After a four-year break from touring, Justin Bieber is headlining Coachella\u2019s main stage. In a controversial section of the show he sang along to YouTube clips \u2013 and at times didn\u2019t sing at all.<\/p>\n
Up to 125,000 punters<\/a> attend Coachella each weekend. The festival is also livestreamed to an enormous international audience: 5.89 million people subscribe to the YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n Audiences and reviewers argued over whether Bieber\u2019s performance was a clever statement on nostalgia<\/a> or a lazy<\/a> display of disrespect. <\/p>\n But, placed in a historical context, Bieber\u2019s performance can actually be read as an interesting contribution to \u201clive\u201d performance.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n What happened during Bieber\u2019s performance?<\/p>\n The controversial section ran for around 20 minutes of the 90-minute set. <\/p>\n Coachella is known for guest appearances, and in other sections of the performance, Bieber welcomed Dijon<\/a>, Tems<\/a>, Wizkid<\/a>, Mk.gee<\/a> and The Kid Laroi<\/a>. Much of the set played out like a typical festival show. <\/p>\n Still, there were early hints at something different. After performing Speed Demon, Bieber peered directly into the camera to shout-out his \u201cliving room\u201d audience, and Coachella\u2019s giant screens showed the chat feed on the festival\u2019s livestream.<\/p>\n When the show approached 50 minutes, Bieber addressed the audience again: \u201ctonight is such a special night, but I feel like we gotta take you guys on a bit of a journey. You guys remember this song?\u201d <\/p>\n Sitting at a laptop, he typed \u201cbaby\u201d into the YouTube search bar displayed on screen. The video<\/a> for his 2010 hit appeared and he sang along, omitting certain lyrics and silently mouthing others.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Modern performances are increasingly supported by backing tracks, but often attempt to hide this fact. Today\u2019s Bieber, the backing vocalist, sounded far more adult than his high-pitched, former self. It was a duet of sorts. <\/p>\n After the main hook, Bieber cut the song abruptly and revisited the \u201cgoing back\u201d theme: \u201cBut how far back do you go?\u201d He pressed play on 2009\u2019s Favorite Girl and again sang over the chorus before another abrupt ending. <\/p>\n As he moved quickly through a range of YouTube hits, Bieber apologised only once, not for the backing tracks but for the swift ending to 2013\u2019s Confident: \u201cI\u2019m sorry to cut it but these are just little snippets.\u201d <\/p>\n He played early YouTube cover versions of Chris Brown<\/a> and Ne-Yo<\/a> songs, then his commercial hits Sorry and Where Are \u00dc Now.<\/p>\n After feigning a wifi dropout, the focus switched to pop culture references: a blooper reel included footage of young Bieber walking into a glass door<\/a> and falling through a stage floor<\/a>, followed by a more recent rant about paparazzi and privacy<\/a>. <\/p>\n As a producer of live-shows and researcher of performance technologies, I was fascinated and entertained. I\u2019m hardly a Belieber<\/a>, but I liked how this performance challenged expectations around \u201cliveness\u201d. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n I wonder if the \u201clazy\u201d reviewers realise that every pause and anecdote in this section was likely rehearsed, and that the on-screen \u201ctyping\u201d was produced in advance? There is too much at stake in a performance of this scale to leave it to chance. <\/p>\n What makes music \u2018live\u2019?<\/p>\n There is a long history of artists interacting with their recorded selves and confusing the audience. <\/p>\n In 1967, The Doors brought a television on stage<\/a> to watch themselves in a pre-taped variety show performance. In the next decades, Kraftwerk presented themselves as robots rather than virtuosi<\/a>. In the 21st century, Deadmau5 exposed conventions for pre-recorded festival sets<\/a> in electronic dance music. <\/p>\n In using pre-recorded or sequenced audio in place of playing their instruments live, these artists played with audience expectations about what is seen and how it connects to what is heard. <\/p>\n As a child, I watched Natalie Cole\u2019s 1992 Grammy performance<\/a> alongside her deceased father, Nat King Cole. My parents found it moving, I found it creepy. <\/p>\n Other duets with the deceased include a hologram of Tupac Shakur<\/a> \u201cperforming\u201d at Coachella in 2012 and a hologram of Maria Callas \u201csinging<\/a>\u201d with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 2023. <\/p>\n These holograms offer access to otherwise inaccessible performances and attempt to keep the past alive. <\/p>\n In a way, the Bieber performance attempted something similar as he engaged directly with his own past performances. <\/p>\n He not only called upon pre-recorded materials, but his own viral history. His self-referential performance was directly inspired by online cultural consumption. His interaction with YouTube was relatable and human, rather than detached and lazy. <\/p>\n YouTube and performance<\/p>\n As a DJ<\/a>, I first became aware of YouTube\u2019s impact on the presentation of performances through the emergence of Boiler Room<\/a>, a channel that shows videos of DJs performing while surrounded by punters. <\/p>\n Eventually, the optics of these videos informed how clubbing might look: nightclubs and festivals configured \u201cBoiler Room setups<\/a>\u201d, with DJs surrounded by a dancing audience instead of elevated and separated. <\/p>\n Despite encouraging a generation of overt posers, it showed how what we see online influences what is presented on stage. <\/p>\n Bieber takes this thinking to a much larger audience, demonstrating real engagement with his presence in pop culture online. In turn, how we react to this performance might inform future live shows.<\/p>\n