Coachella faces $28,000 fine due to Lana Del Rey’s set
Coachella is facing a fine of around $28,000 (£22,585), due to Lana Del Rey’s set running over the scheduled time.
The fine has been put forward to the festival organisers following the singer’s headline set at the Indio event last Friday (April 19), where she finished the performance 13 minutes over the allotted time.
The news was first reported by TMZ on Monday (April 22), and a representative for the city later confirmed to the publication that the organisers of the event would have to pay up because of the missed cut-off point.
This isn’t the first time that those behind the iconic California festival have faced fines. As highlighted by US Weekly, the fines gathered for curfew violations over the first weekend of the 2024 edition (April 12-14) totalled an estimated $117,000 (£94,367). These were encountered due to the number of sets that misused the curfew deadline over the weekend – 1am on Friday and Saturday, and midnight on Sunday.
Coachella missed the curfew time on all three nights. On Friday, it ran over by 25 minutes, on Saturday it missed the deadline by 22 minutes, and on Sunday it finished just before 12:30am.
Last June, the ‘Video Games’ singer-songwriter ran into a similar problem with her performance at Glastonbury, where she arrived on stage late and was subsequently cut off due to hitting the curfew.
Aside from Del Rey, Coachella 2024 was headlined by Tyler, The Creator and Doja Cat, and featured two special reunion sets from No Doubt. Other performers this year included Blur, Ice Spice, Grimes, Sabrina Carpenter, Peso Pluma, J Balvin, Khruangbin, Jhené Aiko, Lil Uzi Vert, Justice, Deftones, Sublime, Jungle, Dom Dolla, Bleachers, Peggy Gou, LE SSERAFIM and more.
The first weekend of Coachella was plagued by a myriad of sound issues, resulting in artists such as Lana Del Rey barely being audible, while Grimes faced a plethora of technical issues during her DJ set that left her screaming out in frustration.
While weekend two seemed to fare much better, Kid Cudi – who had been announced as a last-minute addition – had to end his set earlier than expected after breaking his foot while jumping offstage to get closer to his friends.
In a recap of Coachella’s opening weekend for 2024, NME‘s Rhian Daly noted the crowd’s general lack of energy. Daly wrote: “It would be easy to chalk this all up to excitement around Coachella dying down, but that wouldn’t strictly be true. There was plenty of energy in certain pockets of the festival, just perhaps not those soundtracked by middle-aged Britpop blokes.
“Instead, it was the EDM sets that got the crowds the most electrified, while the quieter, more subtle artists like Lana Del Rey were met with scorn. After a year of slow ticket sales, it wouldn’t be surprising if 2025’s line-up features more dance music at the top of the bill.”
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Liberty Dunworth
NME
