The lineup for next year’s Coachella festival seems to be coming together, and it’s looking… well, it’s looking weird. According to various reports, Coachella is going all-in on mainstream starpower for next year’s edition. Last month, Bloomberg claimed that both Kendrick Lamar and Rihanna turned down offers to headline, while Hits Daily Double reported that Fred again.. was a “lock” for the festival. When Post Malone announced his upcoming stadium tour yesterday, he confirmed rumors that he’ll headline Coachella’s two Sunday nights. Now, TMZ reports that three more big names will also join the fray.

Sources have reportedly told TMZ that Travis Scott, Lady Gaga, and Green Day are all locked in for next year’s Coachella. Travis Scott’s inclusion here is interesting. He last played Coachella in 2017, and he was previously announced as a 2020 headliner, but that festival was canceled because of the pandemic. Coachella returned in 2022, months after a crowd crush at Scott’s Astroworld festival killed 10 people. Scott’s management reportedly wanted him to keep his headlining spot for Coachella’s return, but he was dropped. Since then, Scott’s live shows have gone down without serious incident, so maybe the Coachella bookers feel comfortable bringing him back.

Lady Gaga, meanwhile, was a Coachella headiner in 2017, and that’s the only time she’s ever played the festival. Gaga’s got a new grand-scale pop album coming out next year, and her Bruno Mars duet “Die With A Smile” is doing very well on the charts, though the solo dance-pop track “Disease” isn’t hitting the same way. Green Day have never played Coachella, and their fame predates the festival’s existence.

If all of those reports are true, Coachella now has five potential headliners, at least three of which are legitimate stadium acts. I could maybe picture Green Day in the No Doubt “welcome to the desert” spot, but it’s hard to picture how all those names will show up on a Coachella poster. This feels like a reaction to recent years, which were light on stars and which reportedly had relatively slow ticket sales. Still, this doesn’t look like a festival with a real central identity. My contention was that Coachella should book the 2024 pop-girl holy trinity of Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and Sabrina Carpenter, all of whom had standout performances in recent Coachella years, as its main draws. Instead, all three of those artists will headline Barcelona’s Primavera Sound, while Coachella supposedly has this motley bunch of megastars.