Why it matters: 

The influential 1980s indie-rock outfit had been defunct for more than a decade when they reunited in the spring of 2004. One of their first major reunion gigs came at Coachella, where they took the main stage just before Radiohead, one of many bands influenced by Pixies’ anti-commercial sensibility. Once an underground cult concern, the reunited Pixies had now become recognized as progenitors of the alt-rock explosion, and were playing to adoring festival crowds. “To see people that were singing along, I was like, ‘Hey, I haven’t seen that before,’” drummer David Lovering later recalled.

Legacy: 

This was the first of many high-profile reunions at Coachella, and it underscored the growing appetite for reunion tours and albums by iconic ’80s or ’90s bands whose critical acclaim hadn’t initially translated into much commercial success. (Groups like Mission of Burma, Dinosaur Jr. and Slint all reunited to similar acclaim.)

Why it matters:

By 2004, The Flaming Lips’ live show was not just a concert but a multimedia spectacle, complete with psychedelic props, fake blood and dancers in bunny costumes. At Coachella, the experimental rock band took their show to the next level by having frontman Wayne Coyne surf through the crowd inside a giant plastic “space bubble” that resembled a human hamster wheel. 

“[We] didn’t really tell anybody because no one would let us do it,” Coyne later admitted. “So I just did it, and I thought, well, we’ll see if they hate me or if I suffocate in it or whatever. A lot of people went crazy and all that, but they’re kind of going crazy all day and all night [at Coachella] anyway.” 

Legacy: 

The stunt was an instant success, dominating coverage of the festival. The bubble showed that Coachella was a place for colorful spectacle as much as music. It became a mainstay of Lips concerts for years—including in 2020, when they pioneered a new kind of concert by putting audience members in their own bubbles amid the pandemic.  

Why it matters:

Daft Punk’s 2006 Coachella set was a watershed moment for what would soon become widely known as EDM (or electronic dance music). The enigmatic French duo performed toward the top of a giant LED pyramid, mashed up their own hits into an intoxicating sonic meld, and converted a 10,000-person tent into a throbbing dance floor. If ever there was a moment that electronic music—once dismissed as a European phenomenon—won over the rock kids, this was it. 

Legacy: 

The performance—along with Daft Punk’s subsequent Alive 2006/2007 tour—supercharged the duo’s popularity stateside and proved that dance music could thrive on festival stages. It is also frequently cited among the most legendary Coachella performances ever.

“It was a huge moment in how online music fans processed music in the internet age,” says Brown, noting that, because YouTube was a new phenomenon, fans around the world were able to see clips of the festival in real time. “Also, it was a really pivotal thing that changed the festival landscape. It changed how EDM artists and dance music artists tour and perform. This high-concept stage set-up was very influential. You can see it in basically any dance music set, and many other headlining sets in other genres today.” 

Why it matters:

After spending the turn of the century as an unpronounceable symbol, more eccentric and inscrutable than ever, Prince reemerged in the mid-aughts with a comeback album (2004’s Musicology) and an epic Super Bowl halftime show. The star was primed to conquer a new generation of fans, and his 2008 headlining set at Coachella—which he agreed to play only three weeks beforehand, taking home nearly $5 million—clinched the deal. 

Clad in a chic white suit, Prince performed an extensive, 24-song set crammed with hits and special guests, such as Morris Day. But what really made the set unique was a selection of left-field covers, including a rousing, eight-minute rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep.”

Legacy: 

“From now on this is Prince’s house!” the Purple One declared that night—and it was. Prince brought some genuine star power to the festival, proving that Coachella had become much more than an indie-rock gathering. By filling his setlist with unexpected covers (not just “Creep,” but also Beatles and B-52s tunes), he made the night unique and showed that headliners needed to bring more than just their regular repertoire to the festival grounds. 

In 2005, the then-fledgling British rapper performed in the Coachella tent to a rapturous response. “After that show, they said that in the history of Coachella it was the first time they got an encore in a tent,” M.I.A. recalled. “They dismantled the stage and had to put it back together because all the people started going, ‘M.I.A! M.I.A!’” 

Returning in 2008, the rapper was now a veritable star, with the Clash-sampling sleeper hit “Paper Planes” well on its way to chart ascendance—though not yet a festival headliner. Once again, her genre-bending, revolutionary rap fusion incited a massive reaction in a Coachella tent. This time, as Rolling Stone reported, the rapper “whipped the packed Sahara tent into a frenzy, with fans climbing the girders to get a view of her in her platinum wig and then cramming onto the stage to dance alongside her.” Reportedly, around 50 people rushed the stage.

Legacy: 

M.I.A.’s decision to welcome a crowd invasion reportedly upset security staff members, who had the house lights turned on, but it epitomized the rapper’s revolutionary, power-to-the-people spirit and made for one of that festival’s most talked-about moments. Both her 2005 and 2008 appearances at Coachella demonstrated how, in the internet era, heavily buzzed-about festival appearances could be crucial steps on the road to pop stardom. 

Why it matters:

Long before his full-throated admiration for Nazis mired him in controversy, Kanye West (now known as Ye) was at the height of his musical powers when he headlined Coachella shortly after releasing his career-defining album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010). The hit-filled 2011 performance showcased West’s knack for eye-popping spectacle, with a massive stone mural, a crane-powered entrance, stunning stage designs, ballet dancers and cameos by collaborators Pusha T and Justin Vernon.

Legacy: 

This set pushed the boundaries of what a festival set could look like and is often remembered as West’s peak as a live performer. “I believe he pushed Coachella to give him the resources and artistic freedom to be able to do this,” says Brown. “It sort of redefined the potentials of a headlining performance. And this is also the last year that [Coachella] was a single-weekend festival. So that was a huge moment for them.” 

Why it matters:

A paired headlining set from Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg was unusual enough. But the living rappers were upstaged by a deceased one when a projection of the late Tupac Shakur appeared during the set, rapping “Hail Mary” and “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” while seemingly interacting with the audience. The crowd cheered wildly. (Widely misdescribed as a “hologram,” this was in fact a 2D flat projection, created using an illusion known as “Pepper’s Ghost,” invented in the 19th century.)

Legacy:

The projection, both a thrilling and instantly controversial festival moment, sparked debate over the ethics of using modern technology to “resurrect” dead icons. As Billboard noted, Tupac’s appearance “effectively set off the modern holographic gold rush,” with digital likenesses of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston deployed in various contexts in subsequent years. None, though, carried the same sense of novelty and surprise. 

Why it matters:

Kendrick Lamar’s exhilarating fourth album, DAMN, had been out for mere days when the rapper graced Coachella with an electrifying headlining set that included guest appearances by fellow rappers Travis Scott, Future and ScHoolboy Q and a live debut of much of the album. Lamar was elevated in a makeshift cage of light-studded strings as he rapped the song “LUST.” He appeared as his martial arts alter-ego, “Kung Fu Kenny,” in a 1970s-style short film (complete with subtitles) that opened the set.

Legacy:

Hip-hop had changed profoundly in the years since Kanye West headlined Coachella in 2011, and with this performance, Lamar staked his claim as the most influential rapper of his generation—a message he would reinforce, under very different circumstances, with his Super Bowl halftime show in 2025. 

Why it matters:

“Beychella” wasn’t just a festival performance—it was a transformative cultural moment. Originally slated for 2017, then postponed a year due to the singer’s pregnancy, Beyoncé’s two Coachella performances (one headline set each weekend) offered audiences a full immersion in Black expression and Black cultural history. Each set came replete with a full marching band, a reunion of her early career duo Destiny’s Child, a Jay-Z cameo, homages to the Black Power movement and Black feminism, multiple costume changes and a setlist showcasing era-defining anthems like “Formation” alongside the singer’s enviable catalog of hits.

“I had never seen someone who realized the aspiration to be royalty,” says veteran Coachella journalist Bruce Fessier, who was there. “And I saw Elvis Presley two months before he died. That’s what it was like to be with Beyoncé. You were just honored and thrilled to be in her presence.” 

Legacy: 

The performance yielded both a concert film (Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé) and accompanying live album—and could be seen as the culmination of Beyoncé’s evolution from pop star to generational icon. As the New York Times wrote at the time, “History is her stage.”

“The baseline [for headlining Coachella] is, like, an A-caliber artist coming and doing their great show,” says Brown. “Beyoncé took it a step further, where she really made it a special event that was only ever performed there, I believe, on those two headlining shows. And that was just a really definitive moment in Coachella's history."

“Beyoncé was sort of the pivotal moment where the stars aligned, where they have this huge pop artist, and she actually is willing to take a big creative swing,” Brown adds.