{"id":601681,"date":"2026-04-13T18:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T18:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/601681\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T18:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T18:04:08","slug":"karol-g-at-coachella-review-electrifying-set-destined-for-festivals-hall-of-fame-coachella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/601681\/","title":{"rendered":"Karol G at Coachella review \u2013 electrifying set destined for festival\u2019s hall of fame | Coachella"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late on the final night of Coachella\u2019s first weekend, after more than a dozen songs, several glorious costume changes and some of the most luscious choreography ever seen in a headliner set, the Colombian superstar Karol G<\/a> finally introduced herself in English: \u201cI am Carolina Giraldo from Medell\u00edn, Colombia, and today, I am the first Latina woman to headline Coachella,\u201d she said to deafening cheers from a crowd dotted with the flags of Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia and other Latin nations. \u201cI\u2019m very happy and very proud,\u201d she added, but \u201cat the same time, it feels late. There has been 27 years of this festival.\u201d Both sincere and pointed, her remarks recalled Beyonc\u00e9<\/a> in 2018, thanking the festival for allowing her to be the first Black woman to headline: \u201cAin\u2019t that \u2019bout a bitch?\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyonc\u00e9 is quite the name to invoke \u2013 we may never again see a set as virtuosic and culturally significant as Beychella<\/a> \u2013 but on Sunday night, Karol G sure made the case for her inclusion in the festival\u2019s hall of fame. Seeming at once years in the making and effortless, her 90-minute set was, like Bad Bunny<\/a>\u2019s landmark headliner slot three years earlier, an exuberant statement of Latin pride and pan-American unity as well as the joys of absolutely lethal, ass-shaking music so relentlessly danceable I broke a sweat on the coldest night of the festival. From the minute she first appeared, luminous in a glittering gold bikini and flanked by an army of sinuous background dancers, her hip undulations visible to the naked eye from the back rows \u2013 \u201cnot even Nascar has these curves,\u201d she boasts in saucy opener Latina Foreva \u2013 the fireworks literal and physical barely ceased. If it\u2019s going to take 27 years, well, best throw an undeniable fiesta.<\/p>\n

More than most other major artists this year, Karol G<\/a> put on a show that felt just as tailored to the live experience as the live stream. Perhaps it was the scale of her proto-cave rave set (the loose theme being the inherent, primordial wildness of women), which lofted her nearly two stories off the ground, or the maximal sensuality of her many, many backup dancers, but she was the only artist I saw this weekend who did not seem dwarfed by the main stage, able to play both to the fan halfway down the lawn and the precisely wielded cameras whirring about her many dance shakedowns. Any frustration with her appearing half an hour late \u2013 it seems there was a lot of lighting to secure in that cave \u2013 was immediately melted by a steamy opening set that blended the hardest tracks from her 2025 album\/Latin music thesis statement Tropicoqueta with hits from 2023\u2019s stardom-cementing Ma\u00f1ana Ser\u00e1 Bonito.<\/p>\n

\u2018Themed on the primordial wildness of women\u2019 Karol G at Coachella on Sunday. Photograph: Amy Harris\/Invision\/AP<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, La Bichota \u2013 a title she coined, meaning \u201cboss bitch\u201d \u2013 reappeared after a thankfully brief interlude in a show-stopping Carnival-style feathered headdress for the mambo-inflected track Tropicoqueta, the first of several nods to the broad swath of Latin music history. Speaking almost entirely in Spanish, the 35-year-old singer seamlessly blended a tour of regional Latin styles with her own hard-charging, sex-positive reggaeton pop. Tropicoqueta gave way to an all-female Mexican mariachi band, their sound on Ese Hombre Es Malo gorgeously layered, and then a duet with the Mexican-American pop star Becky G, who offered more direct remarks on the current US political climate than Karol G could or probably should say: \u201c\u00a1Que viva Mexico! \u00a1Que viva Colombia! And to all our immigrants, we love you very much,\u201d she said in Spanish, before switching to English: \u201cYou heard what I said.\u201d A grief-stricken ballad with Cigarettes After Sex<\/a>\u2019s Greg Gonzalez transitioned to some of the choreography in ankle-deep water so nasty I glimpsed the feminine divine, filmed as if in a trippy, libidinous club; then to a solo interlude by Puerto Rican reggaeton legend Wisin for a string of hits \u2013 Saoco, Mayor Que Yo, Rakata \u2013 that received some of the loudest sing-alongs of a very loud show.<\/p>\n

It goes perhaps without saying that celebrating Latin pride on a giant stage, at this moment in the US, is both symbolically meaningful and tricky: say nothing on the government\u2019s immigration crackdown targeting Spanish-speaking Latinos and risk appearing timid, aloof; say something and risk charges of fecklessness, let alone the wrath of the country\u2019s leadership. Karol G, no stranger to controversy over what she does and does not say, threaded a very fine needle. \u201cThis is not just about me, this is about the Latina community, the love of my people,\u201d she said with 10 minutes left in her show. \u201cAnd at the same time, this is for my Latinos who have been struggling in this country lately. We stand for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

She hammered home the point of \u201cunity, resilience and strength\u201d \u2013 \u201cI just want everyone to be proud of where you come from,\u201d she added \u2013 with an ebullient cover of Mi Tierra, by the trailblazing Cuban-American artist Gloria Estefan, then a finale, to an EDM-ified Provenza, that utilized the full power of the main stage. With rainbow lasers, strobe lights, pyrotechnics, fireworks and confetti all at once, not one but three false ending beat drops and a megawatt smile that outshone the stage lights, there was no mistaking the message: this may have been Karol G\u2019s moment, but the victory belongs to many more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late on the final night of Coachella\u2019s first weekend, after more than a dozen songs, several glorious costume…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-601681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}