Coachella

Toward the end of No Doubt’s Saturday night performance on Coachella’s main stage—a performance that was the subject of near-endless rumors about the presumably astronomical fee the long disbanded group must have commanded for a pair of one-off gigs—Gwen Stefani offered the night’s lone detectable lie. After knocking out 10 quick push-ups, and before launching into “Just a Girl,” the 54-year-old Orange County native observed, “We are absolutely in the future right now.” A nice thought, maybe, but one that was tough to square with the onslaught of nostalgia that defined their set, the rest of Saturday’s bill, and post-COVID Coachella writ large. Earlier this spring, much was made in the press about the festival’s slower-than-usual ticket sales. Usually, the first weekend routinely sells out within hours of wristbands being made available, all before the lineup is even announced; this year, it took almost a month. Last week, Billboard reported that only about 80 percent of the 250,000 tickets available across both weekends of Coachella had been sold. Edit.