For the first time in several years, festival season will welcome back shirt-optional crowd-pleaser, Justin Bieber.
His Coachella performance this weekend will mark an important moment in his slow-walked return to the stage following a turbulent few years marked by health struggles and cancelled tours, as well as bright spots like fatherhood and Grammy nominations. The first-time headliner’s performance could be a comeback or so much more than that — a throwback to the best days of Bieber.
He last appeared live in front of tens of thousands of people at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil in 2022, but a lot has happened off the stage since Bieber last performed for an audience this big.
Before last year’s release of a pair of “Swag” albums, his last new effort had been 2021’s “Justice.” He was on the world tour supporting that album in 2023 when he was forced to cancel the remaining tour dates due to health issues, sharing that he had Ramsey Hunt Syndrome, a nerve disorder that caused the singer to experience temporary facial paralysis.
“I’m going to be ok, but I need time to rest and get better,” he said in a statement at the time.
Since then, Bieber became a father when his son Jack Blues was born in 2024. He and wife Hailey have been married since 2018.
What could have been a quiet 2025 for Bieber turned out to be anything but thanks to a double-dose of surprise album drops, with “Swag” and “Swag II” coming out within two months of each other. “Swag,” his seventh studio album released in July, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. It also produced hits including the viral “Daisies” and “Yukon,” and scored four Grammy nods for the singer.
Just 11 days after the September release of “Swag II”, Bieber was announced as a Coachella headliner.
Even after his comeback kicked off, Bieber’s penchant for candid social media musings raised some concerns that were assuaged by his representative.
After Bieber wrote a post on his verified Instagram in which he said he felt “unworthy” of his life, a representative for the singer said not only was he doing well, but he was undergoing a “transformative” year after ending “several close friendships and business relationships that no longer served him.”
Bieber is no stranger to Coachella. He previously attended as a concertgoer and has made sporadic guest appearances during other artist’s sets, including with Ariana Grande in 2019 and Daniel Caesar and Giveon in 2022. Also, who can forget that sweet moment he shared with fan-turned-Coachella headliner Billie Eilish?
He’s been seemingly warming up for it all year.
In March, Bieber reportedly performed a full set of songs “Swag” and “Swag II” at Los Angeles’s Roxy Theater, presumably in preparation to sing these new songs for the horde of Gen-Zers making their annual migration to the desert this weekend. This came after the Grammys in February, during which he performed “Yukon” wearing only a pair of silverly blue silk boxers.
There was none of the usual fanfare that comes with a Grammys performance — just Bieber, his boxers and a guitar.
Maybe for the Coachella crowd, simply Bieber and all his swag will be enough.
