up YouTube, and played clips of himself from 2008. His viral cover of “With You.” The “Baby” music video. The amateur footage that Scooter Braun discovered and turned into a global phenomenon. Thousands of fans in the desert heat sang along. Millions more watched the livestream—of a man streaming.
The internet, predictably, had opinions.
The Discourse
Katy Perry, watching from the crowd with her boyfriend (former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, because 2026 is a weird year), posted a video joking: “Thank God he has premium. I don’t want to see no ads.”
Swedish pop star Zara Larsson posted herself watching the livestream with the caption “It’s giving let’s smoke and watch YouTube”—which people interpreted as shade until she clarified she was “vibing hardddddddddddddd.”
Others were less charitable. One X user posted a screenshot of Bieber at his desk, MacBook open, YouTube projected behind him, with the caption: “Nothing from my end thanks”—the universal Zoom meeting sign-off. Someone else compared him unfavorably to Sabrina Carpenter, known for her elaborate stage productions: “If Sabrina Carpenter did what Justin Bieber is doing right now, her career would be over.”
Reports that Bieber was paid $10 million for this performance didn’t help the optics.
But Here’s the Thing
I can’t stop thinking about it.
There’s something almost confrontationally honest about what Bieber did. In an era where Coachella performances are increasingly theatrical—pyrotechnics, costume changes, choreographed spectacle—he walked out with a laptop and said: this is where I came from.
Justin Bieber was arguably the first YouTube-to-superstar pipeline. Before TikTok, before algorithm-driven discovery, before every label had a social media scouting department, there was a Canadian kid posting covers from his bedroom. Scooter Braun clicked on a video by accident. The rest is history.
So when Bieber sits on the Coachella stage and pulls up that same platform, playing those same videos for a crowd that grew up with him—what is that, exactly? Laziness? Nostalgia? Performance art?
Maybe it’s all three. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
The Meta of It All
We live in an age where authenticity is currency, but authenticity is also exhausting to perform. Every artist has to be “real” while also being polished, vulnerable while also being aspirational, accessible while also being larger-than-life. The cognitive dissonance is baked into the job.
Bieber’s set sidesteps all of that. There’s no pretense of a carefully crafted narrative. No “this next song is about a difficult time in my life” followed by a perfectly lit emotional moment. Just: here’s the YouTube search bar. Here’s my past. Let’s watch it together.
One fan account called it “simple and legendary.” Another said it felt “made for the real OG beliebers.” And honestly? I think they’re onto something. This wasn’t a performance for casual listeners or critics. It was a communion with the people who were there from the beginning—who remember when that “With You” cover had a few thousand views instead of a few hundred million.
The $10 Million Question
Is it a scam to get paid $10 million to sit at a laptop? I genuinely don’t know. Coachella knew what they were booking. Bieber’s team presumably communicated the concept. The festival sold tickets. People showed up. The livestream numbers were massive.
If the metric is “did people watch and talk about it”—mission accomplished. If the metric is “did he earn that money through physical exertion”—well, no. But since when is that the metric for art?
Marina Abramović sat in a chair and stared at people for 736 hours and we called it groundbreaking. John Cage wrote 4’33” of silence and we put it in music history textbooks. I’m not saying Bieber’s YouTube set belongs in the same conversation, but I am saying that “he didn’t do enough stuff” is a weird criticism when the stuff he did clearly meant something to the people in that crowd.
What Happens Next Weekend
Bieber headlines again this Saturday. The question everyone’s asking: will he do the same thing? Will he pivot to something more traditional? Will he acknowledge the discourse?
Part of me hopes he doubles down. Opens Spotify instead. Reads his Wikipedia page out loud. Googles himself and reacts in real-time. Go full Andy Kaufman with it.
But more likely, he’ll do something slightly different—enough to show he heard the criticism, not enough to admit it got to him. That’s the celebrity playbook.
Either way, we’ll all be watching. Which, when you think about it, is exactly the point.
Justin Bieber’s second Coachella performance is scheduled for Saturday, April 19, 2026.