On April 11 and 18, American rock band, The Strokes, performed at Coachella Valley’s Coachella Festival for the first time in 15 years. The band’s performance took place on the main stage just before Justin Bieber’s set. Julian Casablancas, the main singer of The Strokes, brought a shocking political statement to the stage in front of thousands of anticipating Justin Bieber fans.

Coach Mac, a dance teacher at Huntington Beach High School (HBHS) who attended the performance, said, “The performance was very chaotic. He seemed under the influence, and would make jokes that people wouldn’t react to, so he would move on to the next song.” 

During their performance for week one of Coachella, The Strokes played a set of 15 songs with their most popular hits, including “Someday,” “Last Nite” and “The Adults Are Talking.” Casablancas set the tone for this performance when he showed up on stage wearing a shirt in the Amazon Prime font, rewriting “Prime” as “Crime.” He allegedly wore this satirical shirt to poke fun at Amazon, Jeff Bezos and the alleged corporate abuse of Amazon from The Federal Trade Commission. 

In this performance, he would use spoken interludes between songs as an opportunity to speak up about current events and try to bring awareness to the crowd. In one of the breaks, he took the opportunity to say, “You guys excited about the draft? Oh wait — not the NFL draft,” referring instead to the military draft registration planned to take effect in December.

During their performance for week two of Coachella, Casablancas stepped onto the stage with a new approach. He swapped out four songs on the original set and performed a shorter set with only 14 songs. The songs he replaced the original set list with included “Life Is Simple in the Moonlight,” which is underlined with political criticism, and “Oblivious.” While performing the latter, The Strokes displayed a video-photo montage of US-backed coups, CIA-involved overthrows of leaders and the recent destruction in Gaza and Iran. The video also showed pictures of country leaders with the caption: “Overthrown by the CIA.” Casablancas then made a joke about Justin Bieber’s performance, mentioning how he brought out a laptop to display YouTube videos to the crowd.

He said, “I was tempted to come out tonight with a laptop and show you guys some of those… Iran Lego videos.” The lego videos he mentioned are AI-generated videos in lego style as pro-Iranian content, and Casablancas said it gave more facts than local news.

Some fans weren’t happy with what he was saying, including as Harper Fishman, a junior at HBHS who attended this performance. She said, “I didn’t fully agree with what he was saying, which is why I was bothered. I also think I wanted to hear his music and I was most excited for that set, but sadly disappointed by it because it was a lot of talk and very few songs.”

Casablancas is publically known for being vocal about his political opinions. In 2001, The Strokes released their first overtly political song, “New York City Cops,” which is based on the killing of Amadou Diallo. The song was featured in their 2001 album, “Is This It.” It was removed from the North American version of the album after the events of 9/11.

When asked about his thoughts on The Strokes’ political performance, Chris Hernandez, a sophomore at Henry J. Kaiser High School and fan, said, “Yes, people went [to Coachella] to have fun, but people should also be educated. All art is political, so I think that [an artist] giving their own opinion on current events should not be looked down upon.”

The Strokes are releasing their seventh album on June 26 called “Reality Awaits.” The album will include nine new songs, which will be followed by a world tour. The tour starts on June 12 at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.